Saturday 21st July

Morning

Lyrics Frankenstein and Dracula have nothing on you, Jeckyl and Hyde join the back of the queue

What: 2-3 miles
Why: easy
Last Hard: Sunday
Lyrics: Not BCR

LMR hope all went ok yesterday and its a bit drier

Birkmyre Is it less quiet now

Morning.

Thank you for the thoughts.

Alehouse - good news.

Blisters - enjoy.

Disappointed with my race, even though I knew I wasn't in race shape and it was very muddy and ankle deep in water in places so not a fast course for some reason I still hope for a miracle! Knew I was in trouble as I ran 3.5 miles to the start, HR was at the top of Z2 despite me being very comfortable and chatting. Start of the race was very congested and it was a couple of hundred metres (once the people who had started too near the front hit the first real puddles and stopped to walk round them!) before the congestion eased. Loads of my club running and despite my never going they were very supportive as I was wearing the vest. Settled down to work hard knowing that it was slow. Somewhere in the second mile my right calf went very tight and wooden, it felt as though it was going to pop and when my left one joined in and I saw that my HR was 170 and I was just scraping under 8 min/miles I came the closest I ever have to a voluntary DNF, just wasn't sure it was worth the risk just to get some miles and record a slow 10k but stubbornness took over and I tried to relax and just run through it. I decided that even if I had to ease off and jog it in I would still have the miles in my legs and wouldn't have set a precedent for myself by quitting. The legs eased after a mile or so and I was running better but still slowly for the effort level. It was a three lap course and I just made it across the start line as the winner hit the finish line - a small victory in not being lapped. The endurance kicked in here and I began to close on the people in front of me, picking off quite a few including three clubmates who had gone past me in the second lap. I seemed to move past and hold my own quite strongly though a few middle aged men put on a huge sprint to overtake me about 50m out - including one clubmate - and I had nothing to respond with. Crossed the line in a disappointing 49.12 (Garmin time). Took a while and a few puffs of the faithful inhaler to get my breath back then bimbled the short way home for a total of 11 miles. AHR 172 MHR 181 (184 is the highest I have ever seen).

What:           hopefully a bike ride if the fog lifts
Why:            haven't ridden long this week
Last hard:     last night was much harder than it should have been
Last rest:     11/6

Lyrics - vaguely familiar but no.

Morning!

Well toughed out LMH! And on that course you were never going to break many records.

Lyrics: vaguely familar, but no here, too

What: off to help at a parkrun
Why: the launch of a new one...I now have three within walking distance of my house, which is rather greedy.

And a beautiful sunny day for it!

Morning

Yesterdays lyrics: Crowded House.'Always take the weather with you'

What: Session later

Why: Lots of washing from younger sons 5 days inthe Lake District

Pammie: Oh Yes, house noise levels 'getting back to normal'.

Walked Geordie for 45min ish. Nice sunny morning up here in West of Scotland today.

Lyrics: Not sure...

LMH: Hope calf is okay.

Back later.

Great toughing out there LMH. Your base endurance came out of the back pocket on that one. It's funny how tired legs seem to ease up once they've been told to just get on with it. Amusing is the necessity for testosterone junkies to get a "chick" on the line. What? You didn't know that "chicking" was an official sport? It works both ways. Not being chicked means beating all the women in the field. Of course, you can chick a couple of heroes on the final straight.

Right I'm off.

Oh I know about 'chicking' Blisters - I do quite a lot of it in my tri's  I do have a tendency to acknowledge whatever is hurting but then tell it that I'm going to keep going any way so it might as well get on with it and strangely enough it does seem to help. 53 miles on the bike done in the dry and relative warmth - result.

birkmyre - it gave me a bit of gyp in the small hours, fizzing and popping but seems fine this morning thankfully. Indeed walking Grace loosened everything nicely.

Alehouse - three within walking distance? That's greedy  Whilst it was never going to be a fast time on the course what worries me is the high HR on the run down and the fact that I can't even manage half marathon pace. I'm miles away from where I was this far out from VLM, debating whether I can get into shape for Abingdon or not.

Hope you're sleeping well Pammie.

LMH: hats off to you for not quitting. It's so frustrating when your HR is through the roof while the pace is nowhere near where it should be and there's nothing you can do about it.  I had exactly the same experience in a 10k last year. It was in September, about 5 weeks out from my autumn marathon and the plan had been to do it as part of a 22 miler. I had run about 10k as a very slow warm up, then 10k race and a very slow jog home for another 15k. Only the race bit never happened. Like you my HR was through the roof on the warmup already (I blamed the heat) and by the time the race bit came there was no way I could even get near HM pace, nevermind close to 10k. I ended up with 49:55 but felt like I just busted my gut running sub 40. It was so unbelievably hard. The 15k jog home was a death march with frequent walk breaks. Ugh. Couple of days later everything was back to normal. We are human after all and some days we are just not meant to be racing I guess. Chin up.

Ale: good to see that the physio is seeing progress. And don't worry about me me me posts. It's what this forum is all about. If everyone posted only their PBs and always had brilliant runs it'd be boring. Real life runners have to deal with lots of ups and downs - generally more downs than ups I dare say. I find it helps to offload some of your frustrations on a forum of likeminded virtual friends as all of us have been there before. Non runners are sometimes the last ones you want to talk to

Enjoy the weekend. I have a week off from work (bliss!!) and guess what: the weather is improving. Yay! Mr. Chick is just researching some bike rides we want to do next week. No money for fancy hols but day trips with a couple of hours in the saddle don't cost much.

whoops. forgot to post my training

what: 6 slow miles
why: it was warm
last hard: Thursday
last rest: Monday
lyrics: no

Excellent report LMH. Not guilty of 'chicking'!

Parkrun for me, 20:36, might have twigged my groin in the warmdown. Can walk on it and lightly jog but the pain occasionally shoots down my leg.

Thanks chickadee. I think I'm frustrated as I just can't seem to get right since my virus. RHR is where it should be now and I'm loads better than I was, swimming is coming back and biking isn't too far off but I just can't seem to find my run form. Mark thinks that I may still have a low level virus - hence the continued fatigue - but I'm not convinced. The weather is forecast to improve here too, I'm home alone as Mark flew to France today to race L'Alpe D'Huez and hoping to make the most with some more rides. Enjoy your holiday.

7d - I hope that it's nothing serious and goes as quickly as it came.

Afternoon

LMH Well done for finishing even with not the esult you wated  but that shows how tough you are, others would have bailed out. May be talking out of my **** but  sometimes  its harder to get back after a virus even when its gone  could be the cycling swimming is ok as its non weightbearing but i'm not a medic so feel free to ignore

7D hoppe whatever it is is temporary and gone soon

Ended up doing my newfavourite session 15 minues out and back planned a route leaving out main roqda to cross and different from last time  but as i started realised i was doing the cheats version as it as mainly uphill on the start but overall pleased as the out was just over 1½ miles so back home for 3.05 miles and 28:45

Afternoon!

Wise words, Chick!

7D: well run today...am I right that would be your second quickest 5k? I would back off for a couple of days, even if the niggle comes to nothing: you have punished the body a bit with two hard races in less than 40 hours! Do you do any stretching at all? What does a typical pre-race warm-up consist of? Should you feel so inclined the Burnage parkrun is very easy to get too from town: a mile jog from my local station! Not as quick as Platt Fields, though.

Alehouse: yeah, I'm going to back off, probably will knock tomorrow's long run on the head and that's it for racing for a little while. Today's warm up was similar to Thursday: individual stretches to all the leg muscles and connecting joints (groin/knee/ankle/back), a couple of laps of the track working incrementally toward a steady tempo, a few little sprints, 25-30 mins total all in all. 

Didn't know Burmage had a parkrun - just checked, first edition today - one for the list!

LMH - well battled

Ale - good to see there is progress

7D - good effort

Me - 1st Anniversary at Andover parkrun and 1st sub 20 there this year so happy with 19:44, 3m of warm up / cool down then 6.5m later on.

Trying to chill now, as have officially handed in my resignation and accepted the new job, which will mean just commuting to Reading and back each day about 55 mins on the train with 5 mins one end and 10 the other..... so much better than being all over the country.

Take care

Congrats again on the job RFJ, make sure you take in the sights of Reading, the Oracle and, err, help me out here. Also well done on the sub-20 for the year. Mildly envious.

Nice work at ANdover, RFJ.

7D: hopefully I have messaged you!