Early summer speed

by Ben

Spring is generally considered to be marathon season, while the summer is dedicated to shorter distances. With both marathon and half marathon distances out of the question for me this spring thanks to yet another winter injury, I always knew that my first races back would be quicker, shorter distances.

My ‘training’ started again gently in March, with a number of runs aimed mostly at building some confidence and clocking up some miles. But I struggle to run without definite aims in mind, and there was no way that an autumn half marathon was going to get me going in the short-term. So, I had a look around, considered how far I was running (up to 4 miles) and decided to book the Brean Down 5k on 3 April.

In all honesty, this didn’t end up being a goal, so much as part of the journey. For those that don’t know the area, Brean Down is a headland between Burnham on Sea and Weston-super-Mare in north Somerset. The race starts by the beach and climbs up to the top of the headland, runs along and down to a fort at the end, before climbing back up to the peak and dropping all the way back to the beach. Off-road. It clearly wasn’t a course on which to get a PB, but that’s fine, as I was hardly in any shape to get a PB anyway.

1604 Brean Down 002

Grimace, grimace, smile for camera, grimace.

The day before the race, we travelled up to Kingsway parkrun, where Lolly kindly ran with the buggy to allow me to put down a more realistic benchmark for my training; 21:59. Two minutes off where my next target, and more like three minutes off where I’d like to finish the year. But at least I had an idea.

At Brean Down, I ran pretty well; my legs were tired from the hard effort the day before, and they certainly weren’t prepared for the hills, but I enjoyed pushing myself around, and getting the buzz of the race. It was also pretty nice to get a medal to add to my collection! Time was pretty irrelevant, but I came in quicker than I’d been targeting, finishing in 24:56.

After that race, I built my training up more, putting more structure in place. While I still wasn’t running from an actual training plan, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to be doing. A couple of runs in the evenings, parkrun, and a “long” run. Which was 5.5 miles of hell that first week. No idea why, it was just a bad run.

1604 parkrun 002

“This is so easy, I can do it with my eyes shut.”

Another chance to set down a benchmark followed soon after; the first race of the Yeovilton 5k series. I’d been meaning to race in these for a while, but this year I let myself give it more importance, and I’m planning to use it through the summer to benchmark my progress. I’m going to be pretty pissed off if I don’t go sub-20 at one of them!

I don’t tend to run all that well in evening races, though I do really enjoy them. Still, I managed to prepare relatively well, with a shorter day at work, and a mid-afternoon meal. I didn’t really know what to target, other than quicker than the 21:59 I’d run at Kingsway. With that in mind, I changed the settings on my watch to km pace (I usually use miles) and decided to aim for around 4:20 per km, which would give me a time of somewhere around 21:40, which seemed reasonable.

My pacing was dreadful. Perhaps unsurprising, given that the races are known for having a fast field. I started too far forwards, and found myself drifting back for the first kilometre. After that I steadied myself in the pack, but obviously everyone around me was pacing badly too, and we struggled to maintain our pace. All that said, I was chuffed to come around in 21:07, within a minute of my PB.

After Yeovilton, I had two and a half more weeks of training before my next significant benchmark, the Glastonbury 10k. But I’ll cover that in another post…