Sub 25 - and beyond!

Bewl: Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! I did not enjoy it ONE BIT. It is a definite Daz-style race. Hilly, muddy, fieldy, lumpy and TOO LONG!! I wasn't in the mood which is no good at the best of times but when you know you're going to be out there for at least 2 hours it becomes even more hellish. 2 hours and 14 minutes later I finally finished. Yuck! Wet, cold, horrible, too hard and so not my thing. Luckily the only similar thing I've signed up for is Henfield half which is flat so once that's over I must remember I hate anything over 10 miles.

Ran well at track on Monday as was fuelled by rage at my crapness on Sunday. Dead today though when I ran my usual seafront 10 miler. Off out for 6 or so over teh downs this evening. Sheesh will I never stop? No. Intervals at Hove Park tomorrow. Maybe doing Wivelsfield Wobble (4 miles) on Sunday and parkrun on Saturday. I may then expire.

Bewl and track full report.

Managed another parkrun pb today 21.39 (Nonsuch Park) which very pleased with and felt like there was a bit left in the tank at the end. Doing a 5k race in London next Thursday which is all on the road and largely flat so hoping for a quick time there and then a tough 7 mile race next Saturday (Elmore 7, in Chipstead, Surey).                                  

Mmanaged a 20.37 parkrun dragged round by a friend from the club. If only I had looked at my watch I could have put in a sprint finish and got a new pb. Grrr but no matter as only 2 seconds off the pb I set a few weeks ago.

Today I waded through 4.5 miles of sludge at the Wivelsfield Wobble.

More info

Good stuff Ostrich. A parkrun pb next week perhaps?  The battery in my garmin gave out just before the start of the race so I too had very little idea of what time I was doing apart from the timekeeper shouting out the time at halfway and with 200m left.  Managed fairly even splits (was 5 secs faster in the 2nd 2.5k)

Have tried both holding back in the first mile or so and really going for it early on but even splits seem to work best for me.

Hello there. I've just signed up for my first 5K, wanting to get a time for it then beat it, etc, etc, Normally I'm more of a 10k-er, and half M-word-er, but had an ITB type injury which now seems to be better.

Was wondering if anyone could tell me what your interval/speed run pace would be if you were wanting a sub 25 minute PB. I did sub 8 minute mile pace the other day, which I'm pretty sure is too slow, but I'm only just getting back to training really.

Any clues/shared experiences greatly appreciated. My race is on Sunday the 22nd of July. so I have a couple of weeks... I usually run 3 times a week, tempo run, long slow run and aforementioned interval/speed run.

Thanks very much!

Running calculator

http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/index.php/calcUsage/calculate

Heh. Thanks, Ockham, yes I have been looking at that calculator, just a bit confused as to which run on that is the interval one, cos there's two - is it tempo run or tempo interval? I'm guessing it's interval. My 'tempo interval' yesterday was done at sub 8 minutes, which seems actually too Fast according to Mcmillan! Gosh wow! Cheers.

Ikle - 8min/M pace is bang on 25mins for 5k - how long did you do it for?

if you're going to do Mile intervals you're probably best aiming for 7:30-7:45 pace

kilometre intervals are good though - you could aim for 4:45-ish and do at least 4 (5 or 6 if you can manage  )

Too tired. 3 days rest! Hurrah!!!! I must be tired as usually the thought of rest makes me tres anxious.

Hoping to be rested and ready for another good parkrun on Saturday. Possibly inspired by going to Crystal Palace to watch Diamond League on Friday evening.

Rest made me crap! Legs really ached. Ate too much porridge.

Rooooooobish!

Ostrich - your blog makes good reading - keep it up!
rest makes me carp too - my legs feel really "wooden" if I don't do at least a gentle jog the day before a race
I did a shortish (hilly, obviously) race tonight, but was well off my course PB
I felt really strong endurance/aerobic-wise, but no top end speed
might have something to do with lack of regular speed-work

Thanks Daz. My blog at present seems to just be me moaning! Having a bit of a bad patch mind-wise at the moment. Getting hacked off with windiness meaning I can never have a proper go at a pb

Major annoyance

Hi Ostrich, have enjoyed reading your blog. Keep it up!  I also find with running that when things go pear shaped it puts me in a bad mood.  Of course the reverse is true when things go well.

Last Thursday I ran in the Standared Chartered 5k London city race.  It has to be one of the fastest 5k road races in the country as all on tarmac and pancake flat.  I was confident that I would better my 21.39 parkrun time by some margin.  Unfortunatley I hadn't stated on my entry form that I was expecting to run in under 21 minutes so when I attempted to join my work colleagues in the sub 21m group I was turned back as my running number didn't have a green dot in the corner.

Had a less than brilliant starting position and only managed 22.28 a time I've bettered on my local hilly parkrun course in the mud.  Was even more gutted when I found out that a Charlotte a female work colleague who runs sinilar park run times to me managed a massive pb of 20.25!  A lesson learned for next year race. Despite the mediocre time, the atmosphere was fantastic as was the course taking in St Pauls and the London financial district.  Something like 6500 runners took part.

Will do a parkrun tomorrow and have a 10K race next thursday so a couple of pb's would be great.  Looking forward to the warmer dryer weather next week.  Really sick of the rain and the resulting muddy parkrun courses.

Probably my last 5km race this year, at clacton earlier this evening.

No training since last one. so thought I would try for 21 mins. On the little warm up found the wind a bit strong so decided to run at a pace that felt comfortable.

First 2.5k in 11 mins and against the wind. So I knew I can get under 22 mins. Unofficial time of 21:28. Best this year.

Cheers Paul.  If the course is close to 5.25K that equates to 6.53 per mile pace which isn't too bad I suppose.  23.08 is a an excellent time with only 3 months recent running under your belt.

Excellent time Ockham. That the sort of time I'm looking for a tomorrows parkrun.  Hasn't been a great week running wise as haven't done anything too intense due to the 30C heat in my part of the world.    

I have returned from the New Forest! Excellent weather but not much exercise.

Thanks Geoff hopefully one day we will both be happy with our parkrun times! Not today though as I was grabbed to help when I arrived so was on scanning duty. Good as think if I ran it would have been slow. Can't wait to get back to normal training routine as of Monday.

Blog here

Managed another parkrun pb today of 21.35 (pb by 4 secs) which came as a welcome surprise given the heavy overnight rain and a further heavy downpour around 30 minutes before the start which made the grassy sections of the course tricky in places.

Decided to run parkrun as a warm up to parkrun. Failed. Warm up parkrun significantly faster than actual parkrun of 22.22!

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