Tag Archives: sub40

Sub-40 Project, Bideford 10k Training: Week 1

by Ben

Training for a sub-40 minute 10k? Ha, we’ve heard this story before, haven’t we? For whatever reason, this just seems to have been the big block for me. Way back in 2016, I set myself an ambitious plan to run sub-90 at the Bristol Half Marathon, and achieved it. Since then, I’ve just never really made any further headway. I’ve tried a few times to target 40 minutes, but for various reasons, it has never come off. So, we start again.

My target race is the Bideford 10k on 7 May – I ran the 10 miler there in November, so I have a good idea of the course. It has a little lump early on, but nothing particularly significant. The wind can be a pretty significant factor, but to be honest, that’s not much different anywhere else, so I’m not going to get too caught up on that.

For my plan, I’m self-coaching, combining the training philosophies from Faster Road Running and Daniels’ Running Formula with my own knowledge to make something that fits me. Or that’s the hope, anyway! I’ve explored the possibility of having a coach in the past, but remain convinced that I can do it myself. Possibly, if I don’t make the breakthroughs that I want this year, I might have to relent. But for now – I’m going to knuckle-down, be positive, and give this plan my all.

I’ve got reasonable mileage behind me – 30 to 35 miles per week feels pretty normal these days, and I feel confident that I can push up into the 40s throughout much of this training block. I think key workouts are going to be threshold work, something that I often neglect when I don’t have a written plan. I added them into my running last year, and did pretty well before getting ill in the autumn, and missing my target races.

So, introduction done, let’s have a look at week one:

  • Monday: Rest day
  • Tuesday: 7 miles easy with 6 x 12 sec hill and 6 x 100m strides
  • Wednesday: 9 miles steady
  • Thursday: Rest day
  • Friday: 8 miles threshold: 3 x 1 mile at threshold pace and 6 x 200m reps
  • Saturday: 3 miles recovery
  • Sunday: 10 miles long
Monday:

Rest day – I really want to be using these days to do some yoga and foam rolling work, but… I didn’t.

Tuesday:

I headed out for an initial five miles mostly around some country lanes. I averaged roughly 8:30 per mile for this part of the run, which seems about right, with a heart-rate around 130-140 bpm. The hill I chose for the hill reps was a little too shallow really, I’ll need to find something a bit more significant before doing these again. My pacing was also a bit all over the place. The strides after went much more smoothly, though I’m never quite sure exactly how hard to push on strides!

Wednesday:

For my midweek steady mileage, I’ll generally be trying to do these with my running club. This week, I was leading Group 2, which has a 7:30 to 8:00 per mile pace band, slightly quicker than my own steady pace band of roughly 7:45 to 8:45 per mile. I got out beforehand for 1.7 miles alone, and then managed to keep the club run to the slower end of the band, 7:55 per mile on average. This actually felt slightly harder than I would have liked at times – my legs still seem slightly fatigued from some cycling I did last week, and it just seemed to make everything feel a little harder than it should have done. Still, nine midweek evening miles done.

Thursday:

Rest day – still no yoga or foam rolling.

Friday:

The big one – threshold day! I was working down in Cornwall, and wanted to work out a way to fit this in nicely, rather than leaving it until I was home and doing loops of the Bathpool estate. (I’m sick of loops of the Bathpool estate.) So, I worked out that I could come off the A38 at Bodmin and do this session on the Camel Trail, a multi-use trail the follows the River Camel. (See what they did with the name there??) This worked pretty well, the surface was generally very good despite some light rain, and it was mostly flat. More on that later.

The gorgeous Camel Trail.

By the time I wrapped up my job and arrived, it was about half 12, and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, which wasn’t ideal preparation for a speed session. I started off along the trail for a couple of miles warm-up, and then cranked into the first mile threshold interval. I was targeting 6:44 for these. As usual, I set off too fast, but ended up not too far ahead of target pace, with a 6:41. The one minute rest went far too quickly before I ran the second in 6:42. Having hit half distance for the whole session, I turned around. For the first half of the run, I’d noticed a slight downhill assistance. For the second half, I definitely noticed the slight uphill resistance. Oh, and the headwind! Still, I hit 6:42 again for the third interval, though I really pushed my heart-rate up into the high 170s by the end of it. Still, the averages across each interval weren’t too far off: 169, 167, 172.

The quicker repeats didn’t go so well. My legs were very weary, the climb was very obvious in places, and twice I had to extend my recovery because of awkward road crossing. Aiming for 43 seconds, I ran 41, 39, 42, 42, 44, 45. By the time I finished this, my legs felt absolutely trashed. My watch declared the training effect of the run was 3.9 aerobic and 2.5 anaerobic. I have no idea what those numbers specifically mean, but they are much bigger than I normally see! As long as I can recover nicely from it, this was a great workout.

Saturday:

My plan called for three miles recovery, which tied in perfectly with our parkrun plans for me to run with my daughter. However, Lolly woke up ill, and her and my daughter decided to stay at home. I still headed out, going to Marine Parade parkrun where I met up with Kirk and Dawn. It can be far too easy to get caught up and run too fast at parkrun, so I kept my hoodie on, and did the first kilometre with Kirk, who had plans for a sub-30 finish time. I kept things pretty steady thereafter for a 28-minute finish, and was really happy to see Kirk sneak in just under 30 minutes.

Sunday:

Almost always my least favourite run of the week – the long run. I’ve always preferred running fast to running slow, and I often find Sunday long runs a battle to get myself out the door. Still, whether it was the positivity of the plan, and knowing how this run slotted in with the others, or just the sunshine, I’m not sure, but today felt pretty good. After a reasonably sedate first four miles, which averaged 8:37 per mile, I pushed on for the remaining six, averaging 7:50 per mile across those, including a surprising 7:35 for mile eight!

Considering that my legs still felt heavy from Friday, I was really happy with this run, though also a little worried that maybe I was overcooking things, and should have taken it all a little bit easier. We’ll have to see how next week goes.

Summary:
  • Mileage planned: 37.0
  • Mileage achieved: 37.5

This was a really solid first week. I came into it more fatigued than I would have liked, as I’d raced 5k and rode my bike for the first time in ages, but I still coped with the plan pretty well. The mileage was only a slight step up from what I’d been doing recently, but simply by adding a threshold workout in, the training effect seemed much higher. Next week ups the ante with harder workouts on both Tuesday and Friday, along with some slightly higher overall mileage, but I’m excited to see how it goes!

Power Run 10k @ Exeter Racecourse: race report

by Ben

Turns out that this is a bit of a long one, sorry about that…

In January of this year, I ran the Waves on the Prom 5k, and three days later, I also ran the Storm Force 10. It turns out, three days is the shortest span I’ve ever had between two races. I didn’t expect it to be another eight months (to the day) before I ran another race: the longest span I’ve ever had between two races. The reason for this is obvious (in case you are reading this years later for some odd reason, it was the Covid pandemic). I had a few races booked, but they, like most, were cancelled.

I had some ankle issues in February/March, and was then furloughed at the start of April. I then went through a pretty inconsistent patch: I’d have a few good weeks, then a couple of weeks when I really couldn’t be bothered and barely got out. That sort of pattern continued for a while, until I picked up another niggly injury around June. Finally though, I strung some consistency together: 113 miles in July and 130 in August, never dropping below a 25-mile week since the start of July.

I looked around, fancying a crack at my 10k PB, the lowest-dangling fruit of my collection of PBs: 42:06 set at the 2017 Chard Flyer. I had come close twice in 2019, running 42:23 at the Pawlett Plod, shortly followed by 42:28 at the Wessex 10k. I found the Power Run 10k advertised at Exeter Racecourse, and set myself a crash four-week training plan to hone my speed.

Okay, so the training plan was actually just an adaptation of Runner’s World’s 4-week 10k training for 5 days a week. It mostly involved dropping the mileage of my long run from what I had been doing (around the half-marathon distance) and focusing more on quality mileage. I stuck to the interval sessions, but a lot of the other runs got adapted to fit in with life better.

Race-day

I wondered what affect socially-distanced racing would have on my day. I was definitely more nervous pre-race than I normally would be, although that might have been the combination of the period of time since my last race, combined with the pressure and expectation of going for a PB time. (The last time I beat a PB was actually that 2017 10k…)

The race instructions were great: very clear on what would happen, and what was expected of runners. There would be no water station, so bring your own water. It was three and a third laps of the race course service road. The start would be a mass rolling start, to avoid us all standing close together in a pack. Each race would have multiple waves, so only restricted numbers of runners would be on the course at a time. Come ready to run, collect your own medal after. Very stripped back.

I arrived about 45 minutes before the race was due to start. I was directed into the car park: “Park wherever you like, but leave an empty space between you and the next car. The toilets are over there..” Yes, that was my next stop. On the way back I had a bit of a chat with Chris, another RFRC member who had run in the first wave. He gave me some useful information: the wind is horrible, and it is hillier than you might think.

Okay: my initial target had been to run something around 41 minutes. I had always hoped to take it easy early on and then assess it, but hearing about the course cemented that in my mind, especially given I was out of practice at the whole racing thing.

The chat was useful, but it also meant that I ended up running a bit late. Normally I aim to warm-up for about fifteen minutes, but I had to make do with an abbreviated seven minutes – that’ll teach me for chatting too long!

Technically a post-race flat-lay, but does it really matter?
Race

At the start, we were funnelled into three files approached the line: I was in the second row from the front, as everybody else had declared that they were too far forwards, and dropped back. As we shot off, I made a concerted effort NOT to shoot off too fast, while also bearing in mind that the pace gap would be much smaller than usual: the sub-40 guys were in later wave. A few people went past me, and I settled in around eighth or ninth. Through the first kilometre, I let a gap grow between me and the leading pack, while inadvertently, I also developed a gap from the group behind me, leaving me somewhat in no man’s land. Great.

I was glad of my chat with Chris for the mental preparation: on the far side of the lap, it dropped down a dip, and then rose back up to our starting position. At the start of the second lap, turning onto the main straight revealed a horrible headwind during the gentle ascent. I hadn’t noticed it first lap, probably through a combination of the pack ahead of me, and early-race adrenaline. The pack ahead of me started to break up, and runners fell back towards me. Each runner gave me a little target, but I knew it was still important for me to be disciplined and run my own race.

Consistent pacing was impossible with an undulating course and a steady headwind along the finishing straight. There was also the slight oddity that the dip on the other side of the course was slightly protected from the wind, and so felt quite hot under the sun – such variety in a 3 km loop! I concentrated on strong, consistent effort, albeit with a slight increase during the descent, figuring that it played to my strengths and was the least sapping part of the course to press a little harder.

I passed the halfway stage, 5 km, in around 20:30, which told me that a 41-ish finishing time was out of the window, and I immediately began readjusting my thoughts for something around 42, if I could hold on for that.

I never used to be too keen on multi-lap courses, or at least the idea of them. But touring around so many parkruns has got me used to the concept, and honestly, it was quite nice today. After the first lap, I was able to plan better, knowing where I would lose and gain time. Each kilometre marker I set myself a target time to reach the next marker, bearing in mind whether it was a faster or slower part of the course. I not only considered how quickly I thought I could cover that section, but also what that would leave me needing in the remainder of the race: ‘If I reach 8 km in 33 minutes, I have nine minutes to do that final two kilometres, that should be doable.’

I worked my way through the field, and entered the final lap fourth in the wave: the chap in first was way ahead, but both second and third seemed to be falling back towards me. I closed in on third and passed him through the dip, as we hit 8 km: 33:05. I started to push from here; normally 2 km would be a little too far out, but I knew that most of the last kilometre would just be about holding on into that headwind, so if I was going to make an impact, it was now.

I pressed as the course rose out of the dip and along the back straight, and ran that penultimate kilometre in 4:04, closing the gap significantly on the guy in second. I continued to close in as we rounded the bend onto the home straight, a roughly 600 metre stretch to the finish. I tucked in behind him to shield myself from the wind, hoping to draft for a while before moving out towards the end, depending on how our time was looking.

Even behind him, the wind felt horrible, but I also felt like I had more to give. The pace felt like it was slowing too much, and I stepped out from behind him. Oh, okay, that’s definitely worse. I tucked back in. We passed the ‘400 m to go’ board with just under two minutes in hand. That should be easy enough?!

I stepped out again, but again, I couldn’t make an impression, and tucked back in. We were both getting quicker now: whether he reacted to my move, or it was just the closing push, I don’t know. Either way, I felt pretty sure we’d make it in under 42 minutes. In the final 20-30 metres, I moved into a gentle sprint, as did he: maybe if we had genuinely been battling over second, I could have pushed for an all-out sprint and beaten him, but it didn’t really matter. He finished in 41:55, and I finished in 41:57, officially a nine-second PB.

Post-race

I grabbed my medal, and chatted to a few of the other finishers, during which we mostly commiserated each other on the wind. On the way home, I stopped for McDonalds at the very handy restaurant which is less than a mile from the race course: great post-race fuelling!

Forgive the poor quality – it’s a screenshot of my Instagram story…

I’m pretty chuffed with the effort. Although I ended up around a minute slower than my vague target, I think that on a flatter, less windy course, I would have easily achieved that. I ran strong, and with a consistent effort that I maintained to the finish. I ran the first lap in 12:25, the second in 13:00, and the third in 12:50; then it was just the horrible final drag to the end.

Now I’m just champing at the bit for an opportunity to prove that I can run faster, and finally beat the 10k distance PB that I set during the 2016 Great Bristol Half Marathon.

  • Did I enjoy this race? Yes, definitely.
  • Would I do this race again? Yes, probably.
  • What’s next? No idea. I’m signed up for The Big Cheese (which I ran before, back in 2017), but I might find something else before then. Or… a second wave might put an end to races for the year.

Wessex 10k: race report

by Ben

Right, how does this writing thing work? I’ve missed a few race reports; the last one I wrote was for the Town Tree Trail, back in May. Since then I’ve ran the Crewkerne 10k (abandoned draft blog post), Piddle Wood Plod, the Quantock Beast (another abandoned post), and the Pawlett Plod. As a quick summary:

  • Crewkerne 10k: pretty good
  • Piddle Wood Plod: meh
  • Quantock Beast: good
  • Pawlett Plod: felt not great, but pretty good actually

This race was the first part of my planned summer of speed, aiming to improve my 10k PB, and ideally set a sub-40 time. Unfortunately, after a good first half of my eight-week training ahead of this race, the wheels fell off somewhat, and I’ve barely done anything over the last four weeks. So, coming into this race, I didn’t really know what I’d be able to do. Sub-40 wasn’t going to be in the picture, but maybe I could still get a new 10k PB? To review, my planned targets are:

  • Gold: 39:59 (sub-40)
  • Silver: 41:23 (distance PB)
  • Bronze: 42:05 (race PB)
Pre-race
Ready to race

I chose the Wessex 10k because it described itself as “a fairly flat mainly road”. I had a look at some of the Strava traces from last year, and decided that the hill looked small enough that this could still be considered a decent PB route. The date also worked out quite nicely, and I seem to recall that it was priced relatively reasonably too. (Just checked, £16.) What I failed to notice until a couple of weeks before the race was that it was a 19:00 start time on the Saturday; I had spotted it was on a Saturday, but not that it was an evening race. This threw me off a little: I have it in my head that I don’t race so well in the evening, and I was just annoyed at not having noticed.

In the end though, being in the evening worked quite well; it meant that we still had all of the day on Saturday as a family, and would have on Sunday too (though I’m sat here writing this, so go figure.) I left just after five, which gave me lots of time to get to Somerton and then bimble around for plenty of time before the start. I didn’t have to worry about registration, as the race number had been sent out through the post. Just after half six I started my warm-up; I had intended to go for a longer warm-up, as I generally find them more effective, but it ended up being just over a mile, which is about my normal.

At around five to seven, we started to gather at the start line, and I got chatting to another chap on the start line, but it quickly became apparent that I wouldn’t be using him as a pacer; he was aiming for around 38 minutes! In the inaugural race in 2018, only six runners went sub-40, so I was half aware that there might not be too many ahead of me, and so lined up in the front row.

The race

I almost managed to not go off too fast. As I wasn’t too sure what time I would be capable of, I opted to aim for 41 minutes, and see what happened. That would equate to a time of 4:06 per kilometre. After the initial rush, I settled down to 3:55 for the first kilometre, which was pretty flat, heading out of the sports club, along the main road, and then hooked right onto the back-roads. It was obvious that there were more quick runners than in 2018, but that was to be expected for the second year of an event.

Shortly after the end of the first kilometre, we started to drop down the hill; this was the same one that we would return up later. And, well, it looked worse than I had hoped. In place of the gentle slope I had been expecting, or at least hoping for, was a genuine hill. Okay, no worries, I could make time up heading down the hill, and just see how well I could hold on up the hill in the second half. Downhill-assisted, the second kilometre clocked in at 3:45, and the third, still with a modest descent, was 3:58, leaving me 40 seconds up on an even-split 41:00 time. But of course, it wouldn’t be an even-split race, and I was aware that I could lose close to that same 40 seconds on the hill alone.

Any hopes of managing to make up more time, or at least hold steady were immediately dashed, as at the 3 km marker, we started on the rough stuff. A dusty, rocky, pot-holed farm track. This wasn’t part of my plan, and brought back memories of the Bridgwater 10k way back in 2014, when I destroyed myself chasing a PB on a course with a farm-track in the middle. Thankfully, I’m a bit more experienced now, but I was still losing time against my 41 minute target. Partly, this was probably just lack of fitness due to my reduced training lately, but the terrain clearly won’t have helped. Through the fourth and fifth kilometres, I clocked 4:13 and 4:19, taking me through five kilometres in 20:11; still theoretically 19 seconds up on my target, but in reality, starting to really struggle.

I’d developed an odd pain high on my chest; either my lung or a muscular pain, I couldn’t tell which. It was annoying without being debilitating, but I was very much hoping that it didn’t get worse. Just after the halfway stage, we had the only drinks station on the course, from which I took a quick swig, and then we returned to the road. I tried to get my legs turning over a bit quicker on the better surface, but to little avail; the next three kilometres came in at 4:36, 4:30, 4:30.

Not the best running form late in the race! (Credit: Martin Edwards)

Then the hill hit. It actually was not so bad as I had worried; I managed to run up the whole thing. That shouldn’t have been an achievement, but I’ve really struggled with hills this year for some reason, so I was pretty proud of it. The hill last for pretty much a whole kilometre, starting just before the 8 km marker in actual fact, and correspondingly, finished just before 9 km. It was by far my slowest kilometre of the race, a 4:54, but Strava’s grade-adjusted pace (GAP) was 4:25, which was quicker than my GAP for kilometres six and seven.

Over the top of the hill, and I knew I just had a kilometre to go. I willed my body to run faster, damn it! I managed it. Not consistently, but effectively; I oscillated between a 3:50 and 4:20 pace, and despite telling myself that I was now in energy-saving mode ahead of another race on Wednesday, I engaged in a sprint-finish when the runner behind me tried to get past. Helped by his push at the end, I ducked in just under 42 and a half minutes, officially posting a time of 42:28.

Post-race

After getting my breath back from my quick finish, I grabbed a cup of water, and then had another chat with the chap I’d been taking to before the race. After a quick analysis of each of our races, I commented that I noticed he was from 26.2 RRC (the best running club in Surbiton), made famous by Danny Norman on the With Me Now podcast. It turned out that I’d been chatting to none other than Chauffeur Ramek – what a small world it is! After some more parkrun chat, we headed off our different ways.

Shiny medal!

The medal was really nice; probably the second biggest in my collection, though I don’t really do the type of races that give big medals. (Because I’m cheap.) (Because I race so much that if I did expensive races, we would miss our mortgage payments.)

How about my time? It ranks as my fourth best 10k time; just behind my Pawlett Plod time from a few weeks ago:

  • 42:06, Chard Flyer, January 2017
  • 42:19, Battle of Sedgemoor 10k, August 2015
  • 42:23, Pawlett Plod, July 2019
  • 42:28, Wessex 10k, August 2019
  • 43:18, Round the Tor 10k, May 2016

That two of my quickest ever 10k times have come this year is encouraging. That my two overall quickest times are two and four years old respectively is disappointing. It’s another eight weeks now until the Taunton 10k, and if I want to get a new PB, then I simply have to put the training in. No excuses.

  • Did I enjoy this race? If I’m honest, not really. But that was no fault of the race, or the course. Sure, I’d have liked the hill to be flatter, and the rough track to be smoother. In reality though, I just wasn’t fit enough to run this race as I wanted.
  • Would I do this race again? Probably not, no. I signed up hoping that it was a good PB course, and it wasn’t really. If it was a Somerset Series race, I’d do it and enjoy it well enough, I’m sure. But as a standalone race, it probably won’t be for me again. Never say never though, I guess.
  • What’s next? The Haselbury Trail 10k on Wednesday.

Ben’s training catch-up – #sub40

by Ben

I got pretty good at keeping a training diary throughout January and into February, until I tripped over and smashed my knee in. Since then, nothing. I basically didn’t run at all for a month, and then eased myself back in. I’ve had a few spring sniffles that have set me back a little bit, but mostly I’ve been racing. The Somerset Series gets pretty hectic through April, May and early June, and so it has been hard to find a training rhythm.

But after the recent Piddle Wood Plod, which I’ve yet to write up, we enter a quieter period through the summer. I’ve still got a few races scheduled, namely the Quantock Beast and the Pawlett Plod, but my focus is switching more long-term. Specifically, I want to address my 10k PB.

I last ran a real 10k ‘PB effort’ at the 2015 Battle of Sedgemoor 10k. That’s right, four years ago this summer. At that race, I ran 42:19. Sixteen months later, I ran 42:06 at the 2017 Chard Flyer, a time that I never really counted as my 10k PB, as I was concerned that the course was short. I’ve since realised that GPS really can be quite bad, and it probably wasn’t short. So let’s call my 10k PB 42:06. It isn’t quite that simple though. Although 42:06 is my 10k race PB, I have actually run a quicker 10k time during a race. At the 2016 Great Bristol Half, I clocked 41:24 for my first 10k.

Hopefully, I’ll look better than I did after the Chard Flyer…

So, I have two 10k times to beat: my official 10k race PB of 42:06, and my quickest time over the 10k distance of 41:24. Except that, actually, as I first discussed in August 2017, what I actually want to achieve is a sub-40 minute time. As such, my three targets for the summer are pretty obvious:

  • Gold: 39:59 (sub-40)
  • Silver: 41:23 (distance PB)
  • Bronze: 42:05 (race PB)

I’m not at my fittest at the moment, but I’m getting there. On the rather undulating Crewkerne 10k course, I ran a 43:48, and I should be able to improve on that fairly significantly on a flatter course. According to Strava, my grade-adjusted pace for that Crewkerne 10k was 6:46, which equates to a 10k time of 42:02. So in theory, without even needing to actually improve, I should be able to hit my bronze target. If I trust Strava, that is.

Of course, the crux of the matter is that there is a reason my 10k PB has got to stale. Yes, partly it is because I keep getting ill or injured. But it is also because I just haven’t run any flat, road 10k courses since that 2015 Battle of Sedgemoor race. This summer, I’m aiming to remedy that. The Chard Flyer has 474 feet of elevation, Crewkerne has 607 feet. The first of my ‘target’ races is the Wessex 10k, 215 feet, on 3 August. The second will be the Taunton 10k, 157 feet, on (provisionally) 29 September. If I don’t pull it off at either of them, I have my eye on some back-up races in November.

I have targets. I have races. All I need now is training. In the past, I’ve trusted to Pete Pfitzinger’s Faster Road Racing. But with an eight-week training window for the Wessex 10k, I simply don’t have the base mileage to be able to adapt his plans easily. So instead, I’m going to use a combination of his ideas, my knowledge, and some other stuff I’ve read, to come up with something suitable. Assuming that I’ve got my mileage up to a decent level during this first eight weeks, then I should be able to use an adaptation of Pfitzinger’s plan for the second eight weeks.

There we go. Sub-40 in either August, September or November. No worries.

Training: Weeks 5 & 6

by Ben

Oh boy, what a couple of weeks. As I mentioned in my last training update, my race addiction can cause quite a few issues for my training, and this was never more evident than in the last fourteen days. When I opted to train to improve my 10k time, rather than my half-marathon time, it was a two-pronged decision. Part of it was the desire to have a really good go at the distance that I just hadn’t focused on last year. The other was the vague idea that 10k training would be less intense, at a time when I had a small baby to look after, and a wife looking to get back into exercise routines herself.

What a clanger.

Had I actually looked at the 10k plan I was aiming to follow, or in fact engaged my brain and thought about things, I’d have realised that 10k training more or less followed the same pattern as the HM training I’d done, but included more speed-work. So in essence, similar mileage, but more hard workouts. So, basically, at least as hard, if not actually slightly harder. Anyway, less about my stupid decisions, and more about… well… my other stupid decisions:

Week 5, coming off the back of a recovery week was meant to start with a general aerobic run with hill sprints and 100m strides on the Tuesday, before the traditional endurance run the next day. And so, we reached the first issue. The Haselbury Trail 10k, a Wednesday night race. As is now traditional, the speed-work was cancelled, and replaced with a seven-mile meander along a route inspired by the Hurtle, one of the races that our club puts on. I hadn’t really felt like running at all, but was happy enough that I’d managed to get a run done, and that it was pretty close to the right distance.

I’ve written plenty about the Haselbury Trail in the race report blog post, but in summary, I was really happy with it. Despite some awful conditions, I ran my quickest time on the course, and even managed to add some distance before and after the run to make the day up to nine miles in total, keeping me on track for my weekly mileage target.

Unfortunately, despite my good start to the week, the tail-end was subject to more disruption – we were heading up to London to watch the athletics on Friday evening, so my Friday speed-work (5 x 1000m) was not going to happen. So, still aching from my race, I headed out early on Friday for a gentle 3.5 mile run around the river and canal, which was a pretty ‘nothing’ run. We then spent the rest of Friday clocking up more and more steps; we had to stand for most of the train journey to London, and then walked from Piccadilly Circus to our hotel in Tower Hill. We then turned out to be in the very back row at the athletics, and so built up even more steps going up and down the stairs to our seats and back a few times. Then, after watching Mo win the 10,000m (Go Mo!) we got back to our hotel room after 11 (late for us).

Just a casual 26:49 10k…

All of this was great preparation for Mile End parkrun – in the absence of my intervals the day before, I decided that it would be a good idea to make this an ‘effort’ parkrun. I clocked 19:44; my second-fastest parkrun time ever, on a slightly undulating course; you can read more about it here. I was really happy with my time, and although it didn’t serve quite the same training purpose as the planned intervals, I felt good about getting a quicker workout in.

Sunday’s long run was an opportunity to run on a few roads that I hadn’t explored before to the east of Taunton – I find solitary long runs pretty tough at times, and so I like to find ways to motivate myself and keep myself distracted – in this case it was expanding my VeloViewer ‘largest square’. Basically, every map grid that you run in is highlighted, so I was exploring some new squares! It’s a bit sad and geeky, but it keeps me interested! The run itself was 11.7 miles at 8:34 min/mi, a decent but not spectacular run.

My VeloViewer square.

Week 5: Target 37 mi, actual 36 mi

Another week, another race to mess with the plan! It was back to the Yeovilton 5k in Week 6. In Week 2, I’d ran 19:46, which had given me a big mental boost, and I was hoping for another this time around. My head wasn’t really in the game to start the week though, and my Tuesday run ended up being a very late evening plod around at 9:19 min/mi. I think the combined efforts of the Haselbury Trail and Mile End parkrun had really worn me out. With that in mind, I was really struggling with whether to go to the Yeovilton race. I was down on my weekly mileage, and doing the 5k race would only make that worse. I ummm-ed and I ahhh-ed, and I made and re-made the decision a few times before ultimately deciding to go.

I’m glad I did. As I knew, my weekly mileage suffered, but I ran 19:17, only four seconds slower than my PB set last September. The race gave me great confidence for how my training is going. I managed to tag on a decent length warm-up and cool down to minimise the damage to my weekly target.

Bizarrely, considering that I was feeling wiped out after so many race efforts, I opted to stick with my lactate threshold run on the Friday – cruise intervals; 12 mins/12 mins/10 mins at 6:40/6:40/6:38 pace. As I did for most of last year, I ran this along the canal, and was really happy with the effort I managed after a tough period of training. A gentle recovery run on Saturday evening was followed the next morning by a 12.3 mile long run with the club. I didn’t feel up for a solitary long run, so took the opportunity to do our club’s regular Sunday run. Although the pace wasn’t quite what I’d have done on my own, I didn’t regret the decision at all – it was lovely to be able to chat to friends all the way around, and made the distance feel like nothing at all.

A decent lactate threshold workout.

Week 6: Target 39 mi, actual 37.2 mi

I was disappointed to be short on mileage both weeks, but given that I had races both weeks, and some other disruptions too, I’m not too bothered in all honesty. My training is clearly heading in the right direction; both the races and the speed sessions show me this. Six weeks marks halfway through the plan, and the second half is much less congested – I’ve got a 10k race on Sunday of week 8, but that coincides with a planned 5k tune-up race, so not too much tweaking should be needed, and then the next Yeovilton race will be in week 10 or 11. I’m hoping to be able to get in a lot more of the planned speed workouts, and hopefully with less alterations, my body will benefit from the planned rest and recovery periods!

Acquiring focus, a training update

by Ben

After a few races catch-ups, it’s probably time I focused on my training; what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and whether it is working. As I’ve mentioned a few times in my race reports, despite Lolly doing all the hard work, the arrival of our second child had quite a detrimental effect on my running. This wasn’t helped by a sinus infection that I caught around the same time. The two combined meant that after a pretty decent March, in which I ran 100 miles and set competitive times in both The Big Cheese and the Butleigh MT 10k, April was pretty awful: eight runs, for a total distance of 40 miles.

May and June were both huge improvements, with me finishing just short of 100 miles both months, but I was getting a bit demoralised by my slower race times. The 20:48 at Yeovilton in May was particularly difficult to take, despite the fact that I had known I was going to be off the pace. There are excuses I can tag to some of them as well; Wells and the Steeplechase were both on hot days, the Quantock Beast came at the end of a week when I’d been a bit off-colour anyway. Despite this, and the fact that I knew my pace would come back with time and training, I felt I needed some more structure to my running.

So, I turned back to the source of last year’s improvements: Pfitzinger and Latter’s Faster Road Running. After a bit of deliberation, I opted to follow a 10k plan. My 10k PB is serious lagging behind my 5k and HM efforts, and sub-40 is my next major milestone after doing a sub-20 5k and sub-90 HM last year. (A sub-19 5k is also a target, but that’ll come off training for some further.)

After some further deliberation, I set the Taunton 10k as my target race. It isn’t the flattest, and it certainly isn’t the biggest, but it’s all on road, I’ve set a PB there before, and it worked out around the right time. With this in mind, my first week of training (as last year) was meant to be the week after the Quantock Beast. However, my body disagreed! I opted that week to concentrate on getting the distance in, but not worrying too much about pace. To that end, I ran a 5 mile recovery run on the Tuesday, at around 9 minute miles and 6 miles the next day, at 9 and a half minute miles. I went off road towards the end of the week, taking in a lumpy 5 miles along the coast path on Friday, before a 12.5-mile loop of the Herepath on the Sunday.

Week 1: Target 30 mi, actual 29.1 mi

I was feeling pretty good after that week, despite the hilly end to it, and the second week should have provided the perfect opportunity to hit my planned workouts and get going properly. Except for my race addiction. This is (my wife tells me) a problem (she says this with glances at our credit card statement, our busy calendar and our neglected children). I have to admit, it’s hard to disagree: running a race in the middle of a training plan is a pretty surefire way to mess up the training plan. Of course, the fact we were going on holiday on the Friday was also pretty awkward.

Holiday running: pretty, but an organisational nightmare!

As a result: another week of rearranged and mangled training. My 5k race on the Wednesday showed things were heading in the right direction, at least, while a parkrun (in place of a speed session the day before) provided another opportunity to confirm my pace. Despite being in the New Forest, I managed to get out for 11 miles on the morning of my birthday. Although the speed workouts are important for increasing my pace, the longer runs are one of my focuses throughout this plan, as I did very few of them in the first half of the year.

Week 2: Target 32 mi, actual 32.4 mi

All the food! (A dinosaur birthday cake!)

The third week in, and for the first time, I was able to run pretty close to the plan. I found a nice track in the New Forest to do some point-to-point intervals along, and ran a 200m repeat session. Or at least, a “roughly 200m” repeat session. I gauged this off a combination of the number of paces I’d taken and the amount of time it took me to run, and then marked it with a fallen branch. It was tough, as my Wednesday endurance run title suggested: “I’ve eaten too much food this week to run properly…”

We travelled back on the Thursday, but the weather was absolutely awful on the Friday, so despite some initial resolutions to actually do my planned lactate threshold run, I didn’t get out. (Those who followed my training plan for the Bristol Half Marathon last year will recall that lactate threshold runs have a tendency to be… ummm… missed.) I was eager to get something akin to the planned session in though, so went to Longrun Meadow parkrun on the Saturday. The planned session was 10 min / 10 min / 8 min at pace with 3 min jog breaks. I decided that a 21 min parkrun with a 4 min break and then 8 min effort would simulate a similar session. I got the 21 min parkrun pretty much bang on, but then ended up chatting for too long, and so had too long of a break before my second effort. But still, overall my pace was where I wanted it, so no big deal. I finished the week with a relatively speedy 11 mile long run, averaging under 8 min/mile.

Week 3: Target 34 mi, actual 34.3 mi

Unfortunately, the side effect of moving my Friday speed-work to Saturday and running a quick long run on the Sunday was that I started week four feeling pretty knackered. It was advertised as a recovery week (my favourite) but began with another set of 2 x (4 x 200) on the Tuesday. Again, this was estimated distances marked in the gravel, but it went pretty well (which means I probably under-marked the distance!) I ran with the club on Wednesday, stepping down a group for an easier run, though I got a bit carried away towards the end with some hill sprints…

I’d over-egged my overall distance on both Tuesday and Wednesday, so I went for a much shorter than planned run on Friday, taking my daughter in the buggy with me to help control my pace. To be honest, looking back at this week, I probably should have been taking things far easier. The whole point of a recovery week is to give your body a bit of a reset for the training ahead, and I think the hill sprints and extra distance in the first half of the week really prevented that from happening too much. My Friday run, while short, should probably have been slower still, especially given that I had the buggy. My Sunday run was okay, but again, should probably have been slower.

Week 4: Target 30 mi, actual 30.2 mi

Overall I have to be happy with pretty much hitting all my weekly mileage targets. The training was pretty disrupted in terms of the specific workouts, but hopefully that will improve in the second half of the plan. Either way, improvements are obvious, and maybe, just maybe, a sub-40 is possible.