The Middle Ground

January 2013

5th - Kent County Champs XC - PhilPub
5th - Surrey County XC - Curly
6th - Tadworth 10 - YoungPup
6th - Stockport Hit the Trail 5 - CB
12th - Surrey League XC - Curly
13th - Tadley XC - SG
20th - Brass Monkey Half Marathon - YD, MrV, Dr.Dan(?), Hilly, Wardi
20th - Bracknell XC - SG (potentially)
26th Jan - Southern Champs XC - Curly

February 2013
3rd - Chichester Priory 10k – PhilPub, SG, YoungPup, Curly
3rd – Dewsbury 10k - MrV, BR, Hilly, YD 9th - Surrey League XC - Curly
10th - Wokingham Half - SG
10th - Nick Beer 10k - CB
16th - Race Your Pace Half - YoungPup
17th - Brighton Half Marathon - PhilPub
24th - Snake Lane 10 - PRF, Dr.Dan, MrV, BR, Hilly, Wardi
24th - Radcliffe 10 - CB

March 2013
3rd - Surrey Spitfire 20 - YoungPup
9th - Dambuster Duathlon (GB Champs) – PhilPub
10th – Northumberland Half Marathon - MrV
17th - Finchley 20 - PhilPub
17th - Clutton Cup 10 XC - Curly
24th - Bradford 10K - Dr.Dan
24th - Eastleigh 10k - YoungPup, SG
30th - Baker Cup 3 - Curly

April 2013
14th - Brighton Marathon - Curly
21st - VLM - Ratzer, PhilPub, BR, Hilly, PRF
28th - Greater Manchester Marathon - YD

May 2013
6th - Milton Keynes Marathon - YoungPup
12th - Leeds Half Marathon - Dr.Dan

Afternoon!

Some may be interested: Trafford 10k details below. Sunday March 10th.
BR/Hilly/CB did it last year and I think would all agree it is a potential PB race, not least due to to the quality of the field.

http://www.altrincham-athletics.co.uk/

Good to see you have an all clear of sorts Alehouse, hope you enjoy the short sessions!

Very impressed with Y D's mara/half mara preparations, good festive mileage from Mr Viper too.

Nice double Park run Curly, always nice when a few forumites show up.

BR.. sorry to hear you are still struggling occasionally, hope you make the XC.

PP.. you obviously got a new set of multi coloured crayons for Xmas!  Nice set of figures.

More improvement in the rib dept here, 14+5+8+5 this week and I'm off the painkillers altogether now.  I can still feel a dull ache but it is perfectly bearable.  I have what was an 'A' race club 5 miler on Sunday - fast & flat.  Having spent the last 3 weeks either not running or running slowly will surely have cost me a bit of race sharpness.  Still, I might as well just run it as best as I can and see what happens. 

In other news I took the plunge and entered the Frankfurt marathon on October 27th.  The price went up on 1st Jan so in true Yorkshire fashion I entered on New Year's Eve! 

Simon.. hope your rib is improving.

Happy New Year everyone  

Sorry for hiding recently - not been a great end or start to the year for me  broke up with my long-term gf (almost 3 years) just before the end of the year, which I'm sure you understand hasn't had me in the best mindset. Been trying to run but it's all a bit aimless right now, but I am glad out having the outlet! I'm planning on the Proms 3k tomorrow, not feeling in the best of shapes right now but one more race will count me in for the end-of-series prizes (if I'm quick enough of course).

Anyway enough downer news for now  had some holiday days planned for the end of January to the US which obviously isn't happening now, still need to have them confirmed but I was thinking instead I might have a little trip down south, which may or may not include a Saturday morning somewhere  

I'd be looking for somewhere flat, fast and certified to have a real crack at sub-18. So, questions:

1. Where would be the best place to go;
2. Is anyone keen for a MG meetup;
3. Would anyone be willing to pace me? 

'somewhere flat, fast and certified to have a real crack at sub-18' 

Err, York?  A trip 'down south' can mean many things when you are from Bonny Scotland!  Sorry to hear about the GF Duck  , just practice your chat up lines again and I'm sure a gorgeous damsel will head your way again very soon. 

Good progress, Wardi!

Alehouse - yes, a fantastic race

Duck - very sorry to hear that.  19th Jan - Hull parkrun.  I might be able to find a pacer....  You can then try and blag yourself a Brass Monkey HM place for the day after for a 13.1 mile paced run.

Heh, thanks Wardi 

BR, was hoping for the 26th, actually.... indoors on the 19th (400/1500). Hull would be good though (I had thought of that one). 

MrV - you're quietly making excellent progress there.  What a difference some food intolerance makes!

We're in Dublin on 26th, so I'm afraid it'd be one Celt into Yorkshire, with 2 of us plus our Welsh Celt out to another land of the Celts.

I could sort you out with a track 3000m this Wednesday

Never mind BR. Might see if I can get down in the summer (and struggle horrendously as I'll be 400/800 race fit and not 5000 fit ).

Anyway... read back time.

Mr V - some great training recently and excellent year's training overall. Keep that kind of level up and it'll be a great 2013.

Phil, what a great table! Cearly not as many running miles + more bike miles hasn't been a bad decision at all. Do you think you'd have done better or worse with more running miles or do you think you found a good balance?

Josh, considering you need to run two 18'00s back to back to run 36'00 for 10k I think it's safe to say you can afford to be a little more ambitious with your 5k target  

I'd say my main source of knowledge has been you fine folk  along with plenty of trial and error myself, and some common sense of sound training principles. 

Being a coach is fun, stressful, exhilarating, and challenging. Fun because it allows me to give something back to someone and help them improve. Stressful because you are in charge of their training so to a certain extent the buck stops with you. Exhilarating when they have that breakthrough and you realise it was worth it. Challenging to make everything work and to modify training to an invidual's needs!

Simon, surely 17.3M is an ASICS marathon training weekly total? Nice going.

WJH, good 8*800 session, first one a bit fast though  good to see you kept it consistent aside from that though.

YD, I'm consistently impressed by your long runs and the overall strength/pace of them (and your MP/HMP session - I love that one). Those LRs at a decent pace is going to hold you in very good stead I am sure when it comes to race day. I'll put York down as an option for now.

Nice parkrunning + session Curly.

Good news on your rib Wardi. Frankfurt? Nice 

2012 was, for me:

1,913.75M (almost the equivalent of driving from Aberdeen to Marseille)
46 races (inc. parkruns but not 'unofficial' events like Fetch Miles etc)
18 pbs ('official' events, again inc. parkruns, 16 without)
14 raced parkruns (with an average finishing position of 4.2 - not bad!)

Duck sorry to hear your sad news If you want to come this far south we have a spare room and are about 35 mins from Waterloo station so readily accessible for some town touring too. You'd be welcome to stay We are out with the london fetchies on 25th Jan too and running the Southerns XC on 26th at parliament hill!

3.5 miles for me this morning still asleep

Another 8 hours at work today broken into two 4 hours shifts with 4 hours between, looking forward to my afternoon nap right now

Sorry to hear it Duck. Sending hugs.

Good to see the rib is on the mend Wardi.

Alehouse I've got the Traffod 10k form in front of me now!

12.8 miles last night with 4 @mp. This morning's run became a 6 mile slog. It was meant to be 8 but I bowed out early (I nearly gave up at 100m so it could have been worse!)

Bad news Ducky, only positives are that you're still a real young fella, unlike some of us oldies on here, and that running is the best outlet there is!

So, head up and onwards and upwards!

Duck – Sorry to hear that. If you end up in York, Newcastle, Middlesbrough area I’ll try and come along as well. You may even end up with multiple pacers

Wardi – Good news on the rib. Hopefully you'll be able to do yourself justice and BM and Snake Lane.

BR – Thanks. When I was having to take regular walking breaks during 4 milers back in September I didn’t think I’d be cracking out regular 70 plus mile weeks just a few months later.

Curly – Mid afternoon naps are definitely the way forward!

chubby - Good session last night.  Think I'd struggle to get much done the very next morning.

Curly - Ah yes, the Parly Hill mudfest.  It will be five years since I had that pleasure.

Duck gets a hug from me as well.  Chin up fella, looks like it's been a fine running year anyway.

The Duckinator wrote (see)

 

Do you think you'd have done better or worse with more running miles or do you think you found a good balance?

The way I look at it, they are two very separate questions.  I might be a quicker runner if I'd done more running... on the other hand, as I've mentioned before if I didn't do any other stuff there is absolutely no way I'd be spending the equivalent time running instead, and if I tried to, would I have ended up with another injury?  As to finding a good balance, yes definitely. I love cycling, I want to continue doing it competitively, and because it gives me a whole different focus to think about, I think it keeps my motivation for running that bit fresher.

Was going to supplement yesterday's lunchtime spinning class with an easy run in the evening but went late night sales shopping instead. Easy 6.5M planned for lunchtime, should leave the legs reasonably fresh for XC tomorrow.

Sorry to hear Duck!

Mr V - glad things have improved no end.  I too remember thinking I'll never be able to run properly again.  Whatever virus it was, it was pretty scary and nasty!

Excellent race alehouse!

Phil - great stats!

Training continues here slowly but surely!

Thanks everyone. It'll be difficult for a while but things will be ok in the end 

Good MP sesh cb, are you upping it from ~4M at any point?

Curly, now that is tempting! York parkrun would be very good too. Ooh decisions...

Ran the Proms 3k today. Not my best race ever, ended up with 10'21 and 4th place with 5'03/5'17 splits. Breathing was fantastic, but legs are still missing something. Went off too fast (it was a quick start even by Proms standards) and felt good until halfway when the top 3 picked it up and I really didn't have anything in the legs to respond with. Still another solid result (my second-quickest 3k ever!) and there's time for it to come back to me before the indoors in 2 weeks.

Pleased I can run a 5'03 1500 without it being especially difficult. I felt great doing strides before the start so reckon I could have turned out a decent 800/1500 today, but it's the longer distance stuff that is a bit harder than normal right now. 

nice new pic Hilly by the way