The Middle Ground

Thanks all for comments. Curly, I am not going at it hard - I'm just trying to get easy miles in at the moment. Mr V, I will give it another week or so and then may visit the doc's. I've got a physio booked for tomorrow for the knee anyway. PRF, I feel like I've had enought time off. Besides, my pace really is the only indication that something is wrong. CB, I'm not actually going to give it up, I just feel that way at the moment. YP, it's not overtraining from August - I was peaking then and running about 25 miles/week. Hilly, it really does sound exactly the same. And it does seem very strange that so many people on this thread have experienced something similar this year. Patience is key I suppose.

PRF, 10k @ 9:50/mile? Oh to run at that pace

Curly, can you run Bushy in the dark? How far is a lap?

Mr V, are you still off the gluten? Was it purely down to that for you?

WJH, faster pace for less effort is always a good sign.

Wardi, do you not like running in the cold? I prefer it.

C'mon YP, let us know what the pace was.

Simon -  Sundays 18miler was @ an average of 09:53/mile, with some bits (hills / floods) being as slows as 10:3x.  This morning's 9.25 miles was @ 09:10/mile, again with average heartrate of 134bpm. 

At the moment I'm experimenting with turning off all the various alerts on my Garmin (so no auto-lap, no virtual partner, no heart-rate alerts), and am just running at what I perceive to be a comfortable, easy pace, and concentrating on slow, steady breathing. So far (ten days in), I'm finding this quite enjoyable, and it can almost be a little bit hypnotic, as I find my breath becomes a rhythm, and that's all I try and think about.

Maybe I'm becoming a hippy? Damn - I'll have to grow my hair....

Simon – Yeah still off the gluten. It does seem to have been the problem for me. Though perhaps it was a virus that triggered it (there is some speculation that this can be one of the causes).

Chubby – Good to see some progress. When are you back racing?

PRF – Steady on there. Remember to keep your  easy miles easy

Curly – It’s always tough getting variety in dark winter routes. Sounds particularly hard for you.

11 miles including 35 mins of continuous hills last night. Conditions were really awful.  The combination of wind and rain seemed to really chill me right through and I could not get warm afterwards. It was a good strong session though. I was hoping it would tire me out and lead to sleep.....but sadly not.  

Mr V any ideas why you are having trouble sleeping? You know that being overtrained can lead to sleep disturbance...

Simon not in bushy in the dark (its closed anyway at nights at the moment for the deer cull) we do a lot of our long runs on Sundays in there.

Sounds like you are enjoying the free running YP

5.5 for me last night, up a dual carriageway Did manage to avoid being splashed though which was a bonus! Was going to double today, but was quite tired when woke up so decided not to.

Simon - Nothing much more to add... I suppose my best guess is the virus thing, in which case any talk of giving up the running is obviously foolish (but understandable) short-term frustration.  Keep the faith, run off-road, forget the Garmin and sessions for a while...

My head cold hasn't progressed one way or the other in the past couple of days.  That's a good thing in a way, i.e. I feel OK and there's no chest gunk or anything, so managed the normal spin class + 7 miles easy yesterday (HR/pace pretty normal).  On the other hand my tastebuds are rather dulled and I managed to oversleep by an hour this morning.  I guess 9.5 hours' sleep can only be a good thing though, eh?

...YP. Nowt wrong with being a hippy (man!)  They make the best music. 

Curly – I don’t think it’s overtraining as apart from the sleep thing I’m feeling great. Not sure what the cause is but it tends to happen every couple of months or so and lasts about a week.  It’s not normally quite this bad though (I reckon I’ve averaged about 2 hours for the last 3 nights).

Phil – Have you got a race coming up? I always find colds seem to come on just as a big race approaches.

MrV - As you can see I'm not having any problems sleeping at the moment so I can imagine that must be annoying.
I've not got any more target road races lined up now till February, but there are some big XC races coming up including the Southern Counties Vets, Saturday week, then the Kent County Vets the following week. Thinking I could do all right at the county race if I can crack on between now and then.

I didn't sleep last night either MrV, then overslept by nearly 2 hours as the alarm didn't go off after a power cut! Missed planned run, staff meeting and my assembly! Never mind. Just need to run further tonight

MrV - over training can definitely lead to disturbed sleep.  I also find if run too fast too late I struggle to sleep.  But, that's what nightnurse, piriton and redwine are for.  I swig of one or more of them usually does the trick for me.

Thanks for the link Minni, I hadn’t seen those, I found these the other day though. http://www.flickr.com/photos/69646358@N03/ Including a good one of you picking up some loot!

prf – I reckon this race is right up your street http://www.yorkshirewarrior.com/  I know you enjoy these type of events and the price tag!!! Just add the word ballcrusher and you are in, right?

Good training Mr V, hope the sleep thing gets resolved soon.

Enjoy the XC Wardi. I find that my performance drops when the temp gets anywhere near zero. It was 3 or 4 degrees in Newcastle on Sat, that was ok but any colder and I think I would have been slower.

Barnsley Runner wrote (see)

I'm with Simon

How does Hilly feel about that?

What’s with all the oversleeping? I have three alarm clocks that stop that from happening, my body clock, my actual alarm and the most reliable alarm known to man YD Junior!

6.75 muddy and wet miles at lunchtime for me today. I am just ticking over with low mileage at the moment, I only ran thirtysomething miles last week and I will run something similar this week with the 10 mile race on Sunday. Just letting everything freshen up a bit before I start building the miles and intensity back up again for Brass Monkey and then Manchester Marathon.

Ha Ha YD! 

There must be something with this sleeping lark - we're finding it hard to get up for work, nevermind up for a run at present.  Good job I'm not back to 5.15 am runs just yet as I really don't think I could drag myself out of bed.  Off to the track this evening for a short session.  At least the rain has died down!

Mr V, i must say what you're describing sounds a little like my last few days. After the race Sunday, I suddenly felt sheer knackeration and a bit of a hot head kick in late that evening. Thought I'd sleep it off, but the sleep was one of those where you can't get to deep sleep and wake up even more tired than you went to sleep.

Little bit ore sleep last night, but not a great efforts session today, didn't even hit the target pace on rep 1, let alone rep 4. However, I don't normally try and do efforts 2 days after a race, and the weather was a bit ridiculous too!

hope you get it sorted!

PP.. I've got that album!  Actually saw them sing it with Arthur Lee at a festival in Canterbury in 2003, shame he's snuffed it.

No sleeping probs here but I put that down to a combination of exercise, Sam Smiths Ales & fine red wine.

YD.. looking forward to the XC in a way.  Sherwood Forest should be wet & muddy too I reckon!  It's where me Mum & Dad used to live so a trip down memory lane.

Simon.. don't mind 4/5 degrees but along with my clubmates reckon anything close to freezing and performance drops.  I suffer from Raynauds so have to wear gloves in anything less than 10 degrees.  Strong winds are my pet hate though!

Belated best wishes to Alehouse, get well soon fella.

4.1m on the treadie this morning, 7.4m with the club tonight.  As Hilly said at least it's stopped bliddy raining! 

Alehouse.. no, Friar Tuck actually!   Nice work on the exercise bike!

 The local feeling re. Sam Smiths is that the beer prices are not as cheap, relatively speaking, as they once were.  Sam's magnate Humphrey Smith isn't too popular around here.  Since ripping all the music & TV's out of his pubs in 2008 (I think) the general view is that he has gone a bit bonkers.  Very obstructive towards any local development and as a result is seemingly in a constant court battle with the local council.  I have to admit his beers & lagers are very good indeed but the wine they serve in Sam's pubs is utterly abysmal!

Very funny, Wardi!
Beer prices locally, Sam Smiths at £1.80 is the cheapest (and yes, the red  vinegar posing as wine is grim), then Wetherspoons at £1.99, then Marston's (my real local) is £2.45. Everything else is what we call London prices (£2.60+). As yet nowhere has breached the £3 for bitter barrier, but some are pusing it close.
I think there are 18 or 19 pubs and wine bars within half a mile of my house, and the most poplular seem to be those with the highest prices! Sam's is next to the hospital, which might well prove helpful.

alehouse - Nice bike session.  When various bits of my legs haven't been up to running the exercise bike has been a godsend for keeping up a semblance of aerobic fitness.  BTW I think you'd have a shock if you saw some actual ''London prices''.  Things seem to have gone mental recently.  It probably doesn't help that I'm keen on what trendy types call ''craft'' beers, which seem to be all the rage now.  If you want something in a bottle that's very strong, in either a Belgian or hoppy IPA style, you won't get much south of a fiver.  Shocking.

Wardi - One of my fave albums that is.  I was born in the wrong era, really I was.

Well there's nothing like a hardcore interval session to tell me whether or not my cold is affecting my running. Glad to say the answer seems to be no.  We had our first ever ''B+"" group training session this evening.  The ''B'' group has grown to a point where there's a bit of a range of abilities and it's been decided that some of the quicker guys would benefit from joining the A group for certain sessions, to push us along a bit.  So they eased us in with 10 x 1k with a minute's rest.    To be fair, we finished at different lampposts along a river path, so about 30-40 metres less to run, 5 times out and back so the quicker guys were catching us on the way back.  Average pace was 3:20/k and pretty consistent, so pleased with that.

We dropped into our local for the first time in ages on Saturday and didn't see change from a tenner for a pint of Peroni and a mulled wine.

10 easy miles last night. Mr V I'm doing a 10k in Tatton Park in a couple of weeks. It's muddy and undulating so I'm not looking for a great time. Anything south of 47 minutes would leave me walking on air!

PP we went to a place called The Botanist in Kew on Saturday evening - a mini brewery, it was pretty cool, but uber pricey. Loved it and the open fire though! CB I bought one beer and a G & T and only saw £8 from a £20!

PP Your hard core interval training sounds brutal but well done on getting through it.

Good to see Alehouse getting in some more recovery fitness work. Sadly I dont have any good tales of training for you (see below)

Wardi hope club went well? Are you doubling up for a reason (lower PE for the session)? Or just to squeeze extra miles in?

Enjoy your rest day YP

Ran like a complete donkey last night at club, went out and did a few miles pre club to get my warm up long enough, then warmed up with the fast boys, then did strides and even then could tell it wasnt really going to be a good un, but no matter thought I would try anyway. Did the first rep just inside the pace target so 1200 metres @ 6:27 pace, recovered fine, but it was so cold and wet I just couldnt get up to pace on the second and just as we were turning the corner (its a loop course0, my knee very slightly twinged and i'd Had enough and called it quits there.

I havent dont that for ages, but I do think this was kind of a test that Morgahan likes to throw in from time to time. I almost always fail them and then he uses that to build on weaker aspects of my fitness. Its definitely going to be 5k or faster pace work at the moment then.

Not disappointed at all - was explaining it to Magpie as: I've done a lot of work to bring existing speed up over the distances to half marathon, but now need to work on putting some more speed in at the other end in order to build it up again in the New Year.