Sub 3

JH1 - indeed, nice day here but a bit icy, hope the bike course wasnt icy for PP and CD.

Dids - smash it !

12M for me today which was a bit of a shock after a few weeks of ~5 or 6M runs and not having run at weekends since the Solent 1/2. My legs were moaning like it was the first 20M of a campaign !

Dids - welcome to the V50 club ... what a lovely way to spend your birthday. A sub 3 at Athens would be fantastic - good luck with it

15.5M for me to finish off the week on 50M.  Bit of a tough, muddy course, but have just rewarded myself with my favourite granola with chocolate milk.

Good XC'ing all, nice to see CL popping in and at it again.

Happy birthday Dids.  That's got to be worth a slice of cake on the way round.

Aahh,I've warmed up now.  Today turned out rather nice in the end but my hands were complaining at 7am on my 8 mile warm-up ride to the start of the NADBuster.  I dread to think how it can be on a bad day.  Felt distinctly uncomfortable at the start and managed to completely forget to attach my ankle timing chip.  Oops.  Anyway, set off and settled into a group of three for most of the first 8-mile run, in 8/9/10th positions, reeled in one more before the start of the hill so came in 7th in transition, then promptly lost a few positions whilst adding chip-installation to all the other transition duties.  Didn't see much of the competition for most of the bike leg till near the end - which is all good cos it basically suggests strong cyclists who were a fair way back for the run and therefore very re-overtake-able.  Set off on the final run with quads beginning to stir, and two guys just in front of me, took one back fairly quickly but couldn't shrug off the other guy.  We caught a couple of guys to move up from 10/11th to 8/9th but he had stronger legs on the final climb.  So I'd settled for 9th but one more chap was struggling up the zig-zag, so managed to hold it together for 8th overall, 3rd V40 in a time of 2:51:34

Somehow they managed to extrapolate my splits from what other people were doing around me, so splits:
Run 1  46:06
T1  1:47
Bike  1:14:50
T2  0:59
Run 2  47:50

Pretty pleased with that, especially the relatively small fade on R2 considering how heavy my legs felt. Good to meet NADBuster stalwart CD again.  Yes, I may be back but I'll need to have a serious conference with my hands about weather variability. 

Sounds like, er, fun, Philpub. Did you get a prize for 3rd V40?

Back at the sharper end for me at XC today - 3rd. Men and women start off together in this league, but men do two laps and women just one, so technically 3rd overall . To be fair some of the faster ladies didn't show up. Sarah Harris was notably absent. I need to find the results somewhere to compare my position with the Uni girls who beat me last time. Legs were way more trashed today. 

I have stupidly signed up for a half in 4 weeks time, so I need to get back into the swing of things post holiday. 43 miles this week, but Monday and Tuesday were lost to hols and lurgy. Next week will be better!

Consistent running, indeed, Phil (I can't judge bike times, I'm afraid).  Hope you got some pretty bling for your V40 efforts!

Nice XC-ing, Speedy.  There's no way I could have contemplated going fast again today, so hats off to you.

Hi, CL.  Long-ish time no see!

Edit: I spy with my little eye Athens marathon results on PO10.  Happy birthday, indeed, Dids

CC2 - Cracking podium on a double XC weekend.

It's a good job I do this multi-sporting for the love of it.  An intriguing purse for my efforts; the choice between money-off another event from the organisers, to the value of a little over half the entrance fee I paid for this one, OR hard cash to the value of somewhat less than half of the entrance fee.  It's a dilemma, and no mistake.

CC2 - nice one

PP - likewise, great performance

TR - 12 miles, anyone would;ve thought you were putting in pre marathon training

Jools - solid 15

Welll what an interesting event, lol Nice 1 minute silence at the start then everyone went off but it there was a right turn instead of a left turn and runners started doing what should;ve been the last lap around to the finishing section. Then some runners went left and some went right and carnage ensued Basically people stopped running and the race was void - culimation of cock ups. Everyone back to the start to go again.....

This time no hitches/directions sorted and off we went.... and I can't decide whether running 1 1/2k flat out already helped or hindered. Anyway 20th position in a new pb of 36.17 so I'm pleased with that. Never felt fantastic but indicative of general improvements that I was able to knock out a decent time on a course which included lots of tight turns and some off road sections.

The less said about the football the better

I read about that RS78. Apparently a member of the public cycled onto the course just after the start and they were wearing high viz so some of the front runners mistook them for lead bike and followed. All my NE friends seem to have run well despite/because of that though!

Well run Dids

PP - impressive stuff, 2:51 at the NADbuster is decent. Hope your legs dont hurt too much in the next few days.

RS - sounds like the warm up helped you, thats pretty quick. I usually look at your times and reckon I could keep up, but not sure I could run that fast. I'm more trying to get in some pre training for the pre marathon training. I need some consistent miles in the bank by the end of Feb, ready for the marathon training to start. 

well done Dids, sub3 on a tough course as a V50. See you at the GFA start in April. You can hold my gels for me !

Great stuff LD and Happy Birthday. You can indeed hold TR's gels while he sets up your Garmin for you!!

Nice XCing from CC2 (nice podium!), joolska, CL and JH1.

Great result for Phil too - you've got to be pleased with that I'd have thought. Sounded like a very well-judged effort, well done!

Great PB from RS too, and yes I also read about the problem at the start where the leaders followed some random bloke with a high vis on. Quite funny really!!

Nice longr effort from TR too.

XC for me yesterday. It was 'interesting', mainly due to the fact that I was a bit p!ssed the night before! Went for a post-Mara night out with a few folk (including BR/Hilly) - a few too many beers drank and a lovely meal. I felt rather delicate in the morning but wanted to run for the team thing. I ended up doing ok actually - a pretty hilly 6 mile route in about 39 mins, but there was a beast of a long climb that we had to run up 4 times, so I'm happy with how I ran. I felt a LOT better for it afterwards too!

PP - good effort, 2:51 is a solid time. I can't remember my bike time from when I did it, but I think it was quite similar to yours. I came 2nd when I did it and I think the prize was only slightly less than the entry fee! I'm thinking of doing the spring version - fancy another go? How are the legs today?

Speaking of prizes, the prize I got for winning the HM last weekend (about 1,000 entrants) was just a strange trophy.

Nice XCing JH, CC2, LS and CL!

RS - that sounds like a right cock-up! Well done for a PB after that!

LD - well done on a sub 3 on a tough course. Agree re. some of the dodgy science!

XC for me on Saturday. Quite pleased as I placed a bit higher than last time in this league (10th vs. 15th last time), probably because the course suited me a bit better (not much mud!). Really had to push the last 400m as there was a few guys right on my shoulder - held them all off but must have got close to max HR!

Also did a relatively hard turbo session that morning, then tri club annual dinner in the evening. Got to bed around 2:30am but managed to get up for the usual 8am 3 hour ride with the usual crowd.

Morning all,

Lots of XCing going on over the weekend, well done Speedy (x2!), LS,  Joolska, CL, JH and Padams. Makes me think I should do a bit too, our club isn't particularly pro XC racing, odd as we run off road a lot, but then again the club isn't massively competative. The ladies usually put out a decent team for the Hants winter XC series, but the guys struggle. I haven';t done any yet as they are generally on a Saturday (conflict often with a Sunday race) and quite spread out around the county. Planning to do the county champs in Jan though.

CW - Good call to do the long run a day early!

TR - that garage session must have left quite a puddle...

SL - great 400s, I'll be looking to do a few sets (no where never as fast) like that in the run up to the 10k I'm doing in December

PP - Sounded like a good race, congrats

CD - Sounded like a bit of a nightmare...one of those days

RS - Interesting race start, well done a new PB!

Dids - Cracking running in Athens, top marks for the sub-3.

I've been having similar thoughts about race nutrition and drinking lately. I'm in the middle of reading Noakes new book on hydration which basically says drink to thirst only and don't bother with sports drinks, your body is remarkably good at managing itself in a short term dehydrated state. There's a lot of (practical) research work that says that the fastest runners in a race are generally the most dehydrated and lose the most weight by the finish. I've also been experimenting with adjusting my diet to reduce the amount of carbs I eat in general and replacing it with more fats and protein (Noakes again!), so far this seems to be working well, my weight is very stable and and don't get sudden hunger cravings like I used to.

Yesterday was our club's annual Children in Need run where we do laps (about 2.3ml) around one of the forest enclosures, it runs all day and you just do as much as you like (and donate/collect sponsorship). I started very early doors at 7am to get a decent run in before our rememberence service at 10am. Did 16ml av 6:39/ml (inc 6 laps), and really pushed on the hills (not huge, but decent enough for the New Forest!).

In light of Dids comments I did the whole run on Sunday on 2 dessert spoons of full fat rasberry yoghurt , a small apple and a handful of nuts, didn't feel the need to take any gels on the run which I'm intrigued about, so I'm going to try the method out a bit more and see if it works in general...

Dids - Great stuff!  As it happens I think I ended up overdoing my carb load this weekend.  Not because of any gullibility about the myth (I'm kind of with you myself on that) but because (a) I like eating and it seemed like a good excuse to stuff my face for a couple of days and (b) my hosts on Saturday night made fresh bread that was warm on Sunday morning, so I had two badly hacked (i.e. extra thick) slices in addition to my usual porridge.  Couldn't help myself.  Still felt a bit bloated on the start line!  I do think for VLM next year it will be a modest carb load followed by little-and-often swigs of water and Lucozade on the course, so no need to carry anything.

RS78 - I also heard about the race restart.  Weird!  Great run from you.

LS21 - XC is an afternoon race, therefore night-before drinking is pretty much obligatory isn't it? 

Cheers all for the comments on the race.  My quads feel pretty good today, but the calves are a bit mashed. No worse than after the XC/Cabbage Patch double, but likely to be enough of an excuse to skip track tomorrow in favour of something more leisurely.

A good wekends efforts from PAdams there

Bilmey CD that wasnt a typical CD Ballbuster performance, you must be over the hill nowadays ! 

AL-P - I've run 20M+ fuelled by fresh air in training on no breakfast, but I wouldnt do it in a marathon.