The Middle Ground

Duck, calf does help with elastic rebound on the achilles, which is exactly why stretching it too far would result in poorer performance for the likes of you and I in the shorter stuff (though I need you to slow down on those 200s as you're nearly at my PB on your reps!).  A long elastic string rebounds slower than a short one.  All I think is that there's an amount of flexibility you need to avoid injury from stretching/pulling, and then that's it, because more flexible could lead to deteriorating performance.  That said, when you're me, it's not going to make that much difference in performance and it's better not to be injured!

Treadmill, I only said I couldn't touch my toes on the morning of my 41st b'day!    PBs at every distance I raced through 40, and PBs at the one distance I've raced since I hit 41.  Actually I got a PB today too, but I've never raced 10300m before.

And what a wierd weekend!?  Did the sprint session on Thursday, because it was 3 sets of 3x200 with 30s between reps, and 5mins between sets.  It seemed quite endurance based to me.  It was followed by 3 form 100s to ease down.  But on Thursday a family emergency caused problems, meaning a weekend away got cancelled.  So I did nothing yesterday, and told my club I'd be up for turning up at the league XC today.  10300m on the flat.  Plenty muddy, but flat is hard!  I mean you try to keep top pace all the way and there's no downhills to rest on (or uphills ).  So no results and no time yet, apart from I came 115, 21 places higher than the last race.  Think I scored for our A team this time as well.  Don't think the day off helped much, but better than doing a parkrun the day before!

Oh, and wierd I mentioned somewhere earlier about travelling further if I was selected for something.  Selected to represent East Wales in XC with a trip to mid-Wales in early December! 

(They must be desperate...)

Good luck tomorrow, PP.  I can't touch my elbows together behind my back.  And I heard about a decent parkrun today...

Magpie - Do you have any reason to suspect you have a heart problem?  Regardless of whether you do or not, you should go see one.  I do not want to scare you but: on the 13th October I had a stoke due to a blood clot forming from a leg infection and an unknown (at the time) heart defect.  The week before, I ran my toughest ever training week that was just short of 90 miles and have had zero heart problems my entire life.  If that can happen without any prior warning, I'd guess worse can happen with warnings.

WJH - sounds like a fun race!  I recommend doing daily core exercises.  Since my comeback from injury in February I have really taken corework seriously.  It shouldn't be viewed as suplementry activity to running - I think it is essential.  And that is not just because it helps reduce injury, it also helps you retain good form when your legs start to feel heavy during long runs.  This ultimately makes you a faster and more efficient runner.  I personally think that doing 20-30 mins each day is more effective than doing a couple of big sessions in the gym a week.

I am just carrying on with the core work and stretching by doing two sessions a day of each, while I am patiently waiting 23rd of November to run again.  I have gained just under a stone when in hospital and being at home and am experimenting with a low carb diet, which could be interesting.

Simon, I heard something similar about stretching after quality sessions. 10s normally for me and 30s after usual easy runs.

Josh, I just focus on trying to keep stable and not let the torso sag downwards at all. Sometimes I have the TV on and I listen to it.

Rob, do get it checked out. Last thing you want is something like that 

YP, after 6 minutes EVERYTHING wobbles around! 

WJH, sounds like a right mudbath this morning. If 32'xx 10k runner are running 18+ then 22'18 is a good result.

Ratzer, so you'd say stretch it but not much? 

Nice going being selected! Something to be chuffed at. 

Run commuting and plyometrics have been the name of training the past few days. My vertical jump is getting gradually better, by a  small margin every week. 

parkrun was won this morning by someone I'm usually beating quite easily. Grr. I'm hoping for a still day next weekend! 

Not been on a few days as been away, so apologies if missed anything significant!

I note Magpie has posted about some HR spike and feeling unwell.  I don't know enough about that sort of thing, but if you're worried I would certainly go and get checked out ASP!

WJH - well done on the race!

Ratzer - well done on the xc selection!

As we were away on Friday night in Darlington we decided to do Middlesbrough parkrun yesterday.  I was hoping for a sub 20, but unfortunately not quite there yet.  I did 20.06 with BR pulling me along and worked hard for that, so just need to keep being consistent with my training and I'm sure it will come back soon.  I'm not quite back up to full training yet, so it was a pretty pleasing performance considering.  Not sure about Leeds Abbey Dash next week though - most probably find it hard to break 42 minutes!  It's been a while since I've been in this position, but have to accept I am where I am

Hilly - Nice to see you back racing again. As Tom says once you can get the training in fully, the times won't take long to tumble.

Ratzer - well done on the call up

14 miles for me today including the Town Moor 10k. Ceratinly an interesting one as after about 0.8 miles of the race, it was stopped as everyone was going the wrong way. Apparantly the leaders started following what they assumed was the lead bike but it was just some random guy on a bike in a luminous jacket! I'm sure Kelly will confirm if this is what happened! Anyway I ran 38.23 on a typically windy town moor. Pretty muddy in places as well (Garmin clocked 6.26). Pleased with that as just 4 weeks ago a flat out parkrun was only 19.10. So fitness is obviously starting to some back.

2 more weeks of pure base then a 5 miler on 24th. After that I'll start introducing some half marathon type sessions in prep for Brass Monkey.

Kelly - Its a shame as like you say many will blame the club for something that wasn't really their fault. Although I definitely preferred the course overall to last year, I don't think going round the lake at the start works as it's just too crowded. Lots of people around me did seem really annoyed. I didn't really care as I wasn't going to run a fast one anyway. But if I was going for a PB and ran the best part of a mile at race pace I guess I might have been more bothered!

Must have been a bit annoying for the front runners Mr V/Kelly, but can see how it would be easy to do and hopefully nobody will make an issue of it.  Clubs do their best, but sometimes things don't always go to plan.  Well done Mr V on getting yourself back into reasonable shape to build on.

Thanks Tom I'll do my best to give you something to aim for

Thanks Kelly, I can run short distances quite well, but sustaining the pace isn't there yet.  I'm sure your times will return soon too. The club I am joining is one I belonged to when I first came to Yorkshire 6 years ago, but left when we moved again, so a few of the people we knew back then are still there, which is nice.  Yes I have enjoyed the 3 runs I've done with them so far, all hard work, but I know they're going to be so will make sure they become my quality sessions so as not to be doing too much hard stuff!

12 miles this morning with BR and PRF along lovely trails.  Now to see if I can drag myself out of bed at 5.15 for a morning run.  Not managed to do so yet, but have to give Tom something to aim for

Hilly, nice running even if it was hard work. 30-45 sec will come back I am sure! A smackdown with Tom would be very interesting indeed 

Mr V/Kelly- what a nightmare! So the race was totally restarted? 

Still a good run Mr V even with that diversion. I was hoping to get near your 5k time over the next few weeks but might have to wait for a while now  

Did hillsprints nice and early this morning - 2*3*20 + 3*30. I'm due a low-intensity week now (minus parkrun & possibly a 150m TT) and I move onto phase 2 of base. 

Magpie Rob wrote (see)

Dr Dan - yes I did feel bad. It started during the recovery after our first of three mile reps and continued into the start of the second. I felt a bit lightheaded and nauseous and I did feel like I might collapse. I was very glad not to be running on my own and that Curly was just in front of me. However, a couple of minutes later I felt ok again and I completed the session with no further problems.

I tried to tell myself I'd imagined it and it was only when I uploaded the Garmin data and saw the high HR trace that I realised that something may actually have been wrong after all. In all honesty, I was quite frightened by how I felt at the time. As Curly said, I'd not noticed anything like this before.

I've been looking at the AF thread on Fetch and your pSVT thread on here and do think it sounds similar to what you experienced. I think I need to get registered with a GP...

Magpie - sounds like it could well be pSVT to me, as it's very like what I had - get it checked out.

Video of pSVT here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSscfBBkpGQ

As you'll know if you read my thread, I would get rapid increase in HR to something like 230-240 bpm, usually associated with "recovery" (i.e on a downhill phase,  or just getting off my bike). Once you go into tachycardia, you cannot supply enough blood to the muscles and so can become exhausted pretty quickly if you carry on running ... and if it kicks in after a hard rep,you can get light-headed etc.Once the heart returns to normal, you recovered rapidly. I recognised the symptons as something I had all my life - just thought it was a sign of poor fitness or going too fast ... it was only when I put on a HRM at age 42  that I realised it might be pSVT.

I never stopped running ...I found that training (basically base training) was okay but I had problems racing, as I often went tachy mid race! Had no issues since my operation (ablation) in 2010.

Well I might be posting at 6.12, but that's not because I've been for a run, this is normal get up work time and I have not done a run - you can have this one Tom  Genuinely just too tired to get up early at the minute and as I'm not quite up to every day training my thinking is get a run in every day, then get back to twice a day. 

Club runs aren't always specific enough for me either Kelly, but at present where my fitness lies is okay as they just force me to run harder than I would on my own and I'm not really doing specific sessions as such yet.  Although the club I'm with do put on some good longer marathon specific sessions, which might serve my purpose come Jan and marathon specific training starts. 

We also have an excellent long run group that meet on a Sunday whereby we'll do anything from a straight long run to a long run with MP in the middle.  The group has runners from 2.30 down to 3.25, but somehow we always always choose routes that allow everyone to work at their own pace from some of the run.

When I was at my best in 2006 (not much between me and Tom then) I did nearly all my training on my own in the buildup to that stage.  I would often finish work run 3 miles to the track, do my session of 15-20 x 400s average 85 secs off 200m recoveries , 10 x 100m strides, then 3 miles back home.  Used to think about it all day at work and was really satisfying to then get it done - them were the days...

Morning all.  Kelly / Mr V - How bizarre! Don't think there's much contingency for stuff like that happening so hopefully it won't reflect too badly on the club.  Good result from you MrV.

A shameless cut/paste from sub-3 thread of my race report yesterday, since a few of the guys did it/have done it.  The weather turned out rather nice in the end but my hands were complaining at 7am on my 8 mile warm-up ride to the start of the "NADBuster" (Winter Ballbuster duathlon: 8M run/24M bike/8M run, incl. 5x up Box Hill).  I dread to think how it can be on a bad day.  Felt distinctly uncomfortable at the start and managed to completely forget to attach my ankle timing chip.  Oops.  Anyway, set off and settled into a group of three for most of the first 8-mile run, in 8/9/10th positions, reeled in one more before the start of the hill so came in 7th in transition, then promptly lost a few positions whilst adding chip-installation to all the other transition duties.  Didn't see much of the competition for most of the bike leg till near the end - which is all good cos it basically suggests strong cyclists who were a fair way back for the run and therefore very re-overtake-able.  Set off on the final run with quads beginning to stir, and two guys just in front of me, took one back fairly quickly but couldn't shrug off the other guy.  We caught a couple of guys to move up from 10/11th to 8/9th but he had stronger legs on the final climb.  So I'd settled for 9th but one more chap was struggling up the zig-zag, so managed to hold it together for 8th overall, 3rd V40 in a time of 2:51:34.

Somehow they managed to extrapolate my splits from what other people were doing around me, so splits:
Run 1 46:06 
T1 1:47 
Bike 1:14:50 
T2  0:59 
Run 2  47:50

Pretty pleased with that, especially the relatively small fade on R2 considering how heavy my legs felt.  Calves pretty mashed this morning but quads much better than I was expecting.

Me finishing yesterday, obviously not trying hard enough...

Phil – Very nice. To be still knocking out sub 6 min miles on the 2nd run is very impressive indeed.

Tom – Is it injuries that have held you back? Was it that big year’s mileage that set them off?

Duck – You may well beat me in a 5K right now! I’m certainly still a way from summer form. Though I hope that I can have a crack at a PB by the end of the year. What does phase 2 of base involve for you?