Category Archives: Training

Ben’s training diary: w/c 4 February 2019

by Ben

This week was always going to be tough. Lolly was away from home for two nights, Tuesday and Wednesday, and also had her Coaching in Running Fitness course over the weekend, meaning that I had sole parental responsibility for the kids for a fair chunk of the week. Given that I’d built my mileage back quite quickly, this seemed like an ideal week to ease off a little bit and take a “recovery week”.

Tuesday: Seaton coast path

I had meant to get out for a run on Monday, but it just didn’t happen for a variety of reasons. Knowing that Lolly was leaving early Tuesday evening, this only left me with Tuesday, otherwise I’d have to wait until Thursday evening. Even on a lower-mileage week, that would be a bit late for my first run of the week!

This one really did push things fine. Work went on a bit longer than expected, but I managed to get changed and out for four miles out and back along the coast from Seaton. I didn’t really have time for anything more – sure, I could have squeezed an extra mile in if I’d stuck to the roads, but where’s the joy in that?! Conditions were pretty awful, the ground was really wet and slippery after the snow at the weekend, and it was lightly raining and misty, so visibility was bad too! The first and last kilometre of this run were on road, which might be part of the reason I managed a 9:08/mile average pace, though I’m honestly surprised to see that even my slowest mile was 9:42, which given the mud… I’m very happy with!

The views were… well, actually, the views weren’t.

Friday: Five miles general aerobic

This was just one of those runs where things just didn’t feel quite right. I can’t really pinpoint exactly what it was. I had an ulcer on the edge of my tongue which was very painful, and I possibly hadn’t eaten or drunk as much as I should have done. It also affected my breathing slightly, so maybe I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Or maybe it was something else completely. But it just wasn’t great. I’d initially planned to go out at a decent pace, probably slightly sub-8:00/mile, and then push harder in the middle for a Strava segment effort. (Not for CR, which I’d have had no chance at, just because it was a good excuse for a ‘push’ in the middle of my run.

All those plans went out the window after the first mile; I’d just about managed 8:20, and thereafter continuing at around 9:10/mile felt tough enough. I still managed the five miles that I’d planned though, so no major issues.

Sunday: Seven miles ‘long’

Once Lolly was back from her course, I headed pretty much straight out for my last run of the week. Given that it was Sunday evening and we hadn’t had dinner yet, I couldn’t go too long, so I settled on “6 to 8 miles”. I hadn’t planned a route at all, so figured I’d just work it out as I went along. My first mile was the quickest, an 8:39, but after that I settled into the 8:50 to 9:05 range pretty comfortably. I ended up doing 7.11 miles, so pretty much smack in the middle of my target. Nothing too interesting about this run!

Weekly summary

The week went more or less as I’d expected. With everything going on, it was tough to find much time to get out for runs, but I managed to do three, and I clocked up 16 miles, which is sufficient for a “recovery week” style plan. I’d have been happier if I’d been closer to 20 miles, but I can’t be silly about it.

Next week, the plan is to get the mileage back up towards 30 miles, and hopefully incorporate the Street 5k on Wednesday as a bit of a time-trial to see where I’m at. It is far from my favourite race, as a five-lapper with sharp right-angle bends, but I’m pretty eager to see how I’m doing.

Ben’s training diary: w/c 28 January 2019

by Ben

So last week, I set myself a couple of targets to try and prevent myself from feeling so under pressure as I had done:

Get out for a run on a Monday or Tuesday.
Have a training plan coming into the week, rather than just making things up ad hoc.

I’ll approach these in reverse order: I did not have a training plan for the week; I pretty much just made things up ad hoc. Sure, I had some vague ideas about how I might manage to hit 25 miles for the week, but nothing specific. On the other hand, I did manage to get out for a run on Monday or Tuesday. So, mini-yay!

Tuesday: RFRC Trail Run

These days I probably run more with Minehead RC than with Running Forever RC, despite the latter being my first-claim club. So it was nice to be able to pop across town to catch up with some of my RFRC club-mates, and head out on a head-torch trail run. This is only the second completely night run that I’ve done with the club, but unlike when I do it alone (when it seems eerie and weird), I mostly just forget that it’s actually dark at all. The effect of group running is miraculous sometimes!

We headed out on a very muddy and slippery route that headed over Cotlake Hill, one of my favourite local routes. I had a few good chats with various people, and enjoyed the route, though I couldn’t have really told you where we were most of the time in the dark! We clocked up just under six miles in just over an hour, which is a pretty good pace for the group at night. For me, I wasn’t at all fussed about pace on the run, just getting some miles in early in the week: mission accomplished.

Thursday: 5.8 miles ‘steady’

This should really have been a gentler run, but with an amber weather warning in place for snow and ice, which was apparently due to come in at 17:00, I needed to get a wriggle on as I went out at quarter past four. This was a bit of a stupid run – not that I was running in an amber weather warning, but that I had decided to run out on country roads in the foothills of the Quantocks during an amber weather warning. It was lightly snowing as I ran, and had it been heavier, I could have been in a bit of trouble getting back, especially as I was just wearing road shoes. But anyway…

This was a pretty decent paced run. I covered the 5.8 miles at a pace of 8:10 per mile on average, with a couple of ‘grade adjusted paces’ of 7:47 and 7:22 for miles two and three. I can’t really complain about too much on this one; I felt pretty good.

Saturday: Killerton parkrun

I wrote about this in another blog post, but as usual, I’ll address my performance a bit more closely. Having not run at Killerton in over four years, I couldn’t really remember too much about the course (except that it was mostly off-road, and was a net-downhill). I shot off far too fast early on, but then settled in with a small group, which helped me to control my pace for pretty much the whole rest of the run. Despite the snow and ice, conditions weren’t too bad to run in. There were a few icy puddles to negotiate in a couple of sections of the course, but otherwise the weather had mostly firmed the ground up a little.

A sprinkling of snow remained, though it was a bit more than that in a couple of places!

I never pushed myself too hard during the run, but I did stretch my legs a little bit more towards the end, managing to pass another runner in the last field, and then keep ahead as we approached the finish. I beat my previous time at Killerton by 16 seconds, and comparing my two Strava records, it looks like most of that was in the first kilometre; my splits for kilometres two, three and four are practically identical.

I was chuffed to equal my time from Penrose parkrun on New Year’s Day of 21:21. Penrose is pretty much a flat road course, so to achieve the same time off-road (even bearing in mind the net-downhill) is a good achievement.

After finishing the run, I headed around as part of a group of six for a cool down loop of the whole course again. The pace was a fair bit quicker than I would have run for a cool down, coming in at 7:44 per mile, but it was just nice to have company (and people who knew the route). The mileage was pretty necessary, as while I’d got out a couple of times in the week, I knew that I was a little behind target again.

Sunday: MRC Relay Leg One Recce

After running with organised recces of leg three (which I’m not running) and leg two (which I’m not running), and going out on my own for an out-and-back run of half of leg one, it was good to get a proper recce of the route done. I feel like I’ve got the second half of the route, which I’ve now run twice forwards and once backwards, settled pretty well. I want to run the first half, or at least the part getting out of Minehead, again if I can, just so that I’m confident on the day.

The run itself was done at a pretty chatty pace. Seven of us started, and we met Nigel about halfway along to take us up to eight. It was nice to get a bit of clarity on a couple of parts of the route, where people had gone different ways on different recces, but mostly just good to run and chat. We did 8.2 miles at a moving pace of 9:53 per mile (or 11:53 per mile overall), but as with the other group run earlier in the week, this wasn’t about the pace.

Weekly summary

I was really pleased with this week overall. Two of the runs were very gentle paces, but that’s really not a problem at the moment. The other two both pushed the pace on a little bit more, particularly the parkrun, and show that I’m progressing. Running is starting to become a habit again.

Amazingly, this January has become my highest mileage January ever, just surpassing 2014. I ran over 90 miles, and feel like I should have done more. I think this shows two things: firstly, I’ve actually done pretty well and getting back running again, and should be able to press on nicely through February and March. Secondly, I’ve been putting myself under way too much pressure, feeling like I haven’t done enough. I need to seriously consider giving myself a bit more of a break: both mentally and physically. A recovery week is probably well needed before I introduce too much speed work.

Ben’s training diary: w/c 21 January 2019

by Ben

After only managing 14 miles and 16 miles in each of the previous two weeks because of a cold, I was pretty eager to get back up to the 25 mile figure that I have been carrying around in my head. I didn’t really have much planned for the week, other than a long day away from home on the Friday.

Wednesday: 7 miles along the Tarka Trail

Although technically coast path, the trail runs along the River Taw for this stretch.

I didn’t really manage to get myself going early in the week. Having run Thursday, Saturday, Sunday the previous week, I didn’t want to be out again on Monday, but I could really have done with a run on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage it while I was at work, and then the cold rain put me off at home. This then started to put the pressure onto me to get something done on Wednesday. Thankfully, I finished work early enough to be able to get out for a run while I was out and about. As I was working in Barnstaple, I opted to get along to the Tarka Trail. I had previously run part of this out-and-back from Barnstaple to Fremington, so this time I drove out to Fremington (about 15 minutes) and ran from there.

This section of the Tarka Trail is an old railway line, and as a result it’s pretty pancake flat. Across the whole 7.33 miles, Strava reckons I did 37 feet of climbing! The terrain is all very easy going too – in fact, I should have been wearing proper road shoes, rather than my inov-8 Parkclaws. That poor shoe choice meant that I had sore soles by the end of the run, but no real harm done. I was feeling pretty good on the run, and managed a pretty decent pace, averaging 8:04 per mile, and being pretty consistent throughout.

Wooo wooo! (Everyone makes train noises through tunnels, right? Right?!

I enjoyed this run, and I enjoyed pushing on a little faster again than I’ve been recently. On the one hand though, I need to be careful to keep most of my runs at a gentler pace for a while, as I build back to base mileage, but on the other hand, I do need to start pushing myself.

This was also part of the coast path, and so works towards my very long-term goal of running the entire South West Coast Path. Yay.

Friday: Moors Valley Forest Trail

After not running again on Thursday, I was really feeling under pressure to run on Friday. My brother and his wife were coming to visit us, and I had a horrible day planned on Southampton and Ringwood, so I wasn’t sure whether I would manage anything. Thankfully, I managed to leave early, and the work wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, so I was able to sneak over to Moors Valley Country Park (much to the annoyance of Lolly), which is one of the best places to run.

Another train related image – the miniature railway at Moors Valley. It wasn’t running on a school day in January…

I decided to head off in a different direction to my previous runs in the park, and explored the lakes and ‘forest trail’. The place never disappoints, and it was another lovely little run. Unfortunately, the emphasis was rather on the ‘little’. Having not planned the run, it ended up coming in at 3.2 miles, which was probably a little bit shorter than I would have liked in terms of accumulation for my weekly total. But… I did need to rush back, so I couldn’t really faff about adding more on.

Saturday: Henstridge Airfield parkrun

I’ve mostly written about this in another blog post, but for the purposes of my personal running, this wasn’t that significant. I ‘ran’ the 5 km with Lani at a pace of 14:16 per mile. Great for her, but not particularly relevant training for me. I had intended to head back out for a couple of miles immediately after, but didn’t. Enough said.

Sunday: 10 mile long run

It’s more or less the theme of the week, but I felt under real pressure to get the miles in on Sunday. It was also the theme of the week that I didn’t just knuckle down and get it done early. I didn’t end up going out until almost three in the afternoon.

But, in the end, it was a pretty positive run. I clocked up 10.6 miles on a variety of terrains, and ticked my ‘novelty’ box with a new area explored around Knapp. The combination of wet, muddy fields alongside a fair bit of road running meant my shoe choice was inevitably going to be wrong in at least one part of the run, but it was great to be able to get out on some decent trails without having to go for a drive. I always forget that I can actually do that! As you’d expect, my pace was a bit all over the place, but I averaged 8:53, which given how muddy some parts were, seems pretty quick for a long run.

The sun sets on a good week on the trails…

Speaking of a long run, this was the first time since 15 July 2018 that I’ve run 10 miles or more. So that’s a nice little boost.

Weekly summary

Okay, first up: I don’t want to put myself under this much pressure too many more times. As a result, I need to make two main changes going forwards:

Get out for a run on a Monday or Tuesday.
Have a training plan coming into the week, rather than just making things up ad hoc.

Other than that issue, the running I did this week was all pretty good. I ended up hitting 24.3 miles for the week (including the parkrun). In general, things were a little quicker than they have been so far. This is good and promising, but I do need to be careful not to overstretch myself and risk injury. The most important thing I can do is get running and keep running. Over the last five years I’ve not improve anywhere near as much as I would have liked, and the single most significant reason for this is a lack of consistent training due to injury and illness. I generally train well and train hard when I am training, but all to often, I’m not training at all.

Ben’s training diary: w/c 14 January 2019

by Ben

Unsurprisingly, after picking up a cold last week, this was another slightly curtailed week. I didn’t manage to get out at all until Thursday, and I wasn’t sure what I would manage. Obviously, with this sort of week, any grand targets get thrown out of the window, and it’s just about doing what I can, and what feels like it isn’t stupid and likely to plunge me back into the depths of illness.

Oh, and you might notice that I’ve flipped back into miles. My attempts to convert to kilometres lasted two weeks, before I realised that I was having to reverse engineer everything into miles to figure out if it was the right pace / distance etc. It wasn’t worth it. I will still use kilometre distances and paces sometimes for 5k and 10k races and training, but by-and-large, I’m back to good old imperial.

Thursday: General aerobic

‘General aerobic’ is mostly just a posh way of saying ‘just a run’. It’s a pace generally between ‘steady-state’ running and ‘recovery’, but overlapping with each. Some people call these sort of runs ‘trash’ miles, but they do serve a specific purpose, particularly for me at the moment. They do not (normally) have a specific running benefit, but they do help to improve and maintain fitness. For me at the moment, building up my mileage and fitness, this is the main sort of run that I need to be doing. Tempo and speed work will come later, as will the long runs. I don’t need to be doing recovery runs as I’m not pushing myself hard enough to need that recovery time. Now, I just need to be out and running.

The run itself? A 2.7-mile effort around Taunton. I kept a pretty even pace, slowing slightly after my first mile to come in at 9:00 min/mile, which is relatively similar to most of my road running lately. While it’s fine for what I’m doing at the moment, I need to make sure that I ratchet things up once I’m up to distance and training properly: it would be so easy to settle into this pace.

Saturday: General aerobic (eventually)

Saturday was a weird day. We chose not to do any parkrun tourism so that we could focus on a few house chores. Lolly did manage to run a decent time at Burnham & Highbridge parkrun in the morning though. I was actually pretty motivated to get out and run a recce of my leg of the Minehead to Bishops Lydeard relay. In the last few weeks I’ve been out with the club doing some of the other legs, but I hadn’t actually run any of my own. But anyway, despite feeling pretty motivated to do it, I didn’t, and it started to get dark.

Thankfully, I did manage to get out (and not completely waste the day) for some miles around Taunton. I do struggle with these runs around town. When they are just ‘steady’, ‘general aerobic’ or ‘recovery’ runs, I find it hard to motivate myself. For a while now I’ve tried to run in new places to keep myself interested. That’s becoming increasingly hard around Taunton itself, but I incorporated a road that I’ve long meant to run on during this run; Hyde Lane, which goes past the rugby club. It was nothing particularly exciting, but it’s just nice to go somewhere different. If only for a mile!

Hyde Lane – not that exciting maybe, but it was something new!

Overall, this run ended up being six miles at an 8:48 min/mile pace.

Sunday: M2BL Leg One Recce

A day late (and a dollar short?) I managed to get myself out to try part of my relay route. As I was doing it on my own, I had to run it out-and-back, so didn’t fancy trying the whole 8.5-mile route for a 17-mile round trip! I drove up to Blue Anchor, where I parked on the seafront, before following my trusty OS Map App. I’d previously plotted my leg as a route, and downloaded the maps onto my phone so that they would work even if I had no phone signal. Thusly armed, I headed off into the unknown.

I was only half a mile into the run when I came across a pair of runners looking at their (paper) OS Map, along with their son on a bicycle. It turned out that they (the Shortens) were also running the route, and were trying to work out how to get through the farm. I (semi-)confidently led the way through, guided by my app. They suggested that I could run on, but I was in no hurry (sorry Lolly), so opted to stick with them for some company.

Through the farm, across the field, and we joined ‘Black Monkey Lane’. Which turned into a river. Okay, not so bad as the one that we had in leg three, but still – wet feet. Thanks Nigel! (Okay, it’s fun, I admit.) A bit of road, then some more fields to navigate, and then a long drag up the tricky Forche’s Lane to the changeover point. At this point the Shortens jumped into their car to head off, while I had the 3.9 miles to repeat in reverse.

This bit had a path beside the water, but for a decent stretch, there was no choice but to run through it!

More confident of the route (and running predominantly downhill) I was able to get along a bit quicker on the way back. This was a nice varied trail route, and one that I’d never have done if not for the relay. I want to try the route a couple more times before the day, and at least once do the whole lot in one go, but for a first run out, this was pretty good I think.

Weekly summary

Given that I didn’t manage to get out at all until Thursday, getting 16 miles in was a decent achievement. It was a relief to finally recce my section of the relay. Hopefully, with my cold out of the way, I can build my mileage back over 25 miles next week. Beyond that, there’s little to comment on!

Ben’s training diary: w/c 7 January 2019

by Ben

Last week, I discussed wanting to increase my mileage up to 40-50 km per week by the end of January. Typically then, this week I developed a cold. But, such is winter with two young children!

The week was disrupted somewhat as I was working away from home Tuesday – Wednesday – Thursday, but as I’ve done before, I managed to work my way around it, and arranged to join the City of Salisbury Athletics and Running Club for their Wednesday night club run.

Wednesday: 10 km with CoSARC

In fact, that Wednesday night run ended up being my first of the week. I’d intended to run on the Tuesday night, when I arrived at my Salisbury hotel, but I ended up getting in so late that I basically just ate and went to bed.

I arrived at the Five Rivers Leisure Centre with plenty of time to spare, and was impressed with the organisation – everyone had to sign in, and note down which group they were running with. There was a box to later tick to say you’d returned. This wasn’t something I’d come across before, but definitely seems like a very good idea.

I’d looked up beforehand, and decided to run with their group 6, doing roughly 6.5 miles (just over 10 km) at 9 min/mile. The joy of running with a group in a strange place is being able to simply run, rather than spend the entire time checking where you are, where you have to turn next, and generally just getting a bit stressed. Of course, it was somewhat typical that the first thing we did was run straight from the leisure centre to my hotel; one bit of road that I did know!

It was a nice run – I really don’t know the area well enough to be able to comment much on where we went, but I did notice when we ran through the park that hosts Salisbury parkrun, which we did way back in 2016. I ran mostly alone for the first half of our run, just listening to various conversations, before having a good natter for the second half of the run. Our pace was a smidgen faster than advertised, averaging 5:30 per kilometre (8:50 per mile) for 10.6 km.

Thank you very much to all involved with CoSARC for letting me run with you.

Thursday: General aerobic

When I got back on Thursday, I was more or less straight back out of the door for this run. It was a bit chilly, but I needed the miles. Nothing exciting, just a 7 km run around Taunton at a relatively steady pace; 5:30 per kilometre average again, with no single kilometre faster than 5:21 or slower than 5:40.

Bright winter clothing – though I really want to get something more reflective for winter road running.

Saturday: Thornbury parkrun

I wrote a full report in another blog post, so as usual, I’ll just discuss my actual run. This was a tough course with a buggy. I took it relatively easy for the first lap, but was constantly easing my way through the field, having started at the back. There were obviously points where I was able to make better progress (downhill, on tarmac) and places where I made less (uphill, on grass, narrow bits). and so the pace bounced up and down a little bit throughout the run. I pretty much ran negative splits throughout though; especially if you consider the grade-adjusted pace: 5:35, 5:24, 5:06, 5:01, 4:56. A time of 26:25 with the buggy is nothing to be scoffed at; it’s quicker than I did Weymouth, Barnstaple, Plymvalley, Shepton Mallet or Exeter Riverside. And obviously quicker than Mount Edgcumbe!

Weekly summary

My cold, which started to come through on Friday evening, nearly stopped us going to Thornbury parkrun: I’m bad enough in the mornings, and waking up with the start of a cold didn’t help. But I made the decision that if I was going to get a cold, I might as well run while i could, as it wasn’t going to make things much worse. I’m glad we did, especially as I then wasn’t able to run on Sunday due to being too thick with cold, and just plain wiped out. So for the week overall, I did 22.7 km, which was well under the 38.8 that I’d hit last week. Still, it was three decent runs, and I’m now up to five weeks of more regular running. Hopefully I can shake off the worst of this cold over the next couple of days, and get some more mileage in this week, but in all honesty, I’m not going to force things.

Ben’s training diary: w/c 31 December 2018

by Ben

Training diary might be something of an exaggeration – on both counts. My ‘plan’ at the moment is to spend most of January just getting back into a pattern and rhythm with running, building my mileage back to a decent base. Only once since my marathon back in July have I run anything approaching a decent weekly mileage. In reality, primarily due to illness, I’ve simply not run during that time.

My aims for January are to build up to a 40-50 km weekly mileage consistently, ideally with a long run in the region of 16 km. Although I’m not planning on focusing on my speed, I would expect my 5 km times to come down towards 20 minutes naturally just through improvement to my general fitness.

Tuesday: parkrun double

Lolly blogged here about our parkrun double, so here I will focus more on my personal effort. I planned ahead to push during the first of the two; Penrose. The course is a mostly flat out-and-back, and I figured I could set a relatively representation time on it. I got caught up in congestion early on during the run, but cleared it to set 4:31 for the first kilometre. The second kilometre was the most consistent in terms of pace, and was nicely quicker too; a 4:14. A small climb at the turnaround point slowed me down a little in the third, but I was cracking along quicker than I’d expected irrespective; 4:24. The second half was a slog; I’d predicted to my brother before the run that I might be around 23 minutes; it was pretty clear that I’d be sub-22. In the end, I held on for a 21:21, which clearly significantly exceeded my expectations.

On the other hand, I was a little worried that I had destroyed myself for the second run. I jogged back along the course to run in with my sister, who was running her first ever parkrun, and this nicely acted as a cool down for me.

After a 20 minute drive, we arrived in Heartlands with around half an hour to spare. I had every intention to take it easy and jog around in something like 24 minutes. It’s fair to say that those plans fled out the window pretty early, when I hared off along with the front pack. I really enjoyed the course, which was fun as it twisted and turned through the gardens. My pace throughout the run was more consistent than earlier; registering 4:12, 4:16, 4:12, 4:16 before a drop to 4:31 for the final kilometre. Not a surprise really! Still, I was pretty chuffed with another sub-22 finish; 21:44. In fact, Strava suggests that my pace was quicker at Heartlands than Penrose, but the distance discrepancies resulted in a slower time. If I put those two times together (and it’s clearly not this simple) I’d be delighted with a time of 43:05 for a 10k!

Thursday: General aerobic

Weirdly, this was my biggest success of the week: getting out for “just a run”. If I want to get back to decent weekly mileage, then I need to be able to just go out and run, particularly for these first few weeks. I’d originally hoped to be able to get out and run somewhere more interesting – maybe the Camel Trail near Wadebridge where I was working. Unfortunately, work took longer than I’d hoped, and by the time I really had a chance to run, it would have been too dark, so I just headed home for a plod around Taunton. Nothing much to report, but I did gently speed up as I went along, and averaged 5:25 per kilometre for just over six kilometres.

Saturday: Woolacombe Dunes parkrun

With some childcare at home (thanks in-laws!) we were able to get out and about. We targeted Woolacombe Dunes, as it looked like one that we wouldn’t be able to run with the buggies (confirmed). It was a tough course – I’d put it as the toughest parkrun course that I’ve done, harder than any of Lanhydrock, Parke or Mount Edgcumbe. Again Lolly has blogged about this one, so I won’t go into too much detail on the course, and rather focus on my run. After a 1.6 km warm-up (ahem, it’s a slow transition from imperial to metric), I was just about able to change my shoes in time for the start.

The beach didn’t feel that bad to run on, but it noticeably slowed me down.

A downhill start played into my hands, and after the first kilometre I was still running with the leaders after posting a 3:54 opening kilometre. The sand dunes were hard work, followed by the beach itself, which slowed me to 4:44 and 4:41 for the next two kilometres. It go slower yet as we climbed back up the dunes to get off the beach, and then continued to climb back towards the start/finish. This was compounded by another descent, which was fun, but of course added to the climb! 5:41 and 5:37 for the final two kilometres reflected both the hills and my fitness by this stage of the week! A time of 24:55 doesn’t look like anything special on paper, but I’m happy that I couldn’t have gone much faster on the day.

Sunday: Minehead RC M2BL Leg 2 Recce Run

Snappy title, eh? Each year Minehead RC put on a club relay. I ran it last year, and blogged about it. In the couple of months leading up to the relay, there are a number of club-organised (or semi-organised) recce runs. Although I’m not running leg 2 myself, it’s nice to get out with others, particularly to see routes I haven’t done before, so I was happy to get along to this run. (It would probably be good to recce my own route at some stage though…)

My legs were pretty broken after four hard effort parkruns in the last week and a bit (dating back to Trelissick parkrun last Saturday) and it was a pretty hilly route. My legs weren’t helped by the fact that I opted to run most of the route at the front with Matt, pushing myself more than necessary! It was a lovely off-road route with some good company, and better still for being further than I’d expected, giving me a nice 13 km distance.

Weekly summary

This week generally exceeded my expectations. I ran the parkruns harder and faster than I thought I would, and I accumulated a much higher total mileage. In fact, if I ran this every week, I’d more or less hit my 2,000 km target for the year. Over the next couple of weeks I intend to stick to much the same. Ease the overall mileage up a little bit, but mostly just keep getting out there and running. I’m working away from home for a couple of nights, which adds its own challenge, but if I can get two midweek runs in, then I’ll be in a good place come the weekend.

Training Diary: 16-29 July

by Lolly

As seems to be typical for me, I don’t have any running goals at the moment. Well, technically, there are a couple of things I’d like to achieve, but they aren’t anything I’m specifically working towards. As Ben keeps telling me, the most important thing right now is to actually run. And I’m hoping that keeping a training diary will help motivate me to do that.

16 – 22 July

Wednesday – RFRC Club Run

I’m pretty sure that the last time I went on a normal club run it was 2015. I went with the combined groups 7 & 8 and hung out at the back in a sweeper-type role. There was a bit of stop/starting on the way out of town, and then some run/walking after one member of the group pulled a muscle, so not my fastest run. But it was nice to run and not need to remember a route. It was also the first time since the Easter Festival 10k that I’d run for an hour, so definite psychological boost.

Saturday – Longrun Meadow parkrun

The ‘getting out of bed’ part of running on a Saturday morning is rarely an issue for me, as I have two playful alarm clocks for that. Mostly it’s making sure that I’m motivated to go out that’s been my downfall of late. Still, I made it out in enough time to walk there, which always helps loosen my legs a bit. It was reasonably cool at the start, but quickly warmed up. Despite that, my gradual improvement in fitness gave me my fastest time on the new course, and a nerve-wracking wait for my result of 29:59.

Sunday – Junior parkrun & Quantocks

Probably the most regular running I do at the moment is the 2k of junior parkrun with my daughter. Often we also have my son in the buggy as well, but this week Ben was around to spectate. The main aim of this particular run is to make running as enjoyable as possible.

Afterwards, we drove up to Lydeard Hill car park. Ben took the kids for a walk and I went for a run to Wills Neck and back. I was really tired so it was tough going, but definitely nice to be running somewhere other than the middle of Taunton. On the way back to the car park I took a detour to try out some different paths, which was fun to be able to do. I always have to be wary of pushing myself too hard when I’m tired, but just under 3 miles turned out to be a pretty good compromise.

23 – 29 July

Oh, there isn’t a day sub-header. Yes, after a week of actually running, a week of no running followed. Illness is the nemesis of all runners. In my case, though, it’s generally other people getting ill that’s the issue, as it steals both my energy and motivation. The main thing is making sure I bounce back. Again.

Snowdonia Trail Marathon: Weeks 3 and 4

by Ben

“The key to improvement is consistency. Much more than any fancy training schedule featuring interval training, tempo runs or hill repeats. Just run day after day, week after week, year after year at a level where you never become injured.”

— Hal Higdon

Sadly, I think Hal probably knows a thing or too about this running malarkey. These two weeks have been anything but consistent. After weeks one and two, in which I was little below my target mileages at 26.1 and 29.9 miles respectively, I was hoping to use my week off in week three to really push on.

Short version

It didn’t happen.

Long version

We flew over to the Isle of Man to visit Lolly’s parents on Monday afternoon, and I was planning a couple of midweek coastal path runs before taking part in the Easter Festival of Running at the weekend. Unfortunately, after not managing much dinner on Monday evening, I had a fever overnight, and then some stomach issues and diarrhoea through until Thursday. So, a whole load of training miles missed. Although I was feeling much better on Friday, I was still pretty weak, and so had to miss the 10k race that evening too. (More on that race in a blog post coming soon from Lolly though.)

My 2015 Peel Hill Race beanie that I never ‘earned’.

On Saturday morning, I reckoned I was feeling up to giving Nobles parkrun a go. Lolly was going anyway, and I figured that I could easily drop out early if I wasn’t as ready for running as I thought. A relatively gentle run of 23:41 was managed without any issues, and I started to ponder the very real possibility of actually being able to run the Peel Hill race. I’d signed up for the race back in 2015, and then not actually raced, as I was concerned about a knee injury. (Although, I did run the 10k that year.) Despite not racing, I still collected my beanie at registration, and have worn it frequently since, something that has always felt a bit odd.

So, it felt like closure when I finally made the decision that I was well enough to race. The race is short and sharp. Very sharp. Despite being just 3.5 miles, the race climbs 691 feet. Starting more or less at sea level, the race goes up the hill, reaching the 475-foot peak at about 1.25 miles. The women’s race turns around at that point, but the men head back down the other side to add another climb. A 1.25-mile downhill sprint to the finish then ensues. This would normally be totally my thing, but unfortunately I was suffering from some kidney pain, and couldn’t really push myself at all. I lost a few places, but managed not to drop off the pace too much, to finish in 29:42.

Photo by Dave Kneen

On Sunday, feeling much better, I headed out along the coastal path for 10 brutal, but gorgeous miles. I clocked up just over 2,100 feet of climbing which, alongside the previous day’s race, destroyed my quads. The route climbed initially to Lhiattee ny Beinnee, which peaks at 988 feet, before dropping all the way back down to sea level at Fleshwick Bay. Before climbing all the way back up to 764 feet for the top of Bradda Hill. And what a climb that is! I was really happy, with both getting a pretty decent long run in, and getting out in the stunning scenery.

Beautiful. Hilly.

The weekend recovered my weekly mileage to 16.7 miles. It could have been a lot worse, and I was looking forward to kicking back on in week four.

Short version

It didn’t happen.

Long version

I got ill, again, and struggled to even make it to work each day. The evenings, rather than consisting of running, involved a nap straight after work, followed by the essentials of sorting the children out, making dinner and preparing for the morning, and then bed, as soon as possible. I was feeling better towards the end of the week, but we travelled down to Cornwall for my brother’s wedding, and I still wasn’t well enough to have energy enough for both the wedding and running!

Hopefully, week five is going to be better…

Snowdonia Trail Marathon: Week 2

by Ben

After a pretty positive week one, despite not hitting 30 miles, I was looking forward to getting some more miles under my belt in week two. The P&D plan introduced some strides into a general aerobic run on the Tuesday, before a midweek 10 miler on Thursday. With my lower mileages at the moment, the latter was never going to happen, but I was keen to try and incorporate the strides into my running.

Tuesday: 7-ish planned. 0 completed.

As Lolly was travelling away with work, and would be away Tuesday and Wednesday evening, I had to either run early Tuesday morning, or fit my run into my workday. I chose the latter: I planned something like a seven mile route based around Brean Down, which I could do after my first job in Weston-super-Mare. Unfortunately, I ended up coming straight home after that job, as we got a call from nursery to say that our little boy had to see a doctor. As it turned out, he was fine, and went back to nursery that afternoon. But my planned run had been ruined.

At this point, I got into my own head. It was still only 13:00. I could easily fit in a run; more or less any run I wanted. I didn’t have to pick the children up from nursery until 17:30. But for some reason, I just couldn’t quite get myself out the door. After my planned route, I decided that anything from home would be too boring. Fine – that shouldn’t be a problem, a 15-20 minute drive can get me to some gorgeous places. But no. Alas, I couldn’t get over myself, and I didn’t run at all.

Wednesday: Tuesday’s run (8 miles)

It’s not trail running, but it’s still scenic enough.

Not running on Tuesday put a lot of pressure on me for Wednesday. If I didn’t manage to get out for a run, then it was unlikely I was going to be able to match the previous week’s mileage, and my main aim, for the first four weeks of the plan, was consistency. Thankfully, I managed to finish work around three, and had none of the previous day’s head issues. I got home, changed and went straight back out for a run along some of the roads at the base of the Quantocks. The route was loosely based on a reverse part of The Humdinger course. Although it was road mileage, it was pretty lumpy and, with the snow around, simply pretty. I averaged just slower than 8:30 per mile, which I was pretty happy with, considering the terrain, and that I wasn’t pushing myself.

Thursday: Getting out on the river (5 miles)

There’s a huge cliche about the first light evening runs, but they are genuinely so uplifting. I managed to use the last bit of light to start my run along the river, before ducking off around some residential estates to get back home. Like the previous day, I was pleased with the pace given that I never really pushed myself. It was a pretty modest 8:12 per mile average, but after so much time on the trails, I’ve got used to paces in the 9s, 10s and even slower. As I mention above, my focus at the moment is on consistent running; getting the miles done week after week, and building to a decent platform. Once at that platform, I’ll switch my focus more to pace. Trying to build mileage and pace at the same time is just a recipe for injury.

Saturday: Longrun Meadow parkrun (5 miles inc run there and home)

Splash splash.

It’s been ages since I’ve run at Longrun Meadow. Over three months in fact. The underfoot conditions were pretty bad, though far from the worse that I’ve run in there. As I was racing the next day, I was intending a relatively gentle run, though ended up going a bit quicker than expected as I ran with a mate. It was good to be back and to socialise with a few people I hadn’t seen for a while. It’s also a pretty (mentally) easy way to get five miles in.

I’ve got out of the habit of parkrun – partly because I was injured for so long, partly because when I was training before it didn’t fit in very well, and partly because I have given Lolly priority for parkruns lately. It’s a habit I’d like to get back into, even if I can’t make it every week these days. I ran 38 parkruns in 2014, 20 in 2015, 36 in 2016 and 18 in 2017. Based on these numbers, I’m due for 34 this year, though that seems unlikely so far!

Sunday: Race day (11.5 miles total)

Climbing through Butleigh Wood.

For a full race report, see my previous post. While the race was important to me, namely for Somerset Series points, I also needed to make sure to top my mileage for the day up to 10 or 11 miles. A one mile warm-up was followed by the Butleigh 10k. The race went pretty well; I was more or less where I expected to be, though I’d have liked to be 30 seconds to a minute quicker. (Always).

Race done, I caught my breath and chatted for a while, before switching from my race vest into a t-shirt, and my trail shoes into road shoes, and then headed off for another four miles. I opted for a simple two miles out, two miles back route, rather than trying anything fancy and getting lost! I found the miles came surprisingly easy, and although I was a bit bored of the flat roads by the end, it was a pretty nice end to a higher mileage day.

Weekly summary: 4 runs, 29.9 miles

So, yeah… If I’d known I was that close to 30 miles, I’d have cleared tacked another 0.1 miles onto my run. But never mind. Overall I’m happy with what I got done this week. I struggled early on, but in the end, I built the mileage nicely from last week, and the race went about as well as I could realistically expect given the current focus of my training. It’d be nice to get out on the trails a bit more, but sometimes life just gets in the way. More races are due to follow next week, with the Isle of Man Easter Festival of Running; a 10k on Good Friday and then a 3.5 mile hill race on the Saturday.

Snowdonia Trail Marathon: Week 1

by Ben

Oh heck.

On 15 July 2018, I’m planning on running my first marathon. And because I’m some sort of an idiot, I decided that a good introduction to 26.2 would be off-road. And involve a mountain.

As usual, I plan to keep track of my training on this blog. I’ve found it useful before to jot down what I’m doing. It keeps me accountable, and helps focus my mind on what my training is achieving. So, some background information to start. My preparation for this training cycle hasn’t been ideal; I’m still trying to get consistent mileage after my ankle injury way back in September. I initially planned to follow the P&D ‘Advanced Marathoning’ low-mileage plan, but it seems too much mileage for me. So at the moment, the plan is to spend four weeks figuring out where I’m at. Which leads me onto my first run…

Monday: 5k time-trial (4.5 miles total)

The P&D plan involved running a lactate threshold on the Tuesday, with the hard section at half marathon pace. But I realised that I had no idea what my current half marathon pace even is. My only fast efforts recently have been the Hills to Coast Relay and the Babcary 7.5, neither of which were really suitable for gauging my true pace. So I decided to make use of our club’s time on the running track to do just that. After a mile warm-up, I launched myself into twelve and a half gruelling laps of the track.

It was possibly the toughest workout I’ve ever done. Don’t get me wrong – I love track sessions. And I’m more than happy to run them on my own. But twelve and a half laps of push, push, push. It’s hard. I used 20 minutes as my benchmark. For the first kilometre, I came in just under; 3:54. But my pace dropped off after that, and it was a constant battle not to drop too far off the pace. The second kilometre (two and half more laps) was 4:09, and already I was behind the target. I had to remind myself that I knew that I wasn’t capable of 20 minutes right now, it was just to give me a guide pace. In the third kilometre I lost a bit more time, but managed to steady things in the fourth, clocking 4:18 for both. I maintained a similar pace for the next 500 metres, but a kick over the last half lap pulled me up to a 4:03 final kilometre, and 20:38 for the 5k.

More importantly, it gives me a figure to plug into the pace calculator to work out some race and training paces.

Tuesday: Massage

It’d been a while since my last massage with Ian, and I was a bit worried about some Achilles soreness that I’d suffered from over the past couple of weeks. A good, if painful, rub down of my calf muscles, and all sorts of tinkering with my ankles, and Ian declared that my Achilles were good to go. No swelling, no significant tightness. Good news!

Wednesday: Varied 7 miles

I was staying away from home with work on Wednesday night, and had originally planned to just plod around the roads near the hotel. Unfortunately, I discovered that my hotel was essentially a service station motel, and near the friendliest of roads for running. Thankfully, I discovered that it also happened to be on the edge of the New Forest, and hatched plan B. A short drive on from the hotel, and I parked in a random National Trust car park. (Less a car park and more just a flat, clear bit of land with a National Trust sign, really.)

I had no real plan for my run, other than, well… run around. I headed up the footpath out of the car park… and was immediately met by a “No Public Access” sign. Not ideal. Still, I had the OS Map app, and so swung off to my right, across some pretty boggy grass until I hit a footpath. I followed this until it reached the A36, doubled all the way back, and then headed down the small road I was parked on. Away from my car (intentionally). This eventually led me to Stagbury Hill, a nice little climb, before I looped back to the car, adding on a bit more distance along the road to round it up to a tidy 7 miles.

Saturday: Long run (11 miles)

Long runs are always difficult to fit into family life, and as I extend the distance for marathon training, that will only get worse. I’m looking for ways to integrate these runs into the weekend as much as possible. This week, I suggested that as Lolly didn’t want to run Longrun Meadow parkrun in the wet, she could visit Minehead parkrun, and I could do a long run from there, meeting them at Torre Cider Farm. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision. Given the “Mini Beast from the East” which struck over the weekend, we both got out runs in before things got too bad. The wind was biting, and while it had caused Lolly issues during the parkrun, I was sheltered from the worst of it to start with, as I headed inland. (My original idea had involved running along the coastal path to Watchet – that would have been hideous.)

As soon as I crossed the A39 out of Minehead, I started climbing pretty sharply; initially up the road, but then switching onto footpaths. In the first two and a bit miles of my run, I climbed roughly 800 feet from the seafront to the top of Grabbist Hill. And promptly dropped most of the way back down to sea-level again to reach Dunster. After which… I went off-route.

In my defence, I did intend to vary from my planned route. I just meant to take a different variation. Still, it didn’t make much difference, and I soon found myself back up at 550 ft going past Gallox hill fort. I stopped for a bit of a breather, and for a gel – the first time I’ve tried one. I’ve intended to try gels for ages now, but as I suffer from some.. ah.. stomach issues.. on runs anyway, I’ve always put it off for another day. I figured that I couldn’t keep putting it off during marathon training though. I tried a Torq gel – I’ve bought a sample pack with a range of flavours. This one was Strawberry Yoghurt, and other than being very sweet and sickly, it did indeed definitely taste of strawberry yoghurt. It was very palatable, went down without an issue even though I didn’t have water, and I had no issues for the rest of my run. Well, no gel-related issues.

Still awful at selfies.

The run resumed with a very short descent, followed by more climbing, up to Bat’s Castle, another hill fort. Another break (to take some photos, not because I was out of breath… honest) and then about a mile and a half of relatively flat stuff before a nice descent to Withycombe. I rejoined my originally planned route. For about a quarter of a mile. Heading back out of the village, I was met with a footpath closed sign and a padlock. Oh bugger. Quickly consulting the OS Map app again, I realised that there was no convenient alternative; I would have to run the roads around the fields, which squared off my diagonal. But I had no choice, so off I went, up another hill!

In fact, that diversion meant that with the exception of one shortcut across a field, the last three miles of my run was all on the road. Not ideal – particularly in my Speedcross shoes, but needs must. My planned ten mile run ended up being 11.3 miles. I briefly considered adding a bit more on to round it up to 12 miles, but frankly decided I really didn’t give a hoot.

This run was purely a distance run, but I was happy to average 9:29 per mile over that terrain and elevation profile, especially given that I was navigating paths and roads completely unknown to me. Although 2,000 feet over 11 miles sounds a lot, it was (a) proportionally less than Snowdonia will be, and (b) surprisingly runnable.

Sunday: 3 miles road

Three miles of nothingness. I wanted to top my mileage up over 25 miles, but given the snowy, icy conditions and family considerations, I had little desire to do much. A short pootle around town did the job. It was nothing special, I didn’t even change out of my glasses into my contact lenses!

Weekly summary: 4 runs, 26.1 miles

Honestly I’d have liked to have got over 30 miles done this week, but I didn’t get home from work until after 7 on Thursday, and so any run that night was pretty much out of the window. Each of the runs I got in was a tick in the box. Monday’s time-trial was quicker than my first Yeovilton race last summer, and each of the following runs was completed injury-free, which at this stage is my main focus. The P&D plan, which I’m still loosely basing my training off, introduces some strides next week, while I also have to contend with Lolly being away for two evenings, and a race at the weekend. (A race, however will I cope?!)