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!