Sub 3h15

I have a confession to make…

I'm on the shortlist for the Super Six

Vote for knight rider

Had to keep this one quiet but have been dying to talk about it too.
Obviously very excited about getting a place and if I get picked will do my best to achieve my goal of a sub 3.15. Slight change to last years set up but the principal I guess is still the same.

I know I have the speed on the shorter distances up to half marathon and my times reflect this, but I need the coaching/training to convert this to the full distance. Having a coach like Steve (in his 35th year of marathon training) or Bud (with a sucess for coaching endurance athletes) would be an immense opportunity for a “normal” Club athlete like myself. I know MM gained a hell of a lot of great advice / mentoring / support from his part of the SS earlier this year and I hope to soak it up too.

I know B&B, Keir & Minni were also going for this and I was surprised not to see any of you at the Boot camp. Not sure how they do the selection process, but gutted none of you got through too.

** I can't believe I had the mother of all spots on my forehead on the day of the bootcamp**

Excited to 'spot' you on the list KR. Glad to you 'squeezed' in. Opened the link and 'zits' got my vote....

... anyone seen my coat?

Well done Knight Rider. Now you need to go touting for votes like all the others are!!!!!!!!!!! Good luck in any event.

TR - I have tried the running easy approach whilst having physio. On Monday's session he really loosened off my back and it felt heaps better but it has tightened up again and I think (if I am being completely honest with myself) then that is because I am running on it too much in an effort to maintain fitness. I could be completely wrong though. As the next appointment is on Friday (luckily I can swap and there was a cancellation) then I am not losing anything by resting Thursday and finding out what I can actually do or not. I think I need to get fixed before making any further plans.

Still, it's my first 'real' injury. I have had a few days off here and there for niggles and a touch of tendonitis by doing two marathons within 5 weeks of each other in 2009 but I have been lucky overall and I remain positive

There's always wine!!!

Sue C - sounds like you're pretty robust then, hopefully its a short term thing. I'm sure the booze will help relax it !

Knight Rider - never heard of the others, I'll vote for you. Would absolutely hate to do it myself though.

Cheers for the support guys

The spot has now calmed down a bit although it's bad when your 6 year old son takes the mick out of you.

Just posted a thread to help my cause without any mention of smacking bottoms and being called Mildred!

Will be back shortly with some details on the bootcamp and doing laps of a slushy running track.

KR - just cast my vote. My choice of candidate shall of course remain strictly confidential but it might just rhyme with Bite Slider. Good luck !!

Has everyone else voted in the other categories. Seems to be a vast gulf in current achievement between the sub 3 candidates whcih could either present RW with a relatively soft target or a very tough one

Seen Better Days wrote (see)

Moraghan - given MP is just a slow tempo pace and if we believe tempo runs provide the optimal training stimulus to improve your lactate threshold what, in your view, is the training benefit of MP runs?  I think there is often a danger that people get so obsessed with MP runs that they do them at the expense of tempo runs and receive a weaker lactate threshold training stimulus.

How did the faster tempo runs (1 hour race pace so we are clear) become so popular?  I think (happy to be corrected though) that most of the original research on running to improve LT involved a control group and another group doing 20 minute tempo runs.  So, the fair conclusion was that tempo running was a good stimulus to improve LT.  But they never did compare the effectiveness of the 20 minute tempo run with the MP (for example) as stimulus so I would never, ever agree that the tempo was optimal.

Obviously there is a trade off between intensity and duration.  I just believe that you'll get a much better training effect from a 8 mile MP run than a 4 mile tempo run.  I believe for most runners the two are approx equivalent in overall effort but with the former you spend twice as long addressing your LT. 

I can't help thinking that these famous 10 mile club burn ups in the old days are what made distance running so strong - and more than likely these were principally at MP as were Lydiard's base runs.

I think it's a major mistake to ignore any pace around the LT zone but that you have to cover all your bases between easy paces through to 10k (quicker for some).  Put another way in the example of paces for a 3:15 marathoner:

Easy Pace:  8:15 

Steady State: 7:45

MP:  7:27

Tempo:  6:55

10k:  6:40

Too many people ignore the SS / MP zones and alternate from easy pace to tempo.  This only makes sense to the brain in terms of slotting into certain paces, not to the body.  The result being that there is a gaping hole in aerobic background.  Tempo runs have their place but in the past this has been overemphasised at the expense of other paces.

Truth is I don't much like tempo pace.  I think it's the one pace in the typical range that can be missed out.  I still use it but it would be more of a late season LT maintenance or even peaking workout or some "close to race pace" practice for a 10 miler.  In a generic marathon schedule I'd do the bulk of the early work at MP and 10k pace (this helps the LT but also with a vo2 max component) and then finish off with some tempo work to tie together the more fundamental paces.

Thanks for your FIRST comments, Barry B.

Well done, KR, and good luck with it all (though I don't envy you).

Moraghan wrote (see)

Put another way in the example of paces for a 3:15 marathoner:

Easy Pace:  8:15 

Steady State: 7:45

MP:  7:27

Tempo:  6:55

10k:  6:40

Too many people ignore the SS / MP zones and alternate from easy pace to tempo.  This only makes sense to the brain in terms of slotting into certain paces, not to the body.  The result being that there is a gaping hole in aerobic background.  Tempo runs have their place but in the past this has been overemphasised at the expense of other paces.

Typically all but 4 runs would be done at easy paces - perhaps with a couple of others crossing over to SS when feeling good / mileage goal reached and recovering well.  The volume of each would vary if building mileage / long run duration (i.e. perhaps a 'half' session of 10k pace work).

Of those four it would depend where you were in the schedule and what preceeded  / followed. Sorry if that's sitting on the fence!

If forced I'd say 2 * MP based (not necessarily all at MP, could be progressive of MP based alternating), 1 * 10k and another non-pace specific such as fartlek / hills.  

Cans of worms are good!  

(paces mentioned above are off the cuff examples within a wider range)

As I'm flicking through a typical P&D schedule, and having previously taken a "lace up the daps and run" approach to training,  why don't they write training programmes in the same language, so I'm assuming in P&D terms  "general aerobic" is equivalent of "steady state" as referred to by Moraghan. 

But there seems to be a lack of MP mentioned in P&D, in the 55-70 (18wk) schedule MP is only practised in week 9 and week 13 in a LSR, then a 2m dress rehearsal during the final taper week.   (SBD as resident P&D guru help me out here).   Is P&D light on this?  Would you advocate ramping up MP practise for the LSRs??

BTW, Was it me or did it seem when reading the through Supersix candidates that there are more than usual who have never run a marathon?  Surely with the specialist advice on offer they should have at least attempted one previously???

I may have cast a vote in Sub3:15 for a Hoff lover, but haven't in any other category so far...... 

(Well done for getting through KR.)

I'm reading all this training stuff with interest, where I live is extremely hilly, I literally have no flat run routes, it's always hard for me to work out what speed to traingiven a compromise for the gradients.

Moraghan wrote (see)

Damn - I'll try and be more concise in future.

Just want to chip in on the MP debate. P&D indeed only have a small amount of MP running in their plans but I think that is, in part, made up for by the fact that 1, they prescribe a fair amount of what they call General Aerobic running, which I loosly translate to SS running. And 2, they don't advovate running long runs as LSR but at a pace that is harder than that - quoting directly from the web article as I don't have my book here:

The most beneficial intensity range for long runs is to gradually increase from a slow early pace as you warm up, reaching 20% slower than your goal marathon race pace at five miles and accelerating to 10% below marathon pace during the last five miles of the run. At this intensity range, a 22-mile long run will take approximately the same amount of time as your marathon.

I think that this helps to prepare you for MP pace to a certain extent and I suppose is a progression on the mid-week progressive runs that a lot of us do.

I was worried before VLM this year that I hadn't done enough MP running by following P&D and also following Liz's advice to MM on the ssx thread. My worries were primarily that I would be able to recognise the correct pace and have to concentrate too hard on making sure I maintained it correctly - in the end that wasn't the case at all and MP came quite comfortably to me. However, towards the end endurance failed me and my pace did drop quite a lot but I think I can put some of that at least down to glycogen reserves...

Windy wrote (see)

As I'm flicking through a typical P&D schedule, and having previously taken a "lace up the daps and run" approach to training,  why don't they write training programmes in the same language, so I'm assuming in P&D terms  "general aerobic" is equivalent of "steady state" as referred to by Moraghan. 

I think the P&D Aerobic Runs would be somewhere between Easy and Steady State, as described by Moraghan. I would make the choice on the pace depending purely on how it felt when I started running that session. I think Steady State should still feel easy and on most days it would. But then, as Keir says, I've only run 1 marathon too so what do I know!

WELL DONE KR!!! I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous. I'll be voting for you mister.

No running for me. Sick as a dog and have woken up in a sea of sweat this morning. Because I've bugger all else to do I checked my HR just now and managed to relax it down to 50. Shouldn't it be much higher than that if I'm feverish?!