Sub 3

Charlie.. great photo, last time I looked like that was on top of a mountain in the Dolomites!

Excellent blog & pictures Padams.

SL.. nice mile reps there!

TT.. a very good 21m banked, you should be back up to speed pretty quickly.  That's one ability which unfortunately declines as you get older. 

I'm with Dids on the treadie use.  My hands turn blue when it's 0 degrees outside so mine is a blessing in this weather.  I've got a TV in the treadie room too, Over Xmas I remember doing a 12 x 400m session while watching 'The Sound Of Music'.  Trying to yodel along with 'High On A Hill With A Lonely Goatherd' at 6mm pace was not a great success.  

10m today, 3m outside to test a new pair of gloves then home again & hopped on the treadie for 7m inc. 1m @ HMP, 4 x 1k @ 5k pace then 1m @ 5k pace.

With the latest weather forecast I'm a liittle concerned about the Brass Monkey.  A lot of snow due tomorrow evening and into Saturday which isn't going to thaw.  I guess they will have to make a decision sometime on Saturday.  Fingers crossed anyaway.

Wardi, thanks for the heads up on the BM. I've been watching the forecast with more than a little trepidation, and watching the unforecasted snow out the window! I'm with you on the treadie but can understand runners hating the damn thing. I have the same emotions every time I get on - within 10mins I am asking myself why I'm not outside in the wind/rain/snow. They have their place and are bearable for me if I play withe the speed. The monotony is if I need to run long. Then it becomes a mental battle. I also watch crappy TV, listen to 80s music and daydream about Wembley

I watched the Von Trapps for the umpteenth time and still ended up blubbing.

Me n mrs B are in York anyway cos we've booked in Sunday night, so looking forward to a beerio.

AI_P & CW - thanks very much for the info chaps. The sizing facility on the runningwarehouse.com site is great.

Loving that picture CW!

I'm not a fan of treadmills, will only use them if absolutely necessary. I find I run completely different on them! I think generally running on a treadmill you are a bit quicker than the road, but by bumping up the gradient a couple of percent counteracts this to a certain extent.

I have a 10k this weekend which I think may be in danger from the snow! Hoping its not heavy and the race goes ahead as I really want to race this weekend!

Nice photo CW and enjoyed the blog Padams.

Just been doing some shoe shopping as my Bostons are starting to feel a bit worn. While trying to figure out the difference between all the Adizero models I stumbled across Mi Adidas where you can design your own colour scheme for the Adios 2. It costs £130 compared to the £75 the standard ones cost (they've gone back to yellow now) but thought it might be of interest to anyone wanting to maximise their PB with a pair of entirely red shoes.

On weather watch here ahead of Helsby Half on Sunday. I think it'll pass us by in the North West though.

Andy D - Nike have a similar idea, you can personalize with names too.

Weston Prom Run for me tonight as an easier way of doing 10M with 5M @ HMP as per P&D this week.  Pretty pleased to be only 4s slower than last month (31.50 v 31.46) as legs felt heavy and grotty when warming up, but the splits were damn near perfect for blind pacing (i.e. I didn't look at my Garmin at all when running): 6.18, 6.19, 6.24, 6.20, 6.20. Nice to see SL who didn't have such a bad evening himself, although I'll let him file his own race report.  Not sure if I grabbed a podium place as I was cooling down during the prize giving.

My experience of using a treadmill seemed to involve lifting my feet up whilst the ground moved beneath my feet. Although it was possible to add an incline this seemed to change from leaning up hill slightly whilst lifting my feet up and down. It was not anything I would describe as running. 

When I have not been able to get outside and run I would rather do the spendid 100 up exercise routine http://hundredup.com/learn-georges-100-up-running-exercise/ to develop good running form. Something else that treadmills do not do

As a trail runner at heart that takes to tarmac to check pace on a flat and even surface. Treadmill running is  everything running should not be! Indeed I think anyone that includes treadmill miles in their training plans should do the decent thing and strike those treadmill miles from the record.Shuffling your feet on moving ground is not running :P

OS - I think the ground does whizz past your feet when you lift them up running outdoors, unless you suddenly become stationary in mid-air? The only difference is air resistance, which is not that big when running. People say putting a 1% gradient on the treadmill replicates that, but I have no idea on the accuracy of that.

I don't mind treadmills myself, but I'm not a member of a gym at the moment so it's not an option. An easy run in the snow is always good fun though!

I can't imagine many races will be happening this weekend. Ours hasn't been cancelled yet, but given the forecast for this afternoon, I can't see it going ahead.

Jools and SL - very nice work in the 5Mer.

PP - another great MP session. Will be interesting to see what you can do at Chichester - I've always wanted to do that one due to the fast course and quality field.

Turbo for me last night. Time to go and see what Lance said last night!

Lance probably said he was just keeping up with the rest of them, its the rest of his antics he needs to answer.

SL and Jools - nice speeds there.

PP - more MP ! swapping to tempo's and mile reps should see you peak nicely by the end of Feb. But you should bag a fast time at Chichester. I have a number but doubt wether I'll be able to do it now, depends when I can get running again.

Turbo bagged, followed by a nice crunch through the snow on the MTB.

Padams wrote (see)

OS - I think the ground does whizz past your feet when you lift them up running outdoors, unless you suddenly become stationary in mid-air?

OK, maybe this was a really stupid thing to say, or maybe not.  The dynamics of running on a treadmill must be different, as the surface to some extent pulls your feet along, vs normal running where all of the energy is imparted by you. Is this ridiculous?   

Wouldn't it be good if we could erase all the liars and cheats from the record books and somehow reflect on the Obrees, Boardmans and the rest we didn't get to hear of who should have been contenders and heroes?

TR wrote (see)

he was just keeping up with the rest of them

Robert Millar has nicely discussed how this 'level playing' field argument simply isn't true, as the degree of response to EPO is highly variable.  Also not everyone or every team was able to fund and manage it well, including bribing of officials when you go so far as to fail tests on three occasions, as it appears out Texan friend did (the steroid/ saddle sore story, the Tour de Suisse, and the retrospective testing of the 1999 samples for EPO)

Agree on the Lance/EPO thing. Having read a fair bit of stuff on it, including the latest David Walsh book and Tyler Hamilton's book, I really couldn't care less what LA now says - unless he implicates McQuaid and Verbruggen and the UCI gets a total overhaul (which it badly needs in my opinion).

Be interesting if he ends up facing perjury charges though - although I imagine his legal team will have somehow covered that before his public admission

I seem to remember reading a vaguely technical paper saying that treadmill running is biomechanically different from normal running only in subtle ways, but that the main difference in terms of effort is the lack of wind resistance.  The belt on the treadmill is moving, which pulls your foot backwards.  So you need to drive forwards to overcome this and stay in the same place in the room, which is basically (but not exactly, but I'm not sure why) equivalent to you moving forwards outdoord whilst the ground stays where it is.

One other thing my layman's understanding of mechanics tells me is that treadmill running becomes relatively easier than outdoor running, the faster you run.  This is because air resistance is a function of your frontal area and therefore increases exponentially as speed increases linearly.  So speedwork on treadmills should be easier.  Or to put it another way, if one of the benefits you're trying to get from genuine speedwork is improving leg speed, a treadmill is a good shout because you can turn the legs over more quickly for a given effort.

(Waiting for CW, NtS or any other fred lab coats to pull out any obvious errors.)