Tag Archives: Training

A Streak and a Stampede

by Lolly

After a 6 week absence, with very few runs in between, I returned to running Longrun Meadow parkrun with a time that showed my drop in fitness. The thought of running the Stoke Stampede 10k two weeks later was not a pretty one. When I’d signed up for the race, it had been as a target race. I wanted one more shot this year at improving my PB. With two weeks to go, I’d struggled with 5k and was completely out of the training habit.

Back home I checked my Garmin stats and discovered I still had 48 miles left to run to hit my goal for 2015, with a mere 19 days left to do it in. Not going to happen. Ben commented that if I ran 5k a day for the rest of the year then I’d manage it easily. It was a good laugh, but somehow I couldn’t shake the idea.

The next day I got ready to go for a run. Ben asked how far I planned to go, and the answer was simple. 5k. It felt rubbish, but I went. The next day I had an exercise class in the evening. The route I took to get there was slightly longer than usual, and I checked my watch carefully on arrival to check the distance. Heading back I took a slightly longer route. As I took an extra loop around my estate it became clear I was already addicted. I HAD to run 5k every day.

The breakthrough in my streak came at the end of the week on parkrunday. I was volunteering, and wore my kit under my coat and hi-viz. After parkrun I swapped into my trainers (wellies are essential at this time of year) and tried to work out a good route. I clocked in 4 more miles and, importantly for my self-belief, did so at 9:31 min/miles. Pretty much a minute a mile faster than my mid-week efforts.

My mindset had changed from “can face going for a run today?” to “when will I go for my run today?” The only difficulty was working out the route. Oh and December weather. One day it rained straight in my face to the extent that my contact lenses got knocked out of line.

The test was Christmas Day. Day 14 of my run streak, and a return to parkrun. The puddles covered most of the course, and were up to my ankle in places. It was brilliant. I finished in 29:11, almost 2 minutes faster than on Day 1 despite the worse conditions. Day 15 was a recovery run, in preparation for the race.

The Stoke Stampede is a popular 10k race in Stoke St Gregory. Popular to the extent that it sold out of places this year, as everyone always raves about it. Ben ran it back in 2013. I knew very little about the course, other than that it was on country roads. Then Ben mentioned there were hills, which I’d suspected, and that there was a small loop and a big loop, which was useful to know. The thing I really didn’t know was how the race would go.

I started way too fast. It was really hard to wait far enough back, and with the downhill start and excitement of the race it was really easy to get carried away. Slowing down was a difficult but necessary task. The nature of the course means you pass the cheering crowd three times: near the start, after the small loop, and just before the end. This was gratefully received support, even if my daughter didn’t spot me first time.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, at about the 4 mile mark I got really tired. It became much more of a struggle and so I just settled in to a pace that felt comfortable. Some of the country lanes felt very quiet, with little noise other than feet and jingles. Yes, I’d worn a jingle bell hairband. That might be why there was rarely a runner close by.

The few spectators that were dotted around the course were great. I’m pretty sure I’d have stopped to walk on the hill up to the 8k mark if it wasn’t for the support from the top of it.

When I returned to the village for the final push I was tired but pleased. I felt better than I’d felt on a tough run for months. I finished in 56:34, so sub 9 min/miles. Faster than I’d run for over 2 months, while going further than I’d run for a month. Whatever my original plans had been when I’d entered the race, I’d done myself proud.

Even better, just over a mile into the race I’d hit the milestone that I’d thought there was no chance I could achieve.

goal complete

Yesterday was day 17. We went for a walk up Brean Down in the morning, and I ended up carrying our daughter back down the steps. Annoyingly, not in a carrier. My afternoon run was hard work.

Today I woke up with sore legs, and my left quad has yet to improve. Tight, sore, painful on movement, they would all describe it. The moral of the story is that running is good for you, taking a toddler on a day out without a back carrier is not.

run streak.PNG

My run streak has given me everything I needed it to. Fitness, confidence, and a renewed love for running. It’s the love for running that means I’m breaking my streak and not heading out today. Not today. But in a couple of days’s time I’ll be back out again. And again. And again.

It’s a run, not a race

by Lolly

A few weeks ago, my half marathon training was flying along. Fitting 10 miles in on the way to volunteer at parkrun seemed perfectly reasonably. My pace was holding as the long runs increased. And then, I stopped running.

The edge of a cold combined with stress to make curling up on the sofa seem much more reasonable than going out for a run. The problem was, the longer I took off exercise the more sluggish I felt. I missed a whole week from my training plan. Thankfully it had been a recovery week, but it still meant changes to my planned mileage in future weeks.

Tentatively I started back going. By the time parkrun got around last weekend I really felt I had something to prove. The conditions were tough and I didn’t feel 100%. It didn’t matter, I gave it my all and knocked almost half a minute off my PB. In hindsight, perhaps I shouldn’t have gone for it quite so much.

My normal style involves lots of overtaking.

I spent the rest of the weekend feeling ill and sorry for myself. It took until Thursday for me to feel I could go out for a run. Amazingly the 4 miles went smoothly, and although I was careful not to focus on my pace it remained inside my normal training band. While I was by no means feeling completely better, the knowledge that I would get at least one run in over the weekend was a huge comfort.

In this house, Saturday is parkrun day and, because of Ben’s race plans, it was once again my turn to run. This time I knew I had to take it easy. In the last 18 months I’ve talked to an awful lot of people about the power of parkrun. About the support you receive from other runners, from volunteers, and from spectators. And about how it doesn’t matter how fast you are, because it’s a run not a race. Yesterday I needed to remember that.

While I didn’t ease off completely, it still felt like I was going slowly as I saw familiar faces off in the distance. Near the end I had so much in my legs that it was tempting to kick on for a strong sprint finish. But that’s not what I needed to do. I needed to run 5k in a way that would make me feel stronger, and wouldn’t need me to spend the rest of the weekend recovering.

Not a typical half marathon training schedule.

After all the disruptions in my training, I’m a little apprehensive about my half marathon. I have to face the fact that I won’t be as prepared as I had hoped to be. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be ready. Six months ago I ran my first sub-30 parkrun, putting all my effort in to reach the massive milestone. Since that day, I’ve yet to run a parkrun that hasn’t been sub-30. And that includes yesterday’s effort.

If I can keep running to how I feel, I’ll be ready for that race.

Training summary: 10-23 August

by Ben

Back when I was training for my first half marathon, I found it useful to write a summary every week, or every couple of weeks. It served both to hold myself accountable, and to help me organise my thoughts and analyse what worked well, and what didn’t work so well. With a few big races coming up, I thought it might be useful to do it again. So first off, let’s have a look at the raw figures from the last couple of weeks:

Very much a tale of two weeks! Last week was meant to be a recovery week, so the mileage was meant to be low. But, well, not that low. I didn’t have a solid schedule, but the aim was to hit around 15 miles across four runs, all at pretty easy pace. We were going away over the weekend, so the plan was to do some parkrun tourism. The week started pretty well; I finished work pretty early on Tuesday, and drove up to the Quantocks to get some miles in. I live right in the middle of Taunton, so while there is plenty of countryside around, I have to clock up a few extra miles getting out of town, and even then things are pretty flat and dull. So having time to jump in the car and drive 20 minutes up the road to run on some pretty stunning trails is great. I had only been planning to run four miles, but enjoyed it so much that it ended up being five, and I could have happily kept going for more.

Much better than town streets…

The rest of the week ended up being quite stressful and tiring, both at work and home, and I just kept putting running off. Because the weather was looking pretty awful for the weekend, we cancelled our hotel for the Friday night and therefore didn’t engage in any further parkrun tourism, which was a bit of a shame. We had still been planning to go to our local parkrun, but in the end we didn’t really wake up early enough (which with a 22-month-old, is a rare achievement!) Saturday afternoon, evening and Sunday were spent travelling to, socialising at, and driving back from a family BBQ, which just left time for a pretty lacklustre four miles on Sunday afternoon. That run was one of my least enjoyable for a while, but I did see a shrew, which was a first!

I was keen to put a line under that week and begin this one strongly, and an interval session at the track with my running club was the ideal way to start. I’ve been trying to push myself quicker over the last couple of months, now that I trust my knee again, so rather than play it safe and run with group 2, I opted to run with group 1, even though I knew it was probably too fast for me. We were scheduled to be running one kilometre repeats, and group 1 were aiming for about 3:40 per km. I managed my first two at 3:46, but then trailed off during the next two, also taking longer rests than scheduled, hitting 3:50 then 3:55. For the fifth repeat, I’d completely gone, physically and mentally, and I “trotted” around to complete 800 metres at a much slower pace than I was meant to be hitting. Nevertheless, I knew that was a risk with running with a faster group, and I’m happy enough with the result: I ran three good intervals and one pretty decent one.

I kept thinking we couldn’t keep climbing. We did.

On Wednesday, I joined up with my running club’s group 1 runners again as they skipped the normal one hour club run from the middle of town to go do 12 miles along the Herepath. The Herepath is a circular route in the Blackdown Hills on which our club run an annual half marathon (plug). I’ve never done much running down there as I don’t really know my way around, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. Well, almost perfect: I just had to keep up with group 1! As you can see from the graphic, the route is pretty hilly, and it was by far the toughest run I’ve ever done. The pace was quicker than I could find comfortable, and once the climbing and the terrain was added in, my legs were certainly feeling the strain. But all that said, it was probably also one of the most enjoyable runs of my life, and it’s given me some confidence ahead of the Exmoor Stagger in a couple of months.

The next day, I trotted around for a couple of miles just to keep my legs loose; not much to say about this run really, other than the fact that my legs felt awful!! I took Friday off (I very, very rarely run on Fridays) before a buggy parkrun on Saturday.

Looking attractive during my sprint finish…

I told myself that I’d take it easy. That for once, I’d be content to trot around near the back, rest my legs and not push too hard. After a nine-minute first mile, I then ran around 7:40 for the next two, and was running 6:30 pace for the last 0.11. It was not easy. The problem is… because I start at the back for safety reasons, I then start to gently pass people. Passing people then gets a bit addictive, and rather than just settle in at a comfortable pace, I just keep trying to pass people. My legs feel pretty good, and even though my heart and lungs are screaming that it’s hard-damned-work pushing a buggy around that quickly, my legs don’t seem to understand. Or something like that. Anyway, it was a good enjoyable run, even if I did go a little bit fast.

On Sunday I wasn’t really sure exactly what I was going to do. With my 12 mile run earlier in the week, I didn’t need to do a long run, but I did need to get out for something. In the end, I settled for a tempo run, which ended up being three laps of our parkrun course to total five miles, with an extra couple of miles to get there and back, acting as a warm-up and cool-down. I’m a bit split on tempo runs: I can see the obvious value, but on the other hand, they are mentally tough. Obviously, that’s sort of the point: if I can’t maintain a steady pace for five miles, what hope have I got for a half-marathon? On the other hand, I found today’s five miles at half-marathon pace pretty tough, and it just sets me thinking: “If I struggle doing five miles at half-marathon pace, how can I do 6.22 miles at 10k pace next weekend, and 13.1 miles at half-marathon pace in a month?” Of course, for those I won’t have had quite such hard weeks in preparation, and the race adrenaline will carry me through too. That aside, I was pretty happy; I ran five miles with the quickest mile being 7:30 and the slowest 7:35, which is consistency that I’m proud of.

Next week I’ve got the Battle of Sedgemoor 10k, so I’m hoping to do a medium-long distance run early in the week, and then complete one or two gentle runs to keep my legs fresh, before kicking on with distance again the week after.

A little bit about… recovery weeks

by Ben

[Disclaimer: I am not a qualified coach, and this post is only based on advice I have received, and my own experience. What works well for me might not necessarily work well for you.]

This week, I can’t rave about a successful tempo run, or setting a new elevation record. I won’t be extending my long run, or running a set of intervals. In fact, this week my running is extremely dull. That’s because I’m on my recovery week. A few people have asked me what this is and why I’m doing it, so I thought I’d write a bit more about it here.

Unfortunately a recovery week is NOT all about relaxing on the beach…

Essentially, a recovery week is exactly what it sounds like: a whole week of recovery! Unfortunately though, this doesn’t mean that I’m sat on the sofa the whole time. (Or at least, I’m not meant to be…) Much as after a particularly tough race you might want to take a few days to recover, probably including a low intensity workout, a recovery week comes after a tough few weeks.

For my own training, I tend to include a recovery week every fourth week. After three tough weeks of training, normally including the full variety of hills, speed and distance, the body is fatigued. To continue to train at the same level increases the risk of injury or illness, so I scale everything back for the following week. Normally, this would be a total distance drop of around 30%, so if I’ve been totalling 25 miles a week, I’ll drop down to around 17 or 18 miles. Within that, each run will be easier. That’s not to say that every workout will be at a “recovery pace”, but I won’t be conciously pushing myself to run fast: just comfortably.

In addition to the lighter workload, I try to include more “mat work” – core exercises, stretching and foam roller sessions. It is also a great time to get a deep tissue massage, as it’s best not to get these shortly before harder workouts.

Recovery is not just important for injury prevention though; it is while the body is not exercising that it strengthens; without effective recovery exercise sessions and training plans will only make the body weaker, not stronger. Personally, I hate recovery weeks: I feel like I’m not achieving anything. But I know that it is helping my body improve from the last three weeks of pushing myself, and will leave me rested and better able to push myself over the next three weeks.

So, how can you incorporate recovery weeks into your own running? Firstly, don’t feel you have to do exactly what I do! That’s just what I’ve found works best for me. In fact, at the moment while I’m still essentially in rehabilitation for my knee injury, I’m dropping about 40%. You might want to cut back more often, but by less (maybe every third week, but only drop about 20%), or less often, and by more (perhaps every sixth week, but cut back 50%).

Sticking to recovery for a whole week isn’t always very easy, particularly if, like me, you enjoy parkrun on a Saturday: sticking to a slightly gentler pace rather than chasing a PB on rested legs can be tough. But, for me at least, it’s worth it over all!