Sub 3

LS21 wrote (see)

Interesting stuff the taper. One of my best runs was at the East Hull 20 in 2011. After doing the first 5 miles with wardi I did the next 15 at 6'11 pace and had a bit left in the tank at the end. I honestly think I'd have been close to a 2'44'xx if I'd have ran a Mara that day. And that 20 mile race rounded off a 95 mile week.

Now that is surely 'talking a good marathon'.   BTW there were two reasons that you zipped off at 6:11 pace..  a).. my Poundstretcher deodorant, and b) .. the generous spread of tucker put on by the host club at the finish - no bliddy pies left when I finished! 

A good day's graft there TR.

Nice commuting Postie.

TB.. I found 5 x 1k @ 10k pace was a good starter when I was coming back post injury.  Once you are happy with these graduate to 3/4/5 x 2k @ the same pace. 

6.3m recovery tonight.  A gazelle like blur held up a hand as he passed me going the other way, t'was Mr Bilton bidding me a good evening.

Brian - Istanbul looks like a real up and coming marathon to me, plus it's cheap there and nice weather in mid november, so will spend three days there. A 15K race for Er Indoors too. That is all. 

When I look at Jim Peter's training the week before his 2:17, the first thing that springs to mind is I wonder how fast he would have been if he hadn't trained like a complete spoon! He was obviously super talented to be able to train at that intensity so if had trained like the current elite do then I'm sure he would have been more like a 2:10 man.

For me, the key is not how many miles I run in the 6 days before a key race - it's how consistent the previous 2 months have been and that will determine whether a taper is required or not. I know for a fact that if I have had a consistent high mileage Jan-Mar period of training, I'm never going to be able to run much more than around 20 miles at MP unless I do a two week taper. 14 - 7 days out is always the important period for me to take easy , not the 6 days leading up to the race.

Jools -- give it full welly, regardless of the county vest. Live for the moment -- you might get injured or something in another week or two, and then rue missing the chance to have exploited your very impressive recent training if you didn't give it full beans. (So long as you don't get injured because of giving it full beans of course.)

Looking cold and wet for Sunday, if not too windy, at the moment -- no overheating problems for us then...

Forgot to say 4x0.5M @ 5:36/M, with 0.5M light rests, then 2.5M @ 6:09/M this morning with my 2kg rucksack. Still slow on the short efforts but noticeably better than the pitiful paces of a week ago. Only 7.5M total for my "MLR" this week -- a late start, and a hint of taper for my weekend race anyway.

Wardi - you are right next door to where we stayed (Fleming Hotel). You can indeed tumble out of your hotel, jog up the road and find yourself warming up in front of the start line with the elite Kenyans and leading Hun. 

we did this both times, but be warned! the second time my knotted hanky headgear gave the game away that I was not likely to be in the running for a WR, nor Germanic in any way and I was almost manhandled over the railings by stewards, despite my pitiful pleas for mercy. Thankfully it was so close to the gun going off that they let me go....and I slipped behind the kenyans.The rest is history.

You can also have your own personal drinks laid on. It's supposed to be for sub 2:45 runners, but with a little bravery you can simply go into the expo basement and put your drinks there. No-one mans the drop off. Take some little flags to strap to them so you can recognise them.

Jools - CW has written almost exactly what I was about to write.

Marigold - that was my first thought when I read Jim Peters' training (once I'd worked out his MP). I guess in those days people hadn't researched the best way of training, and that was just what they did.

Pursuits again last night - good fun, 9 of us on a 1.2M out-and-back.

Morning All,

Tmap, thanks for the heads up on Coe's book, it's one I have picked out to read. Hope the new drugs do the trick.

Dids, Istanbul seemed a strange choice. Thought that you were after some camels. What's the going rate for a Lady?

Jools, not sure what you want to hear, but even I (J1P) have realised that you are in very good form. Go for it, pb and pick up the vest. The best of luck to you.

Wardi, you have set me thinking now. Could be some good apres-sink! As far as I'm concerned it's Amsterdam or Frankfurt.

4miles recovery last night at 8:25 pace.

wardi - indeed!! I can't actually RUN a good race so I'm now resorting to trying to talk a good race instead!! And TR - to be fair I didn't RACE that 20 miler at all. I did the first 5 at circa 7'20s and then tried to do the last 15 at 6'17 pace. I ended up running to feel a bit for the final half so went slightly quicker than that, but I really did feel I'd kept a lid on it. So an ideal hard long run in that sense. Anyway, not to worry - I can't even manage 6'17 pace for a Half these days....

Brian - I've done Amsterdam twice. Very similar to Frankfurt in my opinion.

LS21 - I didnt race my 2:06 either, DanA didnt race Bramley 2012..............probably just too fit too early and burning matches at the wrong time. Scraping up enough fitness for race day is the way to go nowadays !

Jim Peters is discussed in some depth by Noakes. Along with Ron Hill and David Bedford he is pigeonholed as a clot that that would have done better to train slower/less.

He brought the world record down by a massive 8 minutes over the course of a couple of years. So, you can see why he probably thought his training was the way to go. I think he was also made to run qualifying marathons prior to the Olympics which may not have helped.

I'm with Marigold on the taper - the feeling of those first few miles on fresh legs is an amazing feeling. It is difficult to really be sure how beneficial it is though.

lol LS21.

SL - I meant to ask you; who is the lunatic SA Comrades gold medal winner, and how did you end up getting advised by him?

Jools - I'd have to agree with the others. Your training is going really well; it'd be a shame not to take advantage of that. Back just before I busted my knee up I ran 2 races at less than all-out and spent the next almost year wishing I had gone flat out in them as I was in good form at the time.

Conversely, I'm in pretty poor shape, so my coach agrees with me that there's not much point in me bowling up at Wokingham to run roughly mara pb pace for a flat-out effort and compromising the following week's training, especially as my gut feel is that several years of intermittent and haphazard training means an all-out effort takes me longer to recover from (even if untapered). I suspect I need to knuckle down and start rebuilding some strength.

Jim Peters training was based on running as fast as he could for as long as he could every time he went out, and extending the distance he could do it for over time. Pretty basic, but there's a form of logic to it, especially in a time when nothing was known about the benefits of rest.

I've run a marathon untapered and found that, after the initial tiredness over the first few miles I was fine. I think it comes down to your mileage. The more you do (regularly and over a good period of time), the better your body adapts to the tiredness of running untapered. Following on from that, if you run all your training as fast as Jim Peters did, well the likelihood is that he was so accustomed to it that it had minimal impact on him. As LD points out he took huge chunks out of the marathon WR at the time.

Khalid Khannouchi set WRs running untapered as well.

Jools - As others have said, live for the moment.

TT - I spent the winter of 2010 running past him every sunday morning, eventually we got talking and he started telling me running stories and he hasn't stopped boring me since.  He run sub 2.18 and 29min for 10K at 40

I must say I'm tempted by Amsterdam, moreso for the post race celebrations than the actual marathon 

I'm not sure I've ever tapered well, still learning what works for me, I'm crap at carb loading as well,

Brian/TMap - the Coe book does get a bit boring later, especially when writing about organising the Olympics. Let me know what you think about his battle with the residents of Greenwich - Coe seems a bit obsessed with it for some reason, and his logic about using Greenwich was frail, IMO.

Jools - just to hammer the point home, you are in the shape of your life, running one of the fastest & flattest half marathon courses in the UK.  Forget the schedule for once.  You can run a 1.22 - 1.23, have plenty of time to ease back into the schedule and at the same time give yourself a massive sub 3 confidence boost for the marathon.  Having just confirmed my VLM pacing duties, I've requested to be on the same start as you too 

Two celeb spots on this morning's jog.  Ed Warner (UKA chairman), followed closely by that playboy bird I mentioned a few pages earlier.  Marvellous.

SL - the post-Mara celebrations are Amsterdam are ace! I did it in 2011 and finished the race at circa 12:30pm, where I was promptly dispatched by another member of our group to go and buy some water and a cup of tea. By some amazing turn of events I returned some 5 minutes with later with 12 pints of Heineken (and a cup of tea obviously). This somewhat set the scene. It was a friend's birthday that day. Debut Mara and someone then produced a bottle of Moet. This was supped sitting in glorious sunshine in the Olympic stadium awaiting the finish of the Half (where we had 3 runners competing). I believe 12 more pints of Heineken magically appeared too, although I'm not sure how.

The evening followed a very similar pattern. I had my first ever taste of a truly delightful beverage known as Jagermeister. This has the uncanny ability to make you lose all control of your lower limbs, so I spent several hours walking in a Shakin' Stevens style. After a few more of these 'Jagerbombs' and 3 verses of Green Door I found myself throwing some impressive shapes on the dancefloor of a discotheque in the red-light area. The locals were amazed, and they stood pointing at me and staring at disbelief at the superb moves I was able to execute.

In the end there were just the two of us still standing - me and my best mate (who had ran a 2'48 PB during the race). We eventually got kicked out at 4:30am and got a taxi back to our hotel. This was particularly memorable since we could only just scrape together enough loose change to pay the fare - and this despite going out with over €400 between us. Don't EVER tell Mrs LS21 that though......

The next day was a true joy as you can imagine. On trying to put my shoes on I fell forwards off the bed and went head-first into the TV. And then couldn't get up. I felt slightly worse for wear it must be said, and even missed the free breakfast.

So if you do go don't eat at an Italian restaurant near some big shops as we did. My sudden post-Marathon illness was caused by a dodgy mushroom on my pizza, and I'd hate you to experience a similar feeling of woe and general malaise. Still, the outstanding customer service and general unbridled joy exhibited by the Ryainar team made the weekend worthwhile, so a risk worth taking perhaps.

Anyway, that aside it's a quick course and a cracking weekend away, so give it a whirl.

Hmm. 1.23 is (just) faster paced than I ran at either Prom Run.  I might be prepared to aim for 1.24-1.25, but not 1.22-1.23.  After what feels like a stream of 1.25 attempts ending in 1.27/1.28 I would much rather hit 1.25 than aim higher and end up with yet another 1.27/1.28.

Interesting taper stuff.  One thought after Mariold's post was does anyone cutback more 2 weeks out than the final week (ie swap the final 2 weeks round)?  Not sure if it would be of any benefit but there are definitely times when I've been injured and missed a week and found the second week back running was much better than the first week back.  If anyone tries this and it works then I am now the new supercoach and you owe me loads of money...

Shame Jim Peters never came on here, TR would have sorted him out in no time.

Jools - it does sound like you're in good shape and I'd also go for an all out effort if I was in your position.

LS21 - nice celebration story.

Zattu - hope your coach does the business (SL too).

PP - you won't find many people in front of you at Brighton at this rate.

Good midweek training from Postie, CD, Brian, TR, Wardi, Padams and pretty much everyone by the sound of it.

16.7M for me yesterday (7.31 pace, Jim Peters would have disowned his daughter if she ever put in such a pitiful performance!) and 5M recovery this morning, will do some more this evening.