Sunday 11th March 2012
Took a while to get the half marathon out of my legs. Happy with the track session.
Monday: 9 easy (9)
Tuesday: 8 easy (8)
Wednesday: Rest (0)
Thursday: Long warm up, 2×400,2×600,2×800,2×600,2×400 all off 200 jog or 2 mins. 71/70/1:45/1:46/2:15/2:21/1:53/1:51/61/65 (12)
Friday: 6 easy. Sore. (6)
Saturday: 13 with 2 mile hard section in middle (13)
Sunday: 25 miles. Started slow, ran 18-23 hard (25)
Week total: 73 miles
2012 total: 765 miles
Taken from my training log.
Sunday 26th February 2012
Today, for the first time in a long time my long run started from somewhere that wasn’t my front door. Well, that’s not strictly true as we drove to our start point a few weeks ago, but this morning’s long run was different in that it took place in another city. This weekend we visited some friends in Bristol, one of my favourite cities in Britain. The sun was out all weekend and the weather conditions were more befitting of a day in April than February; the run was spectacular. Fortunately my friend is also a keen runner, well versed in the Sunday ritual of doing a run whose distance in miles begins with the digit 2. No chance of missing my long run this week.
Starting in Clifton, we dropped down the hill for a couple of miles, into and back out of the city centre, before heading towards the suburb of Westbury. The first half of the run was through residential areas but the second half was where it started getting interesting. We came out of Shirehampton and turned left onto a ramp which appeared to just head towards another footpath. I then realised that this ramp took us right alongside the M5, the motorway that connects the south west with the rest of the country. A steady incline for about half a mile was followed by a descent of similar length and we crossed the river Avon with cars and lorries speeding past us. I’ve never run over such a long bridge before and the breathtaking view in both directions distracted us sufficiently from the soreness in our legs.
We passed a couple of small villages and before long we found ourselves on a path along the Avon heading back towards the centre of Bristol. There were no cars, buses, trains or any other vehicle in our way. Just a few hundred other people with exactly the same idea as us. We wound our way along the path, talking about important things, unimportant things, about running, about life in general. It occured to me that this is what running is all about. No watch, no goal, no idea what pace we ran the last mile at; just good company, good scenery and the sun in your face. Whilst we all gain pleasure from bettering our PBs and seeing our hard training pay off in races, running really offers much simpler pleasures than that. The act of running itself, for its own sake, and without any greater purpose, can often be enough to put the biggest smile on your face.
Turning a corner, we saw in front of us one of the most iconic and well-known structures in Bristol, Cifton Suspension Bridge, a stunning piece of engineering that passes right across the Avon Gorge. The sun was streaming through its famous arches as we approached and the bridge looked imposing as we passed underneath it. Nothing puts you in your place and reminds you of how small you really are like a massive bridge hundreds of feet above your head.
We crossed a much lower bridge and prepared for the inevitable, the climb back up to the top. Whilst the view was breathtaking in the metaphorical sense, the road back up to Clifton was breathtaking in a more literal sense. We were gasping for air at the top. From there we took in the view, passing the bridge from above this time, and ran the short distance back to Mark’s house. The rest of the day was spent enjoying Bristol at a rather more sedate pace, sightseeing and taking photos.
Runs like this are why I do it.
A much better week. Long tempo and a track session and a scenic long run in Bristol.
Monday: 20 mile tempo 1:56. 56:56/59:28 (20)
Tuesday: 6 easy. Sore and slow. (6)
Wednesday: 9 easy (9)
Thursday: 12 easy. Bit of spring back in the legs. (12)
Friday: 12 easy (12)
Saturday: 8×400 off lap jog – 70/69/67/68/64/65/63/65 (10)
Sunday: 20 easy (20)
Week total: 89 miles
2012 total: 640 miles
Wednesday 15th February 2012
Last night’s hill session was great. I managed to get 5 guys to come down for a few reps of our usual hill, more people than I would normally train with on a Tuesday evening. The hill efforts we do are 400m long, starting on the flat and getting steeper as you climb. I had done the same session on my own the previous Tuesday and it had been a struggle right from the first effort. Training in a group is much easier. So to celebrate that fact I won’t talk about the session, I’ll tell you about the guys who did it.
Chris has been a member of the club for a while but has only just started training with us. He’s a sub-34 10k runner and a triathlete who looks likely to take a big chunk off his marathon PB in April. He started the session tentatively but absolutely blasted rep number 8, acting as rabbit for the whole group. Starting too fast can be a good thing though; it trains the body to deal with pain. And I could certainly feel he was in pain as I passed him half way up the hill.
Tim, star of last week’s blog, was also in attendance and became the first person to actually manage ten reps of the hill after having set out to do so. He has been putting the miles in recently and is very strong. I had to make do with pacing him half way on rep 9 as I was spent after 8.
Ben is a mountain goat. He ran every club race at cross country this winter and just seems to do better on an incline than on the flat. His powerful sprint also suggests that he could be a rather useful 400 meter runner, should distance running not prove to be his thing. We had a nice little battle on the 8th rep.
Last, but not least, Rob joined us after the first rep. He gradually worked his way into the session showing far greater patience than the rest of us. I didn’t see the end of his last rep, but reports (Tim) suggest that he adopted a sit and kick approach, something that clearly dates back to his days as a middle distance man. You see, Rob is a dormant volcano when it comes to running, but when he erupts he does it with style and devastating speed. The speed needed to run 1:59 and 4:04 doesn’t just go like that. Now it’s time to get this man in a race before they delete his power of 10 page.
One notable absentee was my usual training partner Mark, missing due to illness. He missed a good one.
Full splits on my training log.
Sunday 5th February 2012
Only one session this week. Long tempo on Sunday didn’t happen because of the snow.
Monday: 10 easy (10)
Tuesday: 12 easy (12)
Wednesday: AM 5 easy PM 10 easy (15)
Thursday: 6x(700/300) off 100 jog – 2:10/51/2:10/53/2:08/54/2:08/53/2:05/54/2:04/49 (11)
Friday: AM 5 easy PM 10 easy (15)
Saturday: 13 easy (13)
Sunday: 14 easy. All on snow. (14)
Week total: 90 miles
2012 total 407 miles
Taken from my training log.