Sub 3

PP - congrats on the county silver

Al_P - I'm very familiar with the mill one-upmanship battle

SL - no Gloucester. I'm doing Fred Hughes 10m in January, Wokingham HM and Bramley in February, Surrey Spitfire 20m, Reading HM and Maidenhead 10m in March as my pre-London races. I need the mileage. I don't have the lower distance speed of some of you guys. Plus I'm intending to race Wokingham fresh, so I want to be in good HM shape in 8 weeks time before starting mara training.

I managed to grab an hour of sleep earlier, which helped. Also fitted in an easy 11.5m earlier, and will do 5m slow soon (~2.5hrs from the end of one to the start of the other). As last week also included a nativity (which is why I didn't get to fit a 20m in on Wednesday), a works lunch and a trip to see The Hobbit (top class btw!) - it was a bit mental actually, thinking of it, and this week sees just one more Christmas do and a trip to see some rugby, I fancy my chances of hopefully making the ton and bagging a 20m+ run. Fingers crossed

Al_P - style never goes out of fashion !

PP - couldnt face breaking the seal on a turbo DNF. Great work on the county silver, thats a proper medal. After your mate waiting for you and helping you up it would have been poor form to beat him even if you could have out sprinted him.

TT - that was a very mixed week or running and social events

5M, 1M, 5M. probably the last runing commute til January. I'm still not bagging much mileage wise. I'll review where I am in february, but the footy and indoor cricket fixtures show some very busy Sundays in the new year, so I might step away from VLM this time, we'll see.

Looks like a lot of good running over the weekend. A lot of good distance done yesterday, great xc results for PP and CW and 10k for Andy D.

Nothing to write home about for me, just a couple of easy runs since my xc on Saturday. Today does however mark the official start of my training for the Paris marathon. It was good to get the first run done and get things underway!

AW - will be interested to follow your progress over the coming months

Zattu - Fred Hughes is a good race, challenging route too. Ran it this year.

SL - ankle settling, nice one

30 mins swim am, just over an hour cardio pm in gym -not a bad days work. Same again tomorrow. Hamstring gradually settling down again with the combination of swimming, foam rolling, steam room and normal stretching. Probs a treadmill test run thursday/friday.

Had forgotten that I'm down to run Hyde park 10k on new years day if I'm recovered (albeit with a hangover no doubt)

PP - great race! It's fun to race people rather than worrying about times/paces etc.

ZaTTu - I'll probably be marshalling at the FH10, so I'll give you a shout. We're allowed to race it this year, but it's the week after my ultra so I'm guessing I won't feel like racing that weekend.

6M steady for me last night. Found a very nice off-road trail which is completely at night, which I didn't know about before, so quite pleased about that! Busy this week - driving down to Bristol for work tomorrow (2hrs each way), another work Xmas do Thursday and we're having a load of people over to ours on Friday evening (so lots of cleaning/cooking to do), so not sure when I'm going to fit any training in!

5M yesterday (3M with slow colleague and then a further 2M with slightly faster colleagues) and then 12M this morning into work.  Legs were more than a little sluggish at first but ended up with average 8.16m/m.

Good xc effort there Phil - sounds a bit dangerous to me.

Padams - why are you running so much?  Surely the 5m a week plan is flawless for your January race.

Got presented with an early 40th present yesterday by the missus (it's end of Jan in case you cared).  Trip to Norway at start of the year.  Couple of days in Oslo, followed by a flight to the very northern town of Tromso, with entry booked for the Polar Night half marathon - all in the dark on snow/ice under the Northern Lights. Might be a bit nippy.  Shame I haven't got any running tights.  Will probably be the only one in shorts. Don't suppose anyone here has done it before?  Nah, thought not.

Got up to my local hill last night and then got down to the bottom of the hill. Got up t' top of the hill etc. Hill session confirmed that my cold is still hanging on in there! But a good session with aching legs this morning.

AD great 10km result. I need to enter another 10km. Only done 3 in total and getting on for 18months since I did my last one. Very impressed that you set this PB after a long run the day before. What would be the main reasons for your increase in speed in that distance?

Hoping to be a sparowfarter this weekend. I normally head out around 06:30 on a Saturday morning. Run for about 3 hours with 0.5 litre of water and single gel.

ZaTTu 100 miles a week is really getting up there. Are you still able to feel fresh for all your sessions? When I got upto 80 miles a week over the summer, I felt as though I was sacrificing quality over quantity. Maybe as I get more experienced I will feel more benefit from higher mileage weeks,

Dan A I went to Alta in Norway several years ago to see the Northern Lights and I was blown away by the place and lights. Would love to back there in the summer and winter to take part in a run

Dan - I hadn't considered that. Maybe I should have just upped it to 7M per week rather than the massive 40ish I'm currently doing. I was feeling fairly confident after the 28M run I did a few weeks ago, but last weekend's 22M felt harder than I would have liked. I hoping to run close to 40M over 2 runs at the weekend, then that's all the long stuff done.

Great birthday present! Should be an interesting experience.

It sounds to me as though the definition (or at least the usage on this thread) of sparrowfart would be "1-2 hours after Gobi o'clock".

Fab birthday present, DanA - she's a keeper!  (Does she have a brother?)

Enjoy your visit to beautiful Brizzle, Padams.

Great birthday present DanA! Very cool!

Cool Padams. I'm hoping that current 5m pace will be around 10m pace by then, but we'll see!

TB - in the past, before I busted my knee up, etc, I used to do/try to do higher mileage (I think my one-off weekly high was over 140, but can't remember for definite). Since I got back to it I've been more moderate and find that anything in the 90-110 (maybe marginally higher for the odd week) seems to be my sweet spot.

Looks like my thoughts of a quiet week have disappeared. Since yesterday Mrs TT found out she had to go to London today, which means nursery/school pickups for me. I was also reminded that we've got leaving drinks on Thursday for a colleague who is taking early retirement and plans for Sunday... Hmm. I think it's that period where every run/bit of quality is a bonus.

Dan - Part of me is a little jealous... the part that isn't my fingers.  Too cold for me.  I'd love to see the Northern Lights though.

TT - See you at Maidenhead!  How will you be treating that one?  I'm thinking mini-taper and blast it, which ought to yield a quicker time than my current PB (56:01) which was run the day after a XC race.

I seem to have agreed to a Gobi-sparrow-fart o'clock 20 mile run on Saturday.  Or maybe the sparrows have moved on to some other activity by 7.30 but it'll be the earliest I've ever done a long run anyway.  That's definitely pre-brekky time. 

DanA - nice pressie, very relevant.

Gobi o'clock is 5am, not sure that anything after 6am can be classed as early, esp not 7:30 on a Saturday, thats daytime.

Felt a bit ropey still today, so just a MTB commute and 1.8K in the lido.

That sound like a great trip and birthday pressie Dan A!

Good session today 4 x 2k reps. Splits were 7.12, 7.12, 7.12 and 7.08 around 5.45 m/m. Nice and consistent which was pleasing, and felt pretty strong througout. 9 miles done in total.

Hello all, not been posting much here since I introduced myself a while back but doing a bit of lurking. I particularly enjoyed ‘reaching your potential’ debates taking place, particularly between ZaTTu, LD and others the week before last (I think).

Some cracking training as well, big miles by ZaTTu considering his busy life, LuckyJim running one of my favourite sessions (the pacey 10mile burn up), lots of long runs, parkruns and XC racing.
Congrats on A.W. in bagging the ASICS prize
Andy D, congrats on the 10k PB, like you I am running Ribble Valley as well, I have a soft 10k PB so I hope to set a decent benchmark time, I hear it’s a very fast race. Hope conditions play ball.
Dan A – great present.

I am starting to build up the miles now, heading out for my second 20 miler of the campaign at about 06:30 on Sunday, I think that counts as sparrowfart not Gobi O’Clock, right? All the long runs at this stage are going to be nice and slow, and will probably be done on water and fresh air, it’s all about the fat burning!

YD - easy as she goes, 20M is a long way this far out.

PP - as hard and as fast as I can, but untapered. It's 23 days out I think, so it'll help me to get in a good quality workout whilst tired.

Nice reps A.W.

Nice one Y D. Sounds like you're on the ball.

TR - I'd disagree. For somebody newer to running like Y D, the easy long runs are what will build his engine, so the more he does the better, in my book.

I also missed out on the resolution of the nature vs nurture common sense vs rocket science debate (50/50, 90/10 in my humble) - was gonna pick up on a point made by teh Didsmeister - Coe and Ovett came to be the world's best off totally different training methodologies. Does that prove that you reach your potential regardless of what training philosophy you follow or that to be the very best you have to tailor-make your training to your own ability/needs?

Zattu/PP - similar sort of situation for me. Should really have bagged the sub 2.45 by now but pb is still 2.48. Based on that that I don't know if I should risk 2.40 pace, but my recent HM would suggest that that should be the least of my aims.....ponder, ponder. Either way, won't be making any attempt to hang on to you two in the early miles. 

Dan A - Empathy at its finest. Dartboard with Sue Barker on next year?

Andy - nice 10k pb, 35min feels like one of those important barriers.

Speaking of Gobi o'clock - anyone heard from the great man recently? Still running marathons in tunnels? 

TT - no mention of YD running fast here. Rarely gets recommended by me, esp for an endurance novice. Slow miles are the way to go for him IMO.

NtS -  Gobi had a wear and tear injury coupled with a fall which also caused damaged, which I think means he does the odd short womble but mostly races bicycles now.

Tim - I think you misread (or I was unclear). The 17m was the day before an XC race the previous week. The 10k was preceded by 2 rest days (work xmas do) and 8m the day before.

YD - Hopefully I'll see you there. It's my 3rd time of entering. 2 years ago it was cancelled due to snowfall and a milk lorry stuck on the course, last year I DNS'd due to illness. 3rd time lucky?

NtS - 40mins and 36mins seemed like important barriers at 10k. Everything else is a bonus! A 33:xx would be very nice one day.

DanA - Nice present. A mate came back from Norway recently with some fuzzy photos of the Northern Lights. Meant to be great though,

Not thinking about marathon training or base work, just going race to race at the moment. I ran an unofficial 5k PB at a club time trial tonight. Haven't raced a 5k since about October 2011 soshould really find time for one.