Week 11 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

M 10.5 miles (6:36mm), 6 miles (7:13mm)

T 17 miles (6:37mm), 4 miles (7:17mm)

W 11 miles (6:59mm), 6 miles (7:08mm)

T Rest

F 6 miles (7:17mm)

S 10.5 miles (6:43mm)
S 22 miles (6:24mm)

Total 94 miles (6:46mm)

Weight 142.4 lbs

Body fat 10.6%
Aerobic efficiency 966 beats per mile.

This week was the first week of the marathon specific stage where the aim was to just get in some decent miles in and ready for the proper work to start this coming week with a big session, big mileage and a big long run!

From a training point of view it went fantastically well. My health is much better than recently and my easy runs are now actually feeling easy, which makes a difference from struggling to go quicker than 7 minute miles just a few weeks ago. I decided to slightly front load the week with miles as I was in London on Thursday with work and knew I would be coming back with a hangover so I would only get minimal miles in on Friday. I had been planning on doing my long run on Saturday but to be honest still felt a bit rough from the wine fest so moved it to Sunday instead. The aim was to get my first 20 in with it not feeling too much of a struggle. I was really pleasantly surprised to be running really well and aerobically I felt incredibly strong. The legs weren't tired either despite the uplift in miles this week. The only thing that was bugging me was my ongoing niggles. A visit to the physio on Tuesday confirmed what I thought in that I have a tilted and twisted pelvis which is causing bad sciatica down my right side and a lot of tightness in my right hamstring/glute. This is basically exactly the same injury I had just over a year ago but the other side. The physio doesn't quite know why it has happened as there has been no specific event or trauma that caused, it has just sort of gradually got worse over the last few weeks. Maybe I just need to make sure I stretch a bit more and get the foam roller out more frequently.

Weight is down about a pound from last week but my body fat has increased slightly (although I doubt that and is probably just a flaw within the scales!). Aerobic efficiency is really good at 966beats per mile average, a similar sort of level that I had at the beginning of March when I was starting to come into some decent fitness.

The big work starts here now with nine weeks to go. I just hope I can get in what I intend to without too many interruptions!

Week 10 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

M 7.5 miles (7:26mm), 6 miles (7:09mm)

T 5 miles (7:27mm), 10.5 miles including 4X1M(0.5M) – 5:04, 5:02, 5:03, 5:06

W 5 miles (7:25mm), 8.5 miles (7:15mm)

T 7.5 miles (7:16mm), 5 miles (7:03mm)

F 5 miles (7:20mm)

S 9 miles including Podium 10(?)k - 31:42
S 6miles (7:10mm)

Total 76 miles (6:57mm)

Weight 143.2 lbs

Body fat 10.5%

So the final week of the phase whereby I am trying to build some speed before embarking on the marathon specific phase. It was all to culminate in a 10k race at Barrowford in Lancashire. This is a race that has been set up on a completely flat and smooth tarmac cycling track. It should be a quick course, if you can cope with laps and the weather is kind. It ended up being perhaps quicker than I was expecting but more on that in a bit…

I was keen to still get reasonable miles in for the week given various inconsistencies of the last few weeks and only had one session on the Tuesday before the race. This would be a helpful gauge of what sort of shape I was in for a 10k race. I did 4X1mile with a half mile jog recovery within a run. The mile came out at 5:04, 5:02, 5:03 and 5:06 and they hurt, especially the last one! This told me that my somewhat optimistic target of 31:30 was probably going to be too optimistic so decided that I would settle for aiming to beat my longstanding PB of 32:05 instead and hoping to creep under 32 minutes.

So quite a lot of easy running to freshen up for Saturday. Race day arrived and I was keen to make sure I ate a sensible amount pre-race and didn’t hit the start a little bloated which I think I may have done at Askern and Stretford races earlier in the summer. The weather was dry and cool for a mid-July evening but there was a pretty strong wind. Thankfully it wasn’t as strong as had been forecast 48 hours earlier but still I think strong enough to make a material difference to the times that would be run on the night. The A-race kicked off and there’s a decent field of runners with Ben Fish leading off the front. I found myself in a nice little group with Matt Shaw and Nathan Kilcourse for the first few laps. After a while I could see a couple of runners, one including Frank Beresford starting to drop off and so I gave chase to try and pull him in. I gradually caught up with him and despite thinking I would probably go past him Frank held firm and we raced hammer and tong for about four laps towards the end. I felt really good up until the mid-part of the race when I really had to try and hang on. By the 8^th k it really was starting to slip and Matt and Nathan caught back up and went past . I could then no longer hang on to the pack as they pulled away. On finishing I was incredibly surprised to see the clock at 31:42. It didn’t feel like a PB run, surely I hadn’t got into that good shape in the space of a week? I ran 15:51 last week for 5k on a track in slightly more favourable conditions. I checked the watch and it read 6.15miles. This is in when the doubts started creeping in. I like Garmins, they’re very useful training aids but I don’t trust them in races or to truly reflect distance run. In fact they’re far far more likely to measure long given the technology of how GPS devices work. One has to trust that the course has been measured by a qualified course measurer with wheel. Now, I am not sure how it happened but looking at the course measurers site the 5k is apparently exactly 4.8 laps of the course, therefore the 10k should have been 9.6 laps. We simply did not run 9.6 laps of the course on Saturday evening. My estimation is that we ran 9.35-9.4 laps. So I believe the distance I ran on Saturday was equivalent to around 9.7-9.8k probably adding 45 seconds to my time is about right so around 32:27 which given the windy conditions (perhaps worth 20-30 seconds) I still think is an OK run. I am in roughly 10k PB shape 10 weeks out from a target marathon but it would be disingenuous of me to claim this as a PB as I just don’t believe it was!

 

Hammering it out with Frank Beresford
Photo credit: Jamie McIlvenny

 

Although I got to be nowhere near as quick as I was hoping to be this summer I have not arrived at 10 weeks out from a target marathon in as good shape as I am now and I am very grateful to the support and guidance of Mike Baxter who has taken me through this different approach to my training. I look forward to doing the same sort of thing in future training blocks.

Other things of note this week was that I went to the doctors to get a print out of my recent blood test results. They tested for literally everything! It was very interesting trying to decipher what everything meant and having accepted that I was probably a bit too thick to do just that I wrote to Phil Townsend (coach with Leeds city and also a GP) to ask for his view. In a nutshell I had a low (compared to the general population) haemoglobin concentration of 135g/L, below range Haematocrit 0.39 and below range red blood count and above range mean cell haemoglobin level. To be honest this struck me as odd as I thought the number for haemoglobin and RBC would be higher for a runner who is trained. But apparently that value can be low due to the blood being a little thinner than a sedentary persons. The doctor had assured me I was ok so I initially went home a happy bunny. I double checked with Phil as I just couldn’t make sense of it all though and while initially we thought it may be that I had a bit low iron, my ferritin level was good. Apparently ferritin is an acute phase protein that gives a decent indication of how much iron is in the body so I probably don’t need supplementation although ferritin levels can be raised when under the weather/fighting off an illness. So maybe I was ill when the test was done which showed a higher reading than what it actually is? After playing with it in my head for the best part of 24 hours I decided that it wasn’t worth wasting my energy on. I have gradually started to feel a lot better recently and am nowhere near as exhausted as I was a few weeks ago. So basically I will continue to eat a varied diet, try and stay off the booze and hope I continue to just feel better. I have my Echocardio gram on Saturday which I am hoping will show nothing untoward. That said I am looking forward to it as I continue to learn more about my body!

 

So now starts the 10 weeks to the big race. I will take a week of easy running, but with reasonable mileage with no sessions before really ramping things up next week and returning to the Steve Way type sessions I (and many others) have had success with in the past. Back into the blog will come the monitoring of my weight, aerobic efficiency and now percentage body fat. This will not be that accurate given it’s from the bathroom scales but it’ll be interesting to see the changes for added geekery. I will also stick in the odd different thing training wise like mile intervals and some hills sprints as recommended by Mike Baxter to keep in touch with my speedier running.

All in all I’m really excited to get going now with the specific phase. I just have to hope that a niggly pelvis/sciatic issue that seems to have been gradually getting worse over the last few weeks can be quickly remedied by the physio!

Weeks 8 and 9 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

W/C 29th June

M 10.5miles (6:42mm)

T 9 miles including 2X1k (3mins), 5X500m(90s, 3mins), 5X300(60s)

W 7 miles (7:02mm), 5miles (7:20mm)

T 9 miles (6:58mm)

F 10 miles acceleration run (6:18mm), 5 miles (7:19mm)

S 15 miles (6:35mm)

S 7.5 miles (6:58mm)

Total 79.3miles

W/C 6th July

M 5 miles (7:07mm)

T 6 miles including Trafford Open 5,000m (15:56.82)

W Rest

T 10.5 miles (7:01mm), 6 miles (7:26mm)

F 17 miles (6:53mm), 6 miles (7:22mm)

S 10 miles (7:07mm)

S 4miles (7:48mm), 7.5 miles including Northern League 5,000m (15:51.3)

Total 73 miles

Last time I wrote about getting some checks with the doctor as I’d not been feeling all too good for a number of weeks both in myself and especially in my running! I am happy to report though that my blood tests came back as normal so that’s great news. This has coincided with feeling quite a lot better in myself and more energy generally. I have had an ECG and am waiting for a referral for an Echo so no diagnosis has been made just yet on whether there is anything untoward with my heart.

This past couple of weeks has been a bit of a rollercoaster again though! Leaving me one minute thrilled that I’m in great shape, then the next minute feeling like I’m a 90 year old arthritic with a heart condition! Still, I finish the two week block in a positive frame of mind.

The Tuesday session I did on 30^th June was quite simply one of the best of my life! In equatorial temperatures at the track with a bit of a gust I was knocking out interval times I didn’t think I had in me. Full details are on the link above, but I felt quick and with splits of 2:55, and 2:54 for the k’s and then c1:25s for the 500s I was really running well. If only I could convert that into a race performance….. The rest of the week I was quite wearisome probably due to how hard I had pushed in that session and an acceleration run I did on the Friday whilst OK was by no means spectacular and my legs felt tired from the off.

It was then onto last week where my two sessions would effectively be two 5,000m races. The first of which was a planned Trafford AC open race and the second was a late call up for the Northern League meet at Scunthorpe where I would be the B-Runner with Leeds City legend Alan Buckley taking his place in the A-string. At Trafford I was a little disappointed to be put in the B-race and although I wouldn’t have been in contention  in the A-race I would have had a lot more people to try and hang on to! I had gone there with the intention to do some damage to the 15:51.5 PB and although it was windy felt I was in a good place to knock some chunks off it! The race started quite slowly and perhaps I panicked a little but I was keen to get back on pace so took the lead up about 300m in and then tried to push on. As you can see from the splits above it was not the most brilliantly paced race and indeed I was disappointed when eventual winner came past me with about 1k to go and I didn’t have the minerals to go with him. I was hating every stride if I’m honest and couldn’t wait for it to be over. That said I still thought I would PB. I was wrong! It just shows if you lose concentration for a few minutes it can really ruin the outcome. I finished in 15:56.82 and really disappointed with how it had all panned out. The result was the least of my concerns though as I could only jog a quarter mile to warm down as my left foot was in in real pain having stubbed it on the bed on Sunday morning! It had some pretty nasty bruising so I went to get some ice form the café where I was surprised to see Dave Moorcroft asking me if I wanted a free coffee on behalf of the BBC (they were filming a piece for Join in UK, an organisation that promotes volunteering). I learned later that evening that it was exactly 33 years to the day that he broke the World 5,000m record. He really is true legend of the sport and his coffee making skills weren’t bad either. I urge you to watch this video with the last few minutes of that record breaking run – it’s simply breath-taking.

I took Wednesday off as my foot was just too sore but thankfully it gradually got better over the following days. Then onto the Northern League 5,000m where another windy day was in store. The primary goal was to win the B-string and secondly to try to run a quick time too. I was pleased to achieve the primary objective winning the B-race finishing 2^nd overall a long way behind Alan but my time was still poor. I finished in 15:51.3 so a bit quicker than Tuesday’s effort and an official PB by a whopping 0.2seconds but still some way short of what I should be capable of. This was OK, especially given the miles in my legs from Friday and Saturday but on reflection I really should have been braver. I perhaps had the opportunity to push on and try and get back to Alan when I found myself in second place about 20 metres back but instead I allowed the pace to drift. As I wasn’t checking splits other than at the km mark I didn’t know until it was too late. I'm learning that these shorter distances really are supposed to hurt from very early on and I think if I can accept that I should be able to run one quite a bit quicker, especially if I can get some good conditions! All this is really good prep for Berlin though and I do feel that what I have been working on with the support of Mike these last few weeks is working, I just haven’t seen the results in a race yet. Next Saturday I am racing in the Podium 10k and I really will be looking to put myself in the hurt box. I would love to have a real confidence boosting run before the long steady mileage starts in earnest. But only I can be in control of that.