My Forum

Good to see BR (running by) and Hilly at the BMAF relays today. Club came away with a couple of bronze medals due to athletic endeavour and adequate administration (I did the latter.)

LS21 - Sorry to hear that but thank you for being so open about your depression. I hope running can be part of the mitigation. Usually when people are are down about running we suggest they run relaxed and take in the flowers and trees. I wonder if this is a time when writing down a doable schedule and trying to stick to it might help get you off the bench.

Congratulations TB and Jonny! We must get a list together ...

First run since London today. Felt nice to have no target and trotted round 10 miles at just sub 7. Thighs still a bit tender at times. Lower back/hamstring also a bit twitchy, partly because I've come off the diclofenac I was taking shortly before London.

TT/CW, others - By 'core' exercises, I'm assuming sit-ups with variations, planks etc. Any key references - books, websites. I think I should also include some more twisting and turning exercises to improve robustness. I did have a period of doing a circuits class once a week, which seemed like a good thing to do.

Quite surpised by the high age-graded ranking, but I suspect that there is an age-banding discontinuity which gives me a big boost over faster guys in the low 40s. I ran about 56 miles per week average, affected a bit by a couple of weeks cut back with an achilles niggle and a cold earlier on. Having said that, there's always something every year. I was quite taken by something LD said about longer lasting adaptions, and I wonder if I had a good run off a lower-key build up because I had a reasonable run last year. (Consistent consistency ...)

On longer mileage, we need to think about the direction of causality - is it that opting for a longer mileage campaign makes you a better marathon runner, or is it that being a better marathon runner allows you to productively run higher mileage.

I'm coming round to focusing more on the aim of the first week's training being to be in a reasonable shape to do the second week's training, and so on. I would like to think that I will spend the summer getting myself into shape to up the average mileage a bit, but I probably won't.

I should probably edit the above, but I'll return to my bottle of wine.