Sub 3

I've won a handful of races and haven't yet encountered at tape. Not even at the one I won outright. I think I've been robbed!

Postie - Champs start for both of us, as we're club athletes. 

DanA - I rather enjoyed the hill up to mile 3 as it was sheltered. The one from 10.5 - 11.5 miles on the other hand was straight into the wind was officially No Longer Fun.

Welcome CaroT. I'm hoping Lord Dids is correct in that folks improve by half an hour just by coming on here. I fear not though! But it's my first year on here too, so maybe we'll crash through that sub 3 barrier together. My PB is 3.08.58. 

I was delighted to win my first ever race this year at a local trail marathon. There was no tape, and they had not even had chance to get the video recorder ready to record my moment of history

Was not my fatest run of the year, but winning a race was special, tape or no tape  

Padams - Prague is a fab city, would like run the marathon or 1/2 marathon there one year.

welcome Caro, nice to see more girls here, we used to call them lesser spotteds as they were so rare (or lezzer spotteds in my best dreams !).

5M, 1.5k, 5M, 55M for December already, looking good for getting over the ton !

Hey CaroT, good to see you over here. I like the sound of that 30 minute quicker stat! 

Ah thanks for the welcome guys  . If someone had told me 3yrs ago that I'd get down to 3:15 for a marathon, I’d still be laughing to this day! So now you say 30min quicker...?? Well I'm always up for a challenge and proving people wrong but realistically I think I need to aim for your current PB CC2 - Speedy Goth of 3:08, or 3:07 which is currently our ladies club record. 

I recently took a peek at a sub 3 training program and it looked like a lot of mileage! I'm not a big fan of long runs and I try to get as much speed endurance as I can from shorter speed work, middle distance races, turbo training & swimming.

I've just finished a very long road running Grand Prix season where we our fabulous bunch of ladies have been striving to win the ladies team prize so I'm doing a lot of resting at the moment and enjoying the break before I tackle a training program, and the long mileage which it looks like I can't avoid! Eeeek!

About time i got back into this thread i think if it means taking 30 mins off my marathon time!

Having cracked sub 3 at MK this year I am unable to take up a place at VLM 13 due to getting married in the spring. Still undecided on whether or not to go for an Autumn marathon or hold off until VLM 14, I don't really fancy the long training in the summer & missing out on the summer races as a result.

Focusing on the Wokingham half at the moment & hopefully breaking the 80 minute barrier. I ran the Maidenhead half in September and was going well but pace dipped a little between miles 10-12 & came up just short in 80:21. Hoping a bit more lactate threshold work & a couple of extra miles on the midweek longish runs will make the difference

"I am unable to take up a place at VLM 13 due to getting married in the spring" - weddings are on saturdays, VLM is on a sunday, what's the problem?

You can do the summer races and an autumn marathon, either fit the races into your schedule or pick a late autumn one such as Luton.

CaroT - welcome!

OldNo7 - why not focus on the half distance as a target using park runs and 10ks as workouts and then seeing where you are at the end of spring. You might have changed your mind by then and want to do longer stuff. There's enough autumn marathons about that you could enter later on without forcing the issue too much.

A.W - yeah I used to do tuesday track and sometimes the 10m tuesday burn up from YMCA. Kabir's thursday roller coster session is meant to be good too. Think he switches back to middle distance reps in march. I could never make it to the thursday session. Are you doing the Xmas party in Muswell Hill on sat?

TR - a ton!!!!

15 mins swim followed by 30 mins aqua jogging. Foolishly giving myself a chance of xc on sat but you never know. Swim tomorrow then an easy run thurs morning and see how it responds to that run. If that goes well another run in London friday and then make a decision. If it wasn't the local race I wouldn't bother trying to make it.

5 mile "Tempo" run today as part of an 8 / 9 miler, felt good being out in that cold weather.

I certainly havent won many races, but as far as I'm concerned, if you are going to the effort of winning a race, then the least they can do is put the tape out for you!

Tape shot........

Hello everybody,

It's been ages since I last posted and having had a scan over the last few weeks it looks like I've missed a decent discussion on training, book reviews, a few new people joining (welcome!) and some Bosch love.  Very few mentions of cycling, turbos and what aero bars are the tastiest so people must be thinking about running at the moment and some good racing performances have been achieved.

Frustrating month or two for me, struggled for ages with a cold/bug that meant I couldn't do any harder training then I turned my ankle running fast downhill in the dark but I've been on holiday the last 2 weeks and have managed to get more running in, last week being particularly good (82M).  Highlight though was going up to Yorkshire and finding one of the pubs that Wardi talks about where a pint was £1.80 and that was the expensive stuff!!  I had 5 pints and still had enough change from a tenner to treat Mrs LJ to half a lemonade.

Afternoon all.

Padams - I love Prague, though more for the food and beer than anything else. The idea of running on cobbles doesn't appeal, though with Mrs TT being from Czech, the Prague Marathon, generally, does. I understand very little of it is actually on the cobbles. Huge hill up to the castle though!

Sounds like a good pre-Christmas/post-drinkie workout Wardi.

Sounds like continued (re) improvement Jools. Nice one.

Nice repping A.W.

After last week's vom bug (courtesy of Jr #2) I am getting back into it. Done a benchmark run yesterday which put me at 7s per mile outside of where I was 8 weeks out from Berlin, which is considerably better than I expected. That gives me 19 weeks to find 19-21s per mile, which seems more than reasonable to me given current fitness vs previous fitness!

SL - early thoughts re: Bramley 20m?

Anybody doing the Spitfire 20m at the start of March?

Getting back to normality after a slightly manic couple of weeks hols/work travel back to back, nice to be home  Had a bit of a read back and it took a while, there's lots going on! Well done to CC for the sub 90 Turkey Trot, glad to hear your neck is better Jools (going back a bit I know!), nice 800s session AW, love the Dids vs Biggs Strava battle and the Dids vs TT training and adaptation discussion and welcome to CaroT! Incidentally my marathon time improved from 2:55 to 2:43 between 2011 and 2012 which co-incided with joining this marvellous running institution 

Had a good run at the Christchurch Xmas 10k on Sunday, wasn't sure what sort of shape I'd be in after the some-what inconsistent couple of weeks leading up. Did a bit of a estimate of what to expect using predicted 10k times from the Mcmillian calculator based on my recent 5k/HM times. I weighed it towards the 5k-based time prediction, as the calculator is highly optimistic for me at shorter distances (definitely an endurance specialist) and came out with a predicted 10k time of 34:58, so I set the target pace at 5:35/ml. I started a bit too fast (5:27), slowed up to target pace (5:35) and then slowed down & steadied the pace (5:40/5:43/5:40/5:41) and managed a final blast at the end to finish in 34:59. I came round the last corner tot he finish straight with the clock on 34:50 and about 50-60m to go, so belted it to squeeze under 35mins...Very please with a PB by 41sec and a free Christmas pudding to boot. 

Very nice Al_P. Well done.

postie postie - I'm also doing Wokingham, but, unusually for me (i.e. never done it before) I'm intending to taper up for it a little. I hope it means I will stay focused for the next 9 weeks, but at the very least it should see me 10 weeks out from VLM in much better shape than I was 8 weeks out from Berlin.

Glad the bugs cleared up and your getting back to normal running ZaTTu.

Another one here for Wokingham, I'm also doing the Spitfire 20.

RS78 - Hope the planned runs go ok. I've heard Kabir's roller coaster session is a good one, been meaning to get to it and try it out. Unfortunately I've had plans for some time on Saturday evening which means I'm not going to make the xmas party, its a pity as I would have liked to have gone. I will definitely do the xc Saturday pm.

Great run and PB Al_P, a nice milestone to dip under the 35 min barrier too!!

Putting some serious thought to VLM2013 now and the plan is starting to come together. I'm intending on doing approximately the same Canova style approach as TT, but less fast and lower miles. My plan is to experiment with bench-marking the suitable intensity and duration of the workouts over the next couple of weeks and the do a 'fundamental phase' of 10k/HM focused work up to the Wokingham half before moving on to the marathon specific workouts up to London. Tentative plan is to shoot for a 2:3x (around 6min/ml) this time, which I think is realistic.

However managed to balls-up today's run because;

• (a) I thought I could do a hard session 2 days after a hard 10k effort, silly idea
• (b) I picked a nasty workout to try - 3x5000m 
• (c) mucked up my 5k route planning  
• (d) it's still very icy at lunchtime today so traction was hit and miss
• (e) did my recovery run yesterday in Merrell barefoot shoes too quickly (hard on calves)

TT.. good to hear you are in decent health again.   

CC2.. congrats on that sub 90, nice one!

Al P.. a well earned pudding there!  Nice PB.

LJ.. well done on finding a Sam Smith's emporium, most of their pubs don't have any of the brewery's branding out front!  Mind you, 5 pints to your wife's half a lemonade seems a bit disproportionate!  Nice to see you are upping the mileage again.

AW.. good set of consistent reps done & dusted.

Old No.7.. back in 2008 I postponed my honeymoon by a few days so I could do a local flat 10k.  In fairness Mrs Wardi did it as well!

Welcome to CaroT, good to see another girlie on here.

Enjoyed the run on Sunday, 12m circum-navgating Wetherby as part of a social club run.  Plenty of mud & hills but a sunny if breezy day helped the enjoyment factor.  Ran it about 3 mins quicker than last year & felt more comfortable so took a bit of encouragement from it.  Post race soup, pie & beer afterwards.

5.2m last night - did this as a loop straight from work to let the traffic die down, tends to be manic at this time of year.  4.1m this morning & about 7m with the club tonight. 

Dids.. I should be at the York Parkrun again on Saturday to witness your latest Strava adventures.  There are a couple of V50's who might trouble you - one from Leeds & one from Hull but they only show up once in a blue moon so you might get the glory!