April 2012 will probably go down as one of the wettest months in history and it's important to still keep running during adverse conditions - especially for me at this time, I'm still coming back from injury with a way to go and interruptions to the schedule are not welcome. So this week was an exercise in sticking with it.
Like last week, my schedule is for 4 runs a week - Tuesday is now an early morning hilly 5k; the character building run through the Headless Cross and Webheath districts of Redditch. This is a constant up and down - a kind downhill at first, but then your energy is taken away from you as the steep uphills come in succession. Then its a final 1 mile final slog uphill all the way back. The challenge is to complete the route without stopping - and that I did, with a time of 29:00 being an excellent result.
Wednesday evening was a 4 mile run in heavy rain and Friday evening was a 5 mile run in rain, leaving the worst till Sunday - the finale of the Centurion Grand Prix. This is a monthly 5 mile run around Babbs Mill from November to April. Today was the worst of the lot - the rain had turned sections of the route into mud and water had collected into various ponds too with some having no route around. The wind was strong and the rain was still coming down too. Skipping around everything in a tentative manner at first bacame a waste of time, my feet were wet through anyway and so I eventually ploughed through everything to record my slowest time of the season - I'm not worrying about times, it's not important.
Sunday 29 April 2012
Sunday 22 April 2012
Inspired
The great thing about running is that you are inspired by the people around you; those who you know well and the stories of others who have run - their efforts give you momentum to achieve too. Today was London Marathon day, the biggest of them all. So I sat down and watched the day unfold on TV and on the internet and what a day it turned out to be!
The story of Jane Tomlinson is one that has always stayed with me; she had terminal cancer and spent the last years of her life raising huge amounts of money by running marathons, triathalons and the like. Her determination to succeed was amazing and when the TV showed library pictures of her in tears in awe of the support she was getting whilst running the London marathon brought a lump to my throat. So off I went and did an 8 mile run - the furthest I have run for a long time; it wasn't a good time at all, but it's the distance that matters at the moment. My total mileage each week is now increasingly nicely - up to 17 miles now and split across 4 days per week. Friday's session was a hilly 5k run - it is a challenging one (a killer in fact) that I have always felt has benefited my running the most. I'll be doing this run once a week from now on and use Sunday as my long run - 8 miles today is progress from my 10k last week and it will be good to be able to do 10 miles + again soon.
Back at the London Marathon, I arrived home from my run in time to see the elite women's finish - I was looking out for Liz Yelling, friend of Brueton parkrun and VIP guest at Brueton parkrun PLUS in June 2011. Her comeback from injury 12 months ago in attempt to make the Olympics didn't quite happen today - but the way she was in the final stages of the Marathon waving and smiling shows her underlying character. When I had the privilege to have a night out with her and some others from Brueton parkrun last June, her message was clear, it's about enjoying running more than anything else. Respect to you Liz, I was so impressed by how passionate she is about parkrun and how important she believed parkrun is to running and the health of the nation - certainly puts the Brueton parkrun critics to shame.
A fantastic feature of the London Marathon is that runners progress can be tracked online with 5km split times. So the next few hours were spent watching progress of a group of people I know from parkrun and most of all Eric Robathan who was running his first marathon and I have been following his training progress all the way through. It's down to Eric to give the full story of his experience, but the excitement, anguish and final sheer joy whilst I tracked Eric certainly made for a rollercoaster experience, even though I was 100 miles away. Eric, to pull it back like you did in the final stages of the run to post a time under 4 hours is awesome. And all that after falling over 9 miles into the run. I found the whole experience of following Eric and the others truly inspirational. Even though these runners are far better than I am or ever will be, they made me feel that my own marathon can be achieved if I do put the work in and play it right on the day....
Which comes to the most important lesson of the day for me - pacing. Eric had a pace in his mind to follow and that's what I need to do; to find my marathon race pace and learn how to run at that pace too. Browsing through the split times of some London Marathon runners, I could see clearly how they went off too fast and exploded on the way round - that 20 mile wall that you hear of I suppose. Yet I saw others who kept it steady all the way and posted some great times. One person, who's name I forget ran around 11 minute mile pace all the way and although at half way may have appeared slow to some came through to post a time around 4 hours 50. My aim for Chester is simply to get round, yes and on the day anything can happen. But I need to have something to work against in training and on the day too, otherwise I could have a great first half only turn to disappointment by the end. In my mind, I always seem to settle on the figure of 5 hours, well 4:59:59 really. I don't know if I can achieve it - only the next 5 months can give me some indication on that. I did read somewhere that if you can do a half marathon in 2:15, you can do a 5 hour marathon. Well, my half marathon time is 2:14, so could it be possible? For now, I have to say yes and believe that I can and will do it. Thanks Eric.
The story of Jane Tomlinson is one that has always stayed with me; she had terminal cancer and spent the last years of her life raising huge amounts of money by running marathons, triathalons and the like. Her determination to succeed was amazing and when the TV showed library pictures of her in tears in awe of the support she was getting whilst running the London marathon brought a lump to my throat. So off I went and did an 8 mile run - the furthest I have run for a long time; it wasn't a good time at all, but it's the distance that matters at the moment. My total mileage each week is now increasingly nicely - up to 17 miles now and split across 4 days per week. Friday's session was a hilly 5k run - it is a challenging one (a killer in fact) that I have always felt has benefited my running the most. I'll be doing this run once a week from now on and use Sunday as my long run - 8 miles today is progress from my 10k last week and it will be good to be able to do 10 miles + again soon.
Back at the London Marathon, I arrived home from my run in time to see the elite women's finish - I was looking out for Liz Yelling, friend of Brueton parkrun and VIP guest at Brueton parkrun PLUS in June 2011. Her comeback from injury 12 months ago in attempt to make the Olympics didn't quite happen today - but the way she was in the final stages of the Marathon waving and smiling shows her underlying character. When I had the privilege to have a night out with her and some others from Brueton parkrun last June, her message was clear, it's about enjoying running more than anything else. Respect to you Liz, I was so impressed by how passionate she is about parkrun and how important she believed parkrun is to running and the health of the nation - certainly puts the Brueton parkrun critics to shame.
A fantastic feature of the London Marathon is that runners progress can be tracked online with 5km split times. So the next few hours were spent watching progress of a group of people I know from parkrun and most of all Eric Robathan who was running his first marathon and I have been following his training progress all the way through. It's down to Eric to give the full story of his experience, but the excitement, anguish and final sheer joy whilst I tracked Eric certainly made for a rollercoaster experience, even though I was 100 miles away. Eric, to pull it back like you did in the final stages of the run to post a time under 4 hours is awesome. And all that after falling over 9 miles into the run. I found the whole experience of following Eric and the others truly inspirational. Even though these runners are far better than I am or ever will be, they made me feel that my own marathon can be achieved if I do put the work in and play it right on the day....
Which comes to the most important lesson of the day for me - pacing. Eric had a pace in his mind to follow and that's what I need to do; to find my marathon race pace and learn how to run at that pace too. Browsing through the split times of some London Marathon runners, I could see clearly how they went off too fast and exploded on the way round - that 20 mile wall that you hear of I suppose. Yet I saw others who kept it steady all the way and posted some great times. One person, who's name I forget ran around 11 minute mile pace all the way and although at half way may have appeared slow to some came through to post a time around 4 hours 50. My aim for Chester is simply to get round, yes and on the day anything can happen. But I need to have something to work against in training and on the day too, otherwise I could have a great first half only turn to disappointment by the end. In my mind, I always seem to settle on the figure of 5 hours, well 4:59:59 really. I don't know if I can achieve it - only the next 5 months can give me some indication on that. I did read somewhere that if you can do a half marathon in 2:15, you can do a 5 hour marathon. Well, my half marathon time is 2:14, so could it be possible? For now, I have to say yes and believe that I can and will do it. Thanks Eric.
Sunday 15 April 2012
Get out of the way, fast runner coming through!
After the success of my run at the St Patrick's Day Brueton parkrun, it was important to not get carried away and increase the mileage too soon. So instead I introduced some rowing and cycling into the week. I got the opportunity to run at Brueton again the following week, this time's incident involved an important pre-run matter meaning I didn't change into my trainers until 100 metres into the run! I stopped my watch whilst changing them and the final result was a very pleasing 27:21.
With the clocks going forward later in March, it meant that the mid-week post work 'Freedom parkrun' could be restarted and I've done three of those now already. At the end of the month I had another chance to run at parkrun whilst away in London to watch my fellow Chester Marathon runner Larry Chambers run at the Olympic Park Run (Note two words for Park Run with capital P and R). London is full of parkruns, with more opening all the time due to funding from Boris Johnson's office. I chose Mile End parkrun which was only in its 9th week and being on the tube line en route to the Olympic Stadium. Larry volunteered as photographer and Trish ended up self appointing herself as Event Director when the volunteers encountered problems with the stopwatch. The Mile End parkrun is in a small long and narrow park and has a unique feature in that the middle of the park is lifted up on a bridge over a road - you have to see it to believe it! It makes for a very undulating course, so this was a parkrun for hill training. 25th position out of 47 finishers and a time of 28:54 was a great result.
OK, so all this proved that I can do 5k distances pain free, albeit at times a few minutes off my best. Now to increase the mileage - my first training 10k followed at Easter, followed by a 10k race soon after - the fabulously named 'Wright Hassall Regency 10k' in Leamington Spa. This is a very popular and highly acclaimed race that actually incorporates the Leamington parkrun route (run in reverse direction). 2000 runners took part and with narrow paths for a large part of the first 5k, I got caught up with slower runners and held up by walkers in groups 2 or 3 abreast. I became concerned that I would be expending a lot of energy trying to get past people and indeed it felt at times that a lot of effort was required. I reached 5k at around 31:20, so not within my target of an hour for the whole run, but with the route moving from park path to road, the opportunity to up the pace was there to be taken. In order to still finish within the hour I would have to run the last 5k at a near to parkrun pace and with nothing to lose I decided to give it a go. All went fairly well, but at 5 miles it was looking a bit too tight, and a further increase in pace for a sixth mile at 9 minutes followed by a 7:20 minute pace sprint for the final 0.2 mile meant that I made it to the finish in 59:45 for a really, really good result. Super, smashing, great.
With the clocks going forward later in March, it meant that the mid-week post work 'Freedom parkrun' could be restarted and I've done three of those now already. At the end of the month I had another chance to run at parkrun whilst away in London to watch my fellow Chester Marathon runner Larry Chambers run at the Olympic Park Run (Note two words for Park Run with capital P and R). London is full of parkruns, with more opening all the time due to funding from Boris Johnson's office. I chose Mile End parkrun which was only in its 9th week and being on the tube line en route to the Olympic Stadium. Larry volunteered as photographer and Trish ended up self appointing herself as Event Director when the volunteers encountered problems with the stopwatch. The Mile End parkrun is in a small long and narrow park and has a unique feature in that the middle of the park is lifted up on a bridge over a road - you have to see it to believe it! It makes for a very undulating course, so this was a parkrun for hill training. 25th position out of 47 finishers and a time of 28:54 was a great result.
OK, so all this proved that I can do 5k distances pain free, albeit at times a few minutes off my best. Now to increase the mileage - my first training 10k followed at Easter, followed by a 10k race soon after - the fabulously named 'Wright Hassall Regency 10k' in Leamington Spa. This is a very popular and highly acclaimed race that actually incorporates the Leamington parkrun route (run in reverse direction). 2000 runners took part and with narrow paths for a large part of the first 5k, I got caught up with slower runners and held up by walkers in groups 2 or 3 abreast. I became concerned that I would be expending a lot of energy trying to get past people and indeed it felt at times that a lot of effort was required. I reached 5k at around 31:20, so not within my target of an hour for the whole run, but with the route moving from park path to road, the opportunity to up the pace was there to be taken. In order to still finish within the hour I would have to run the last 5k at a near to parkrun pace and with nothing to lose I decided to give it a go. All went fairly well, but at 5 miles it was looking a bit too tight, and a further increase in pace for a sixth mile at 9 minutes followed by a 7:20 minute pace sprint for the final 0.2 mile meant that I made it to the finish in 59:45 for a really, really good result. Super, smashing, great.
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