Wednesday 23rd February 2011

With apologies to Paul Tergat.

I think only about two people will understand what this is all about. Never mind.

General Running

Training

Tuesday 22nd February 2011

I’ve been training hard. I’ve run two 90 mile weeks back to back and yesterday was my first rest day in 19 days. It is tiring but the experiment with higher volume seems to be working for me. The main benefit I am starting to feel is that I recover from runs so much more quickly. Often in the past it was difficult to get any quality in until late in the week because of the lingering effects of the Sunday long run. Now I feel I am running my Tuesday and Thursday track sessions at a higher intensity than I was before.

Mentally, everything seems to be falling into place for London, which is now only 54 days away. I ran a hilly 21 mile loop with my club mate Martin on Sunday and we covered the distance in 2:06, faster than my previous marathon pace and only slightly slower than my target pace. What pleased me more than my capacity to run at that pace, which I didn’t doubt given the right conditions, was my ability to push myself and stay focused for longer. Last month I blogged about the merits of doing long runs in groups compared to solo efforts, and the group long run every Sunday is really starting to pay dividends. The first of these was Sunday’s 2:06, a time that led Martin, as well as some of my American fellow runners on the Letsrun Marathon training forum, to revise his prediction downwards from 2:35 to 2:30. This does seem like a big step, given that I only broke 1:15 for the half recently. I am racing in a half marathon next weekend and then testing out my pace in a 20 mile race the following weekend. These should be good indicators of the shape I’m in.

If I can run 1:12 I will know I need to be targeting about 2:32 and will set my pace (5:48 per mile) accordingly, but if the time is closer to 1:15 then I will stick with my 2:35 pace of 5:55 per mile.

Of course everything depends on how I run on the day. I could set off too fast, I could be tripped, I could get ill or injured the week before. You can do all the training in the world and still have a bad day. I just like to think of hard training as something that reduces the probability of that happening. As the famous golfing expression goes: ‘The more I practise, the luckier I get.’

Training Summaries | , ,

Press Up Challenge

Thursday 17th February 2011

This is stupid. I should have never started.

In November, a couple of friends and I decided to take on the Marathon Talk Press Up Challenge. The philosophy behind it is that anyone can get fast/strong/fit by just increasing their exercise load by a very small amount every day, and with no effort, suddenly you are capable of feats you never previously thought possible. This is known as the ‘Training Effect’ and I agree with every aspect of it besides the ‘no effort’ bit.

The challlenge involves training one’s body to do three sets of 100 press ups by increasing the number in each set by one every day. Some people start from 1; we started from 5. Now, I know that any gym monkeys with hefty triceps who are reading this are laughing at the easy target we set ourselves, but do remember that we are runners, not a breed of human known for their upper body strength.

The only other rule is that if one person is unable to do their press ups due to illness or other circumstances, the others have to stay on the same number until they have caught up. This ‘all in this together lads’ attitude appeals to me (and gives me an easier day when my friends are ill).

Today we did 3×60, by no means the hardest day yet. I have found that the higher into each ten you get the harder the effort seems. So 40-44 felt fine but 45-49 were really tough, and this had been the case throughout. As a maths teacher, certain nunbers appeal to me more than others too, particularly the ones that are easily broken down to make the task seem easier. 60 was fine today – it’s 30 sets of 2, it’s 6 sets of 10, and so on. Multiples of 5 are fine. Even numbers I can just about tolerate. Prime numbers are horrible. I’m dreading 83 and 97 already.

Our current predicted finish date is March 29th. I really can’t wait.

Footnote: The men who conceived the idea are doing their 3 x 100 at different stages of the 90km Comrades Marathon in South Africa: At 30km, at 60km and at the finish. Insane.

General Running |

Mile Reps

Mile reps are one of my least favourite sessions and this week’s session was no exception.

My training partners and I are roughly following a cycle for our Tuesday sessions that goes: k reps, mile reps, 2k reps, 3k reps, time trial, which means that it’s about a month between similar sessions. The beauty of doing sessions on a 4- or 5 week cycle is is gives you a monthly update on the progress you are making. When I’ve got time I’ll also trawl through the 2010 sessions to see how my times compare to a year ago.

The update this week was a promising one, which I see as an indication that the high mileage experiment is starting to pay off. I feel stronger and more able to run on tired legs. No surprise really, given that that my legs are rarely anything but tired these days. I managed 5 reps, compared to 4 last time, and this time off the back of a heavier preceding week. The splits were also better, with an average of 5:12 compared to an average of 5:15 in January. This was mainly to do with the presence of a clubmate running them at a similar pace to me. We shared the work out. Well sort of. We ran at a comfortable pace for 3, I did one on my own and then tried in vain to chase him down on the fifth.

This session was probably the toughest I’ve done for a while. I probably haven’t trained this hard since the Autumn when I did 10x1k on my own. Heavy wind and rain added an extra challenge that was probably more mental than physical.

I can’t say I enjoyed it but certainly got a lot out of it. 8 weeks until London!

Training Summaries | , ,