RW Forum Six – Sub 2.50 Kier with Parkrunfan

Hi Brian, Bro and Minni and Mr. Z - fancy seeing so many familiar names on here  

Brian is da man - and as another HADDite I couldn't agree more with the "train slow to race fast" theme. Fwiw: 10 weeks of base building HADD stylee and the first P&D LT run was a revelation. With no speedwork whatsoever it felt easy. That was a first .

I can understand that slowing down from what you are used to feels odd at first and I agree - I'd love my runs to be over and done with sooner rather than later, but believe me - slow running works.

Not sure where I heard or read it, but I think even the Kenyans run lots of very slow miles, even some 9mm! Now what's good for them ...

A small confession, my lunchtime run was off road and it was quite muddy, so 9:49/m isn’t a typical pace
I do however run the majority of my road runs in the 8:00/m ball park, this mornings run being 7:59/m or something like that. For me that is MP+90 (MP+100 if I take McMillan MP of 6:20/m).

The key for me is I am able to recover for bigger sessions when I do my general runs at this pace, on long runs (they sometimes end up in the 7:40 – 7:50/m zone) and at this pace I am getting good time on feet benefits as well. My last 22 miler took me 2:52; that's longer than my target Marathon time, oh and I did that on nothing more than a glass of water. Its all about the fat burn!

I remember hearing/reading about Steve Cram complaining about how slow Marathoners often train. I think he gave an example where he went for a run with Rob De-Castella (I think) and the first couple of miles were something like 8:00/m. If its good enough for Deek……
(It might have been a Marathon Talk interview)

Carter - as a good rule of thumb you should be able to do about 10 to 12M of MP in training as a stand alone run and it should be a tough run, pretty much a TT.

Theres a theme developing

YD - You're too young to remember Deek, the half decent plodder that he was!

TR - A very valid point

10.0 Miles @8:33/mile tonight

So, 28 miles over two evenings should make tomorrow's 10,000m track race a suitable grind...

I'm thinking that a second sub 40 in four days with 28 miles sandwiched in between would represent a very satisfactory session - so dont be surprised if I declare myself happy with a 39:xx

Wow! Busy on here today. Well done PRF on keeping your end up. I’ve been flat out at work today so no lunch break to check emails or the thread. Pleased to see looks of new posters (and even TR’s come out of the closet). 

The early mornings are a little struggle PRF, but habit seems to be the key. However I am much happier (and more likely) running in the morning compared to going out in the evening after getting all drowsey doing the bathtime / bedtime story and listening out for 30mins routine.

That said, Weds is my ‘night out’ so will run straight after work and go straight to the tri clubs core session afterwards. Getting up Thurs morning at 6am is pretty difficult after getting home at 9pm. (BTW - I will be swapping round Weds and Fri's planned sessions).

Talking of the McMillian calculator – it used to be brilliant. Just plug in your latest race time and it would predict your comparible time at a whole range of other distances and detailed paces for different types of runs based on your recent pb. But sometime around Xmas they seem to of modernised it, and now it is shite! 

Has anyone signed up for McMillian’s coaching tips and can you access the ‘old’ calculator if you pay?

Run slow to speed up sounds crazy - but has worked for me this year. I started HADDing in November which allowed me to build up to 50mpw very quickly. Soon I noticed my paced dropped for the same HR. For example I ran 11m @ 142bpm (75%) at 8.11 m/m in mid Dec and the same run (same route) this morning at same HR came out at 7.52 m/m (with slightly tired legs from the 10k).

Posted before, but this and this are good HADD resources to read. 

Keir - I can see how the routine lends itself to the early morning runs and tbh I found even the hard quality sessions were just as productive early mornings.....once the routine was established.

I suppose morning running is closer to what we actually do when racing than evening runs.

Didnt realise the McMillan calculator had changed but it is simple enough to work out conversions anyway - just add 15secs/mile for each distance increase, ie 5K, 10K, HM, Mar. The relationship works well until you get to the marathon, where 15 secs/mile slower than HM pace is only achieved by a small percentage.

Nice to see more evidence of the benefits of getting the slower miles in

And good to see flexibility being used with the scheduling.....

parkrunfan wrote (see)

Didnt realise the McMillan calculator had changed but it is simple enough to work out conversions anyway - just add 15secs/mile for each distance increase, ie 5K, 10K, HM, Mar. The relationship works well until you get to the marathon, where 15 secs/mile slower than HM pace is only achieved by a small percentage.

Yes, that would imply a conversion of double HM time + 6:30 or so, way short of the usual rule of thumb additions of 10 mins or 10%.  The very elites would be within that, but very few others, as you say.

I guess it is more of a curved line rather than a straight % when it comes to HM to Marathon conversion. - The slower the runner, the greater the % of HM time. It would be interesting if someone used all the stats on Morgahan's Maraton time predictor thread to analyse this. 

That would give you a real world range of conversions, but would include all those marathons that didn't go to plan, to put it mildly.  The difference between a poorly executed half and a good one is rarely more than a few minutes, but get it wrong at the longer distance and it can be much, much more.  Predictors are looking for the best possible marathon time based on a half time.

Of course, you could look at it the other way and say that the vast majority of runners over-perform at HM, based on their marathon times.

Keir - Not a big fan of the new McMillan format myself, but more to the point, I'm still convinced the calculator itself has changed, stretching out the conversion rate, so that predictors for shorter distances are too aggressive.  Of course, the flip side is that his marathon predictor is a little more generous and IMO effectively adds in a small amount of wiggle room, but is probably still somewhere between a "best case scenario" and any figure that you ought to think about using as an actual target.

If you want to get really bullish, why not work out your equivalent WAVA age-graded equivalent performance from a shorter distance.  According to my 10k time on Sunday (33:07) I'm on for a sub-2:30!  *rofl* etc...

It goes the other way too PP: according to last year's marathon time I should have been able to knock out a sub-17 min parkrun!  *rofl* etc....

Mind you, the new Mcmillan suggests 16:22 for 5k and a 34 min 10k.  Even if I spent the next 6 months training specifically for those distances I wouldn't get anywhere near those times.

Agreed the new McMillan is rubbish. However , I find the conversion has always been pretty accurate for me in the 5k – 10mile range and not too bad for HM after I had a few cracks at getting my HM time in line. WAVA on the other hand scares me when I look upwards from my 5k and 10k times.

Conversions to 5k, 10m, HM and Mara from 10k pb of 35:24:

McMillan:         17:03 - 59:10 - 1:18:55 - 2:46
Howard Grubb: 17:00 – 57:35 – 1:17:08 - 2:42

I would fancy my chances on the McMillan predictions up to half, the WAVA 5k seems ok to me, but the rest 

YD - You're capable of 57:35 and 1:17:08, I'm not sure why you think they're out of reach, that was quite a breakthrough performance on Sunday.

As for the 2:42 for the marathon, that all depends how you take to the marathon but admittedly it looks the toughest of all the predictions.

Thanks for the vote of confidence prf, it looks like I might have a couple of opportunities in March to prove it either way.
I suppose my caution when it comes to the HM stems from my experience at the GNR when I blew up at 9 miles when chasing what was to my mind a sensible target.

Motivation down to 3 / 10 today. Didn't fancy running. But zipped up the man suit and got on with it. Very cold wind. 1.5m w/u @ 7.43m/m (bit too fast really) then should have been 7m between 6.45 - 7m/m. Started a bit quick at 6.40m/m and legs were really burning after 2.5m. I guess this was still Sunday and the cold in the legs. Stopped, thought of PRF running another 10k tonight and told myself to man up. No slower though as next 4.5m @ 6.39m/m but felt better. 

Then 3m progressive: 1m @ 6.16m/m 162bpm (85%) / 1m @ 6.00m/m 168m/m (88%) / 1m @ 5.39m/m 175m/m (92%). Lots of coughing up clear phlem after the session but good to get it done. Finished off with 1hr of tri club circuits. 

Keir - How you managed that on a 3/10 motivation level is a minor miracle. But what a confidence booster to get it done when it just didnt seem on.

Hopefully the phlegm stuff is just clearing out the remnants, there clearly isnt much wrong with the performance output.

Very positive news

Tonights 10,000m was a wind affected affair with the back straight into a pretty strong headwind. But since it is all about effort levels rather than times the wind didnt really affect the value of the session.

The plan was to try to run each 5 lap block progressively after a 6 mile warm up - it felt strong and controlled but the wearing effect of the wind just didnt allow for the acceleration towards the end.

38:29 - 7:42, 7:41, 7:38, 7:46, 7:42

Very happy though, it was a stronger performance than Sunday's 38:12 and with 34 miles sandwiched in between shows conditioning is coming along nicely.

The last 5 days have consisted of 55 miles, of which 15 have been around the 6 min/mile mark - the kind of workload that will reap dividends down the line. No need for absolute speed yet.