RW Forum Six - 3.30

Speed Sheep - I'd do a 10 km as soon as possible after you start training proper so you can use it to set your training paces, perhaps one of the earlier ones in Oct. The half in early dec will be well timed 6-7 weeks before the marathon which is just where you want it. My race at the end of Oct is a 10 mile, and I like that event and the distance, gives you more time to get into your runnning than a 10km. I don't think any of the Nov races would do any harm and would be useful to reset training paces while you still have time before the marathon. But what do I know.

Scuba you know lots.

Speed Sheep, My 10 miler 1:08 result helped confidence wise for my half estimate below, 10k mile pace plus 6-8 seconds, so gets my vote. Don't worry about the half to 3:30 time, get some training under your belt and see where you are at. I'd go for 10k early in Oct, half in Dec, but not 2. If you think doable then 10k/10m/half is nice but might be too much. All my PBs were post May marathon, just the one half raced in mid March, though I had some club races. Congrats on essay D&D.

Gazelle, book was the Charlie Spedding autobiog. Even just the first 5-10 pages would be enough PMA for anyone, unfancied against a top world class field he got a bronze medal at 1984 Olympics marathon. A lot about the internal thinking and attitudes he used to get there. Very very inspiring, Brol you want first?
Which half are you doing Sunday? I'm aiming at 1:31-32 for next half attempt but not till Nov.

Scuba, I usually cope fine with recovery, adaption with my 2 rest days. This week not helped by stressful rest day Friday at work??tidying up others mess, press report in local paper, and possible threat of lawyers and even fines (not for me). Not good. Tiny bit less sleep meant low energy, probably high heart rate too? Some combo of stress/ fatigue/ energy. Now fine.
Good luck with tempo run, more an interval session almost, with the rest in middle? Hope goes well.

Brol, See, I said you would find the 10x400 fairly easy. Making the recoveries shorter doesn't make the session any better, stick to what your coach says. You remember me mentioning speed development not speed work? Longer recoveries for these, not shorter. Usain Bolt would do 5-10 minute rest doing 100metres sets for example. Honest!

Fully recovered now. Monday is rest day, Tuesday speed. On seafront, 5 x 0.35m, 5 x 0.25m sort of half laps of a pavement loop in groups based on ability. Hard session, running with fastest in the club. I always try and have 1-2 people I know I can't stick with the whole distance, see how close I can get. 5-6 I couldn't stick with now far behind. Pushed and stayed ahead off 17-18min 5k runners on some efforts, made them work really hard.
Did anyone see Michael Johnson explaining how to run 400m? How fast to go off, try maintain speed through 200, then endurance phase, apply turbo kick on 250/ 300m. So I tried different speed starts, middle approach & when to kick to see what worked. 0.35m sections around 1:50-1:54, the quarters nicely between 1m17-1m21. Absolutely flying.

No speed next week, races every Tuesday!

SSheep- I wouldn't worry too much about the pace you're doing your strides at.  Just do it by feel.  Sounds like you got it right. In terms of racing I agree with ST.  You want to get a 10k done as soon as possible to be able to set your paces.  How about the one on the 6th October? 

You then want to do something in November to see how you're progressing- if it's a 10k/ 10m or half marathon is really a matter of preference.  Good thing about 10k races is that they give you a good idea about where you are in terms of fitness but don't take as much time to recover from as half maras, which means that they don't interfere so much with your training.

From my experience I always noticed improvement 5-6 weeks into my mara training so it might be worth slotting something in at that point.  I've never raced 10m but only because there aren't many around.  The half mara on 7th December would give you a very good indication of your target marathon pace, I would definitely do that one!  I wouldn't bother with the 10k one week after the half in December.

If it helps I will end up doing 3 x 10k and 2x half maras in my build up to NY.

ST- good luck with the tempo!

FRTC- x post. Glad to hear you're back to your usual boing self. Not to worry about the book, I will download it to my kindle, but many thanks! What races are you doing every Tuesday?

Races every Tuesday, local multi terrain mini league, so all sorts of surface, grass, trail, forests, rocks, mud, and a fair few hills. I will be wearing those lovely XT4s of course.

Or as someone asked me last week, have you got those tractor shoes on again?

Brol, agree with you about the recovery time, I'm sure P&D has 10k as 2-3 days, and a half as something like a week? Marathon then 2-3 weeks. 10 mile sits nicely as 4-5 days assuming taken full on.

Speed Sheep my race report for the 10 miler is here, gives you an idea of pacing. Scuba is going for similar for his.

I aimed for 10k pace plus a smidge or two (say 10-12 seconds per mile) and keep that pace going as long as possible, even to point of burnout. 10 mile time can prove you are taking half too easy. C target was 1:12, B 1:10, A 1:09. I got A** !

Great confidence booster if you can fit one in without affecting your running.

I'll start linking these into spreadsheet as boss Gazelle has ordered with all our PBs and races.

Charlie Spedding book is here and actually has the first 10-15 pages on look inside preview thing, click click. He ran against Alberto Salazar, Rob De Castella and others. and beat them.

Awesome advice, as ever.  Thanks all  

I think, based on the above, my target will be 10k on 6 Oct, 10k on 9 Nov, then half marathon on 7 Dec.  I was avoiding the early 10k because I was scared  but you're right, I need to see where I am at the start of my training, and that will be at the end of week 2, I think.  Giving it another go a month later will hopefully see some improvement.  

Brolish, I like your thinking in terms of recovery.  I think that's really important for me coming back from injury, which is why I'm going to avoid the 10 miler in November as it is too close to the half in December.  But FRTC and Scuba (I agree with FRTC, you know LOTS!!), I hear what you're saying about the distance and will definitely keep that in mind should I see another one.

Also, I'm laughing because the half marathon in Dec is the one I did last year and had an absolute nightmare on the course at around 10m (I got a massive stitch right under my rib cage through drinking Gatorade when I'd not trained with it ) and ended up struggling home in 1:49ish.  It's time to right that wrong!!!

SSheep- I can totally understand why you're scared to do a 10k early on but it is important that you are training at the correct paces. That was exactly the purpose of my 10k a few weeks ago which went rather horrible but the one I did last week was a lot better so remember that you will improve! The main thing is you're back running and posting about running- yuppee! And yes, it definitely sounds like you have some unfinished business with the December half.

13m done on the way home @ 8:40. 

My friend from Spain is coming to stay with us for the weekend from tomorrow and she loves going out and staying out until all hours (as they do in Madrid) so I'm going to make sure that all this socialising doesn't interfere with my running over the next few days. I suspect there might be some hangover running happening at some point. Hopefully no intoxicated running though...

SS: i will be the old git with the Grey goatee at the 10K on the 6/10. Bright yellow Mirdif Milers vest!

Hi all

Very busy at mo, so brief call in.

Well done to SS on the essay!!! 

Gazelle! Good luck for the half! 

Excellent training as usual from the rest of you guys, ST, FRTC and Brolish!

My mileage is very low at the mo, just ticking over at about 25-30 mpw. Will be away this weekend with Mrs J. It's her opportunity to recover from all the preparation and this week's clear up and being into school etc....

Next week, I am going to sort out some races for the winter and put a proper schedule together. Won't be longer than a H/M tho.

Waves to all

Brolish well done on your interval session, we all knew you could do it, not only do it but smashed it  Did you do anything different on the build up to the session ie PMA or was it just one of those days when things fall into place? Oh dear take care when showing your friends around town, I'm sure you be able to fit in a few running sessions.

SS I have tried to follow the baby schedule twice, first time I bottled out of the mp runs and a few long runs hence I didn't get a good time, then I did a few weeks at the beginning of this year before moving over to Shaggys schedule. I wouldn't worry about the overall mileage, the most I have done in a week on this campaign is 55miles, if I did more miles my energy levels would be zero, I think it's only Brolish who can get away with the higher mileage!  ST is spot on by saying do a 10k asap(10k with Dubai Dave sounds good) as you will have an accurate assessment of where your running is at the moment.

FRTC I'm doing the Kenilworth half on sunday.I'm looking forward to your Tuesday race reports I think it may only be yourself who has used the Tractor Shoes!!!! Gagging to get mine on but will wait until after the marathon Thanks for the info on the book.

Juggler, 25-30 is still very good mileage since you are not on a schedule. Hope you are taking Mrs J somewhere nice for the weekend, will you be packing a pair of trainers just in case....

Intoxicated running, Brolish?  I'm sure you'd never attempt such a thing   Enjoy some quality socialising!

Juggler, still a good mileage week as Gazelle says!

Dubai Dave, I hope to see you on the start line!  What do you reckon the temperature will be like at beginning of Oct?  

Gazelle, I take great comfort from your mileage levels so I will stick with it!!  Good luck for the race on Sunday.

I had a much better run today.  I was out the door at 5:45am  but it was worth it.  It was still very hot, but the humidity was a lot lower so I think that really helped.  Irritatingly, the one day I really needed Garmin feedback, the damn thing messed up (did I ever mention how much I hate my 405 ) Actually, to be fair it just had one of those days where it wouldn't lock on to a satellite so I was running blind.  Therefore, based on recent heat-impaired pace, I decided to estimate 10 mins per mile.  Imagine my surprise when at 25 mins in the Garmin decided to spring into action.  I was even more surprised when a mile later it told me I was running 8:50 m/m!  So I decided to slow down a bit and the next mile was 9:20, the following 9:40.  By which time I had 58 mins on the clock so I worked out that I'd covered 6 miles, give or take.  The last mile did start to feel uncomfortable, my heart rate was up in the 160s, but overall it was nowhere near as bad as last week.  I never knew what speed I was running at because I've got my watch set to show average pace and of course because it thought I'd taken 25 mins to run my first mile (I may be bad in the heat but I'm not THAT bad!) it skewed the average.  I couldn't be bothered to fiddle around with the settings to change it so I just ignored it until I heard the mile beep.  All in all, it was nice to be home before 7am and be stretching   Also, it was good to arrive home in one piece rather than a gibbering wreck.... I can't say I'm looking forward to 5:15am starts, but if that's what it takes then so be it.

SS Good on you, when your a bit more acclimatized Dubai Creek Striders run on Friday mornings from the Novotel at the Trade Centre which must be about 5 mins from your apartment. Temp in early October will be in the mid 30's in the day time so probably around 30C at the start at 0700, maybe a couple of degrees less as the exiles is a long way out of the city.

Sounds good Speed Sheep. you have your races to see where you are and tune up. I wouldn't worry too much about P&D. It is meant to flexible not a prescription. You especially do need to listen to your body, any warning signs.

Brol, just drink lots of water to balance up the booze. A glass before you go to bed  and some neurofen usually works for me. Then lots when out. Guess it depends how much drinking you will be doing...

Tractor shoes are ace. light. Okay on the road once you've run in them for 1-2 miles, tyres warming up maybe he he? On a mixed trail run though, or varied surface very good. Probably will run in them Tuesday.

Road run last night, to help pal doing marathon. trail is nice on Thursday but gotta do some road running to get him used to it. We were getting ready to leave the club, 2 of us, Mike had already gone out on road half hour ahead. A few at club asked what route were doing, maybe bored with trail run too.. and suddenly we had 8 in our group, some much faster sub 1:30 half , which made pace a little difficult for my pal, ~1:40 half for him.

11.5 miles total, 1m warm up at 8mm, 3m @ 6:55 (not sure how this happened), 5 min break then 6m @ 7-7:30, then a final 1m @ 8mm since pace was a little hot for my pal so held back to get him home. finishded with a little sprint finish

Circuit tomorrow, maybe intervals (undecided). Aiming to do 20m on Sunday, but paced with pal so nice builder aerobic wise. Good weekend Athletes.

Juggler- enjoy your weekend away.
Gazelle- I didn't do anything differently before the intervals. Had another great run today with some MP miles thrown in which felt ridiculously easy so ended up doing them at 7:38... It's either a randomly good week or things are coming together for me hope its the latter!
SSheep- sounds like things are looking up, great to hear. Do you make sure that you lock the satellites before you set off? I always check garmin accuracy and wait until it shows 30ft or less. It must be a nightmare to get a good reception with all those tall buildings!
FRTC- impressive running yesterday.
Well I'm going to try to take it easy(ish) today so that I can do my long run tomorrow morning so that I can concentrate on drinking for the rest of the weekend

Brolish, superb to see you've got your priorities well in order   Shame there's not a 'beer' icon like there is on my BlackBerry for me to post....  I hope you get in a good long run today to set you up nicely!

Speaking of which, I was off out before 6am again today.  Just a 5 mile easy pace, still just getting back into it.  Despite the temperature dropping, the humidity was ramped up.  I got up and saw that our windows were completely steamed up on the outside, never a good sign.....  But, I definitely felt better today.  My splits were mostly sub-10m/m!!  Blimey, never did I think posting something like that would be a boast   I ran 9:50, 9:43, 9:20, 10:30 (no idea what happened there, didn't feel unusually hard and I don't recall having to stop for any reason), 9:40.  My heart rate was also much better, average 137 and only in the late 140s for last mile.  So all in all, I'm quite pleased with that.

Garmin also played nicely.  I realised what I did wrong yesterday was set it into training mode before I left the apartment (because I wanted to see what my early morning heart rate was).  I have to get in a lift which knocks the satellite reception off and obviously it just had a bit of problems reconnecting.  Today, I simply waited until I got outside.  The first bit of my run is away from buildings so it had no trouble sorting itself out.  Brolish, what do you mean when you say you wait until it locks on and shows 30ft or less?  How do I do that?

Also, while we are on the subject of Garmin, I seem to be having real issues with Garmin Connect when I upload my data.  Bearing in mind I've not used it since I got injured in Feb, it seems to have changed.  I'm having no issues uploading my data, that's the easy part.  The problem I'm having is with accessing my individual runs via the Dashboard or the Activities tab, it takes FOREVER to load on my screen.  I get the outline up, but the map just won't load quickly and I can't scroll down the screen to see my splits until the sodding map is loaded.  I don't even want the map, I know exactly where I've been, is there any way of getting rid of it?  This whole process even crashes my browser sometimes!!!  It's a real pain as it makes editing the run with a title and notes a real chore.

Juggler, I hope you're enjoying a really lovely weekend.  That's a great idea to do something nice after the wedding as I'm sure it's been mega hectic for you both.  Enjoy some quality time 

Gazelle, I hope you're chilling pre-race.  I can't wait to hear how it goes!!  Your efforts will inspire me to make another early start for tomorrow's 'long' run (7 miles, longest since Feb).

Dubai Dave, once I've mastered this early morning running malarky, I will investigate the Fri runs.  Yes, the Novotel is just across the bridge from me so that's kind of handy .  I'm still nervous about a 10k in 30 degrees, I think that will affect my speed somewhat, but if you don't try and all that..........

FRTC, nice splits!  I love the fact 8 m/m is now a warm up..........  You'll like this one, I've come up with a new TRX press-up - both hands on medicine balls.  I saw someone using what looked like handles and he was really struggling, so I thought I'd give it a go.  I found it really easy.  So I wondered if I could make it harder.....  I've been doing press-ups on the floor using medicine balls as part of my post-challenge effort to keep the strength but reduce the numbers.  So I ni

Clearly I bored the Forum with an excessively long post   That's what happens when I'm all bouncy having come back from a run and it's still too early to go and wake OH up!!!  Anyway, what I was trying to say was I managed not to fall on my face and did 3 x 10 with medicine balls interspersed with sets of calf exercises to give my arms a rest.  I managed them well, really slowly so great core exercise, and it was only the last 2 of the final set that I struggled with.  I am definitley adding that to Mission 6 Pack 

SS you are funny, long posts are good you do post them very early for us hence no replies! I woke up at 9am today, 11hours of sleep, I knew I was tired yesterday. My garmin dosn't lock on sometimes, so one minute i'm running at 10mm which I know i'm not and then as soon as it bleeps for the mile It says i'm running at 8:??mm blooming watch. I should of listened to you all and got the newer version, oh well I will try and be good and see if Father Christmas can put one in my stocking(115 sleeps) Well done for getting up early for your runs you will find that it gets easier soon. I'm glad you're embracing the heat, respect to you.

FRTC Sounds like you are inspiring lots of members of your club  Good luck with the 20 tomorrow, are you sure you don't want to enter Chester marathon??? I'm sure you could fit in a couple of 20 milers!!

Brolish I'm glad your training is going very well, does the "Boss" tell you off when you go quicker than he has prescribed? Take care not to wear yourself out by doing all sessions too quick and goodluck today for your long run it looks hot out there. I wonder how many drinks you will have before you feel tipsy tonight? Hope you have a great time.

 

I think my mind and body goes into overdrive on the lead up to races. On Wednesday's training session I felt a tight spot like a big knot on my right calf so I stopped and rubbed/kneaded it for a few seconds then it disappeared. Hubby is out all day today 7am-7pm volunteering at a show, last year we turned up and was able to go in the VIP tent! so I decided to do my run that was scheduled today last night, it all went smoothly but my calf was tight after the run, hubby massaged it and today the knot seems to have gone!

A few days to the lead up to a race I like to visualise the race in my head as I'm going to sleep, anyway I woke up this morning and realised that I fell asleep after the warm up last night, not sure whether this is good or not??? Hopefully I will visualise all of the race tonight before I drift off.

Any way I will go and try to keep myself out of mischief, hope you all have a great weekend,

Gazelle

Gazelle, no, nope to Chester for me. Nice to have the "pressure" of specific time off, and enjoy running, I'm having fun.
Good luck tomorrow. You will be awesome. As always.

I have a good article for you actually, click here, actually mentions visualising a lot. Speed sheep, it's also about Mission 6 pack too, or any challenge.

In tests, people doing an exercise, a set, brain activity monitored. If they visualised the same exercise, brain actually did a similar reading just lower. So the brain / body connection is far deeper than realised.

Really liked this quote

There is no such thing as "I can't," no such thing as "impossible." You must surround yourself with positive people, positive quotes, positive images and positive videos. This force-field of positivity will thwart any negativity trying to infiltrate your mind.

& last sentence finishes it off nicely

Shun the naysayers, forget the stereotypes. Conceive your goals, believe in yourself and achieve your dreams. Nothing is impossible.

Speed Sheep. Nice running by you. And yes I know that sort of press up with the handles. Med ball will be similar. Tough!
One for your Mission 6 pack, a TRX roll out. Like you do with the wheel on floor? TRX behind you, arms behind, lean whole body forward. Not nice. But great for core.
Garmin Connect, check your browser and update it. Also flash since this is used in parts. It could be something happening at your ISP, blocking filtering? Compare speed on an iPad or smartphone if similar delay.

Nice uber circuit for me this morning, pretty tough in parts. Did I mention I have got uber gym coach to come Sunday long run last week? He runs on his own and is doing a half next week, so got him to run with the fast boys, club coach happy obviously. First time I've seen uber breathing hard when they finished.

Not sure about inspiring members at the club, but certainly helping as many as I can. Mike for some reason is aiming for 3:28:01 at Chester. I wonder why??
My previous gym instructor, I did classes & personal training with her for the 12 months upto Liverpool marathon. Have got her to come now to Tuesday club speed sessions too. I couldn't get near her in a 5k last year, things very different now. She is lovely though, and always thank her for building up my legs & fitness carefully. Maybe jobs going in uber gym so...

After circuit, short break and down to the nature reserve for "track" session.
Last time I was fully rested no circuit so interested to see how it affected times.
Lap 1 6:00
Lap 2 ?:??
Lap 3 6:03
Lap 4 6:30 more a cool down chatting with pals

Lap 2? A stonking 5:52. A new mile PB. I really am getting faster, speed work paying off.

Gazelle, Aston Martin DBS to you for tomorrow. Aka speedy roadster.

Waves to all.

Hello everyone. Quick check in between running and drinking to say good luck to Gazelle and don't be shit! Look forward to the race report tomorrow. I'm sure you will smash it, go get them speedster!