RW Forum Six – Sub 2.50 Kier with Parkrunfan

Thanks for the heads up Minni, but I don’t think I will be racing it. I wont be in the NE that weekend now, plans have changed.
As a general point on racing in the build up to the Marathon, I have decided to avoid long races. I have the Thirsk 10 in March in which I will go full beans at, and I will have a few short races closer to M day as sharpeners but don’t want to risk anything on a long race. I think extra long runs are worth more to me at this stage and are lower risk.

prf – Spen 20 is a no no I am afraid, I am not going to risk it (see above) + I can lose a lot of brownie points by racing on Mothers Day.  
As for your slog comment, yes it is feeling a slog at the moment.

Keir – if you call back to back MLR’s (one of which contains a 10mile tempo) followed by a hard 5k run, easy, then you and me have different definitions of easy  

Keir, Best of luck with the 32M run, where is it? And how does next week's training look like?

Went out yesterday lunchtime for 45mins very easy. Got a little carried away and ended up doing 63mins easy (7.98 miles @ 7:54). Calf tightened a little after about 40mins, but stretched it out and it was fine. All easy runs this week.

Minni - It sounds like your prep is going really well.

Keir - Enjoy your hop over to France!

The 5000m tomorrow is an official Po10 race and looks like being decent conditions, so is worth a first shot of the year at a 17:xx.

YD - Sensible approach. Racing 10 miles, and possibly 13 miles, is ok but once you go beyond that you really have to control the effort levels.

I love the strategic brownie point calculations

Brian - It sounds like that calf is quickly becoming nothing more than a minor niggle, no doubt a big relief!

Keir - An ultra in the dark.  Sounds like, er, fun!  I may step into the crazy world of 26+ races one day.  Think I'd be OK at them. I don't know much about ultra running except my intuition tells me I'd prefer to be setting out at something like 8m/m rather than 10m/m purely because I'd find it easier to switch off and clock up the miles, whereas the slower pace would need more active concentration.  I could be wrong!

Re: 20 mile races. I know there's a lot of talk about people getting carried away on these but I've not found it a problem previously.  I'm looking forward to the Finchley 20, which is ideally scheduled at five weeks out from VLM, and I will be treating as my hardest LR. Likely 23 miles for the day (2 mile w/u, 1 c/d) with a steady 5 miles followed by 15 @ MP.  As with all the other MP runs I will have done, "MP" will be a product of running to effort/HR and I'll genuinely only up the pace at the end if there are any oldish looking people up for a race, or if the clock looks like it's in danger of ticking over the 2 hour mark!    Only at this point will I think about genuine time targets for the marathon.  (Although I like to think that the window of possible times is narrowing by the week!)

PhilPub, beware as last year Finchley was full of people doing odd paces so even though I did the 4 laps in pretty even pace (aim was 20@MP of 6:30 for 2:10 and ended up in 2:08:09) and all within about 45 seconds of each other (31:37, 31:53, 32:23, 32:15) I spent the whole race passing fast starters who died and others who set out slow and brought it home fast. Very disconcerting when some of the sub-3 thread come flying by at mile 16 so you can't count your chickens until you have crossed the finish line for the 4th time.

Cheers PMJ.  I guess, all the more reason to stay disciplined and stick to the plan.  If Marigold flies past me at any point, I promise not to try and stick with him! 

I'm getting a bit worried. Decided to rest and stretch on Monday before the massage. The masseur confirmed at tight and tender lower back and left side. Still stiff this morning, so I decided to rest again and stretched whenever we stood still around the aquarium in France, often rubbing myself up (not in that way) against hand rails. With all this rubbing quite sore and bruised, but still a little bit of pain there when walking. Certainly feeling better than a couple of days ago and there is not much else I can do other than massage, stretch and light training for a while. I'll run tomorrow as a test. 

Keir - go canny on the rubbing. I'm sure I made my calf injury worse a couple of years ago with a little too much self massage (as well as self TENS and self ultrasound).  In the end it was the frozen trout that helped the most.

I was one of those who started off slow and then overtook most of the field in the 2nd lap at Bramley. Intended to start off at 8s but that didnt happen so was 7.30s for the first 5, 7:15s-7.30s for the 2nd 5 then ramped up to 6.45s for the last 10. Couple of 6.57s on the hills but otherwise 6.45s all the way. Chuffed with that and tells me where I am. Was tired Monday and yesterday but still clocked 29 miles over the two days. Speed work last night and still managed sub 6 pace in the 600s and an up and down route. 15 today.

I am in the do not race 20s camp. I just think it leaves your body open to illnes and injury afterwards and takes too long to recover. I loved overtaking everyone on the 2nd lap, especially my club mate at 18 miles !!

Am sure you're fine Keir, just take it a bit easy for a couple of days. Niggles always appear when marathon training its learning which are the more serious and which can be trained through that does take experience. I have arthritis (not confirmed yet, but x-ray next week) in the ball of my foot and big toe joint. Its falred up at the mo but the physio is working wonders and it didn't hurt at all until I crossed the line on Sunday, then it cramped up. Arrhhh!

Keir - there comes a point in time IMO where you have to stop icing/stretching/heating/rubbing  etc and leave it alone to heal up. Apart form a few key exercises. Otherwise it keeps getting stirred up again. I still havnt seen a lion do a few stretches before it chases it's lunch.

Defo in the PRF behind the curve/under cooked camp at this end, but getting there. Managed to make a hilly 22M last me 2:46 on Sunday and backed it up with a 5M +10M commute on Monday (with a lunch time swim session too) and my legs were fine, apart from the knee but thats getting there slowly.

I don't think there is any real right rule about racing be it 20 miles, a half, a 10k, parkrun or whatever provided you avoid the obvious gotchas so don't be racing a 20 miler 2 weeks out. At the end of the day, there are three things you need to take to the starting line:

1) confidence
2) ability
3) freshness

The whole marathon campaign is a balancing act: if you train harder to improve your ability and get niggles or injuries it negatively affects your freshness. A raced 20 can be a massive confidence booster but if you do a mini-taper and recovery afterwards then you miss a few quality sessions and that affects your ability.

I reckon that as you get more experience, then your confidence grows and so the need for confidence boosting races goes away and you can concentrate more on the other two pillars. For some, a slow start and faster finish is a good confidence booster as well.

TR, that's because you haven't been in the African plains as dawn breaks, with the silence only broken by the whispering breeze and the distance sound of the lions' pilates class.

An excellent piriformis stretch from our running lion ...

Nice pussy Minni. Tell me more about the fish.

I wondered why you hadn't posted for a while MM. SOunds like you've been running nicely. Balancing act indeed. It is hard to know which side of the tightrope you are treading when marathon training sometimes.

Wise words PMJ. Know thyself is the key. Unfortunately that takes experience and it is only through mistakes that you really know where your own barriers are. 

Impressive that your knee is recovering whilst you are running such high mileage TR. Shows that rest isn't always the best option.

So today was a bit of a test run for me. After 2 days rest and the massage I really wanted a bit of a test to see how bad / serious things are. I had the first proper progressive 10miler planned for today, so I thought I might as well start doing that and see how far I get. 1.5m warm up @ 7.57m/m with tightness around hip flexors. Took a bit of time to stop feeling as if I was waddling rather than running. However once warmed I got stuck into the head wind along the exposed marsh for: 1m @ 6.57m/m, 1m @ 6.56m/m, 1m @ 6.49m/m, 1m @ 6.41m/m, 1m @ 6.34m/m, 1m @ 6.28m/m. Decided to stop, stretch and jog home at this point, but after a rest I thought I might as well go for an extra out and back along the more sheltered canal tow-path - 1m @ 6.14m/m, 1m @ 6.04m/m. So a pretty satisfying progressive 8miles. Still tight over 2.5m jog home and post run, but I'll keep up the frequent stretching and cross my fingers. 

Does marathon training produce hypercondriacs?  
(I had to check the spelling) 

Nice one Keir.  I've occasionally had pain the hip flexor and usually find a blast of fast running actually helps it. Fingers crossed.

This is my emergancy injury treatment pack...

Love it Minni. Looks a bit like mine too except I have a roller, spikey ball and theraband in mine too. The red wine takes the edge off the rolling !

I am soooo tired today. Little girl was up on the hour, every half hour, not entirely sure or how many times but I feel jet lagged and soooo tired! No idea why, nightmares or something? It was like sleep torture! 

Waddled round 14 miles in just over 8s after I dropped her off at pre-school and can hardly keep my eyes open now and have pilates to get through later yet! Homework to do yet and two boys with tonnes of energy. Garden me thinks and trampoline for them!

Mitchie - I would hate to go back to those nights.  Although my daughter didn't sleep till she went to High School at 13!   Sometimes tiredness can drive you on.

It's a rare event fortunately, but I think that makes it worse as I sooo need my sleep ....Fingers crossed she sleeps tonight as I need to work tomorrow as well as run twice, swimming lessons to get through too!

The boys sleep very well, never a peep from them once they're gone.

My daughter has her 8th tooth coming through so similar disturbed night MM. Like you, with a lack of sleep I really struggle. Luckily half term allows lie-in opportunities for all.