Following the awful conditions of the Deal 5, I got a sore throat and chesty cough which would not budge for a couple of weeks. Fortunately I got a full week in before the next Kent League XC on 1 December, but I think I had lost that edge I had at the end of October. Although the Kent League went ok finished 41st, I felt like I was a minute or so down on where I should have been.
Busy time starting now as London Marathon is now 20 weeks away and have Southern Vets & Kent Vets XC Champs on consecutive weekends 8th & 15th December. So watch this space..............
LONDON MARATHON - 21 April 2013
"Deal 5" Sunday 4 November 2012
Following last weekends doubled up racing on Saturday & Sunday, I took it very easy on Monday and Tuesday. Monday was an easy 5 miler with Tim & Angela at a very slow pace, right heel was still a little tender but nowhere near as bad as it felt on Sunday night. Tuesday was from the club and again was an easy run of about 7.5 miles.
Wednesday was a day off as still feeling quite tired and on Thursday I had my last session at the University booked so I wanted to be fresh for that. It entailed basically running for 18 mins on treadmill at about 60% effort, then coming off being weight, having some blood sampled and then going back on treadmill for 6.5 mins with the mask on to measure oxygen uptake. This was repeated three time, which amount to an hour and a half of running. Then after a short break it was onto the treadmill for a flat out 5km, where I could see the distance ticking by but I was not allowed to see the time elapsed. This was my fifth and final session and I will get the results next week. Over the 5 weeks I have done the same session but water intake was as follows: Week 2 500ml, week 3 1500ml, week 4 none and week 5 whatever I wanted (which was none). So I am waiting to see which state of hydration produced the best run!!
Friday was an easy 6 miler and Saturday was out with the club doing some cross country training at Evegate Mill. I just jogged about as had race on Sunday (7.7miles covered).
Deal 5 - Sunday 4 November 2012
Weather conditions were unreal, horrendously strong winds which we had to run head into for first two miles and then turned with wind on back for nest 2.5 miles before turning again back into wind for last half mile. Warmed up for three miles, before coming into HQ to change into vest and racers. Wasn't raining before, but when we came out, to go up to start it was now starting to rain hard. Off we went headfirst into the wind, was in a small group for first half mile but that soon strung out and so was running on my own, just after the first mile which was reached in 6.01 m/m, the rain started to feel like hail as it was really stinging my chest and arms with the force of it. Due to this the second miles slowed to 6.25 m/m before we turned and then had the wind behind us, went through a really soggy alleyway and had to concentrate on path on the way back as we had the runners coming straight towards us. Could risk stepping into a puddle as didn't know how deep it would be!!
Anyway pace was picking up now with a 5.45 m/m, but I was overtaken by a Paddock Wood athlete and could not try as I may hold onto him, I had to drive on and not let anybody else passed.Dug deep and pushed on to final turn and on the way passed the 4 miles mark in 5.31 m/m. On the turn back to the finish the wind was again head on and so it was a hard to drive to finish line. Finished with a time of 29:25 but was hoping to be a minute quicker, never mind nothing I could do about the conditions.
Finished 5th Overall so quite happy at the end
Wednesday was a day off as still feeling quite tired and on Thursday I had my last session at the University booked so I wanted to be fresh for that. It entailed basically running for 18 mins on treadmill at about 60% effort, then coming off being weight, having some blood sampled and then going back on treadmill for 6.5 mins with the mask on to measure oxygen uptake. This was repeated three time, which amount to an hour and a half of running. Then after a short break it was onto the treadmill for a flat out 5km, where I could see the distance ticking by but I was not allowed to see the time elapsed. This was my fifth and final session and I will get the results next week. Over the 5 weeks I have done the same session but water intake was as follows: Week 2 500ml, week 3 1500ml, week 4 none and week 5 whatever I wanted (which was none). So I am waiting to see which state of hydration produced the best run!!
Friday was an easy 6 miler and Saturday was out with the club doing some cross country training at Evegate Mill. I just jogged about as had race on Sunday (7.7miles covered).
Deal 5 - Sunday 4 November 2012
Weather conditions were unreal, horrendously strong winds which we had to run head into for first two miles and then turned with wind on back for nest 2.5 miles before turning again back into wind for last half mile. Warmed up for three miles, before coming into HQ to change into vest and racers. Wasn't raining before, but when we came out, to go up to start it was now starting to rain hard. Off we went headfirst into the wind, was in a small group for first half mile but that soon strung out and so was running on my own, just after the first mile which was reached in 6.01 m/m, the rain started to feel like hail as it was really stinging my chest and arms with the force of it. Due to this the second miles slowed to 6.25 m/m before we turned and then had the wind behind us, went through a really soggy alleyway and had to concentrate on path on the way back as we had the runners coming straight towards us. Could risk stepping into a puddle as didn't know how deep it would be!!
Anyway pace was picking up now with a 5.45 m/m, but I was overtaken by a Paddock Wood athlete and could not try as I may hold onto him, I had to drive on and not let anybody else passed.Dug deep and pushed on to final turn and on the way passed the 4 miles mark in 5.31 m/m. On the turn back to the finish the wind was again head on and so it was a hard to drive to finish line. Finished with a time of 29:25 but was hoping to be a minute quicker, never mind nothing I could do about the conditions.
Finished 5th Overall so quite happy at the end
Great South Run - 28 October 2012
Well as you can see I have not really been on the ball with this blogging lark over the last couple of months, but luckily my training has not gone the same way!!!! and I have got some decent weeks together.
From my point of view it does not feel like I have done anything special from the beginning of September just slowly built up the milage 30, 40 50 miles per week but nothing higher and not a lot of specific speed work only some sessions here and there.
It was then somewhat satisfying to get the first Kent League Cross Country of to a start with a solid 41st place, probably somewhere around where I was hoping to finish, and ended as 5th Vet home.
The following week was the Givaudan 10km in Ashford including the BMAF & SCVAC championships, I had hoped to train hard up to this and look for a good performance, but as it was I went into it hoping for somewhere around 36:30. Well the end result was some quite unexpected and I really don't knowhow I pulled it out of the bag, finished 15th overall and was Silver medallist in BMAF championship and Gold medallist in SCVAC championship, beating a few of the guys that were in front of me a week before in the cross country. The time 35:05!!!!!! phenomenal I think probably it was due to being a championship race the quality of the field was a little better and therefore I was actually racing other runners rather than just running a time trial on my own.
Two more weeks of about 50 miles each and we came to last weekend which was going to be a tough double header of Kent League Cross Country on the Saturday and Great South Run on the Sunday. Hadn't really thought about the clash when I had booked the GSR. But as I love the Cross Countries I didn't want to miss it and I wanted to well in the individual league over the season. Saturday had turned very cold after the mild weather we were accustomed to and after some overnight rain the course was very soft and greasy. As the race started I forgot all about the 10 miler the following day and got straight into the race, wasn't feeling too bad and got a good start and was just behind Barry Royden, was expecting him to slowly pull away from me but he didn't so we battled our way around two and a half of the three and a half lap race, nip and tuck but at the beginning of the last lap I really tried to put some effort in and pulled away. The ground was very soft and the long uphill sections were quite exhausting, but at the top of each hill there was a down hill so pace picked up straight away, tried to keep strong right to the finish and was rewarded with a 31st position (10 places higher than last time) and 3rd Vet home. Overall now after two races in the league standing 19th in Senior Individual and 2nd in Vets.Now looking forward to a good season of cross country running.
Sunday 28 October - Great South Run. travelled down to Portsmouth on Sunday morning with Lucy Rona & Steve leaving home at about 06:00. Got to the outskirts of Portsmouth at about 08:30 and got the train into Southsea and met Tim & Angela. Then we had about a 20 min walk to the start.
My right heel seemed somewhat painful since yesterdays cross country but the more I walked on it the easier it got. There were a lot of people around the start area as 25000 had entered the race and it was still very cold and there was some very light rain. After changing and warming up we got into our relevant start areas, I was lucky I had a good club runners place and was right behind the elite start. In the few minutes before the start, the TV crew (Channel 5) were interviewing Sally Gunnell And Iwan Thomas and on the start line I was standing right next to Iwan (reason being I thought he would be easy to spot on the telly!!!!!). Anyway got away cleanly and running fairly well, at about 2 miles I could feel my quads and thought it must be from yesterdays run but still tried to push on as much as I could and try and use the runners around me to do this. At approx 4 miles saw Tim heading the other way down the dual carriage way I had previously come along before doubling back, soon I was at five miles and back on Southsea sea front, quick look at the watch showed 29:04 through 5 miles and 36:30 through 10km. Really concentrating and trying to keep the miles under 6 m/m and wind was behind us up to 8 miles, then we turned onto the sea front into a head wind for the last two miles home, this was very tough and I was beginning to feel yesterdays race now but stuck in and tried to keep with two guys that came up on my shoulder letting them passed and then tucking in behind to try and get out of the wind. Then saw signs for 800m to go and tried to move up a gear and two of us broke away from the third guy and with 200m tried to put in a sprint but could not quite catch the guy in front and finished in 74th place in 59:15, missed my target by 15 seconds but when I set it I didn't realised I would be racing cross country the day before. So all in all very satisfied: 5km splits were
5km = 00:17:59 10km = 00:36:30 15km = 00:55:09
= 00:17:59 =00:18:31 = 00:18:39
Also 1st Place in Vets Age Group Category (45-49)
Tim , Steve, Angela & Lucy all got fantastic new PB's, and my cousin Vanessa was commentating at the finish line so got a big shout out from her over the PA system.
From my point of view it does not feel like I have done anything special from the beginning of September just slowly built up the milage 30, 40 50 miles per week but nothing higher and not a lot of specific speed work only some sessions here and there.
It was then somewhat satisfying to get the first Kent League Cross Country of to a start with a solid 41st place, probably somewhere around where I was hoping to finish, and ended as 5th Vet home.
The following week was the Givaudan 10km in Ashford including the BMAF & SCVAC championships, I had hoped to train hard up to this and look for a good performance, but as it was I went into it hoping for somewhere around 36:30. Well the end result was some quite unexpected and I really don't knowhow I pulled it out of the bag, finished 15th overall and was Silver medallist in BMAF championship and Gold medallist in SCVAC championship, beating a few of the guys that were in front of me a week before in the cross country. The time 35:05!!!!!! phenomenal I think probably it was due to being a championship race the quality of the field was a little better and therefore I was actually racing other runners rather than just running a time trial on my own.
Two more weeks of about 50 miles each and we came to last weekend which was going to be a tough double header of Kent League Cross Country on the Saturday and Great South Run on the Sunday. Hadn't really thought about the clash when I had booked the GSR. But as I love the Cross Countries I didn't want to miss it and I wanted to well in the individual league over the season. Saturday had turned very cold after the mild weather we were accustomed to and after some overnight rain the course was very soft and greasy. As the race started I forgot all about the 10 miler the following day and got straight into the race, wasn't feeling too bad and got a good start and was just behind Barry Royden, was expecting him to slowly pull away from me but he didn't so we battled our way around two and a half of the three and a half lap race, nip and tuck but at the beginning of the last lap I really tried to put some effort in and pulled away. The ground was very soft and the long uphill sections were quite exhausting, but at the top of each hill there was a down hill so pace picked up straight away, tried to keep strong right to the finish and was rewarded with a 31st position (10 places higher than last time) and 3rd Vet home. Overall now after two races in the league standing 19th in Senior Individual and 2nd in Vets.Now looking forward to a good season of cross country running.
Sunday 28 October - Great South Run. travelled down to Portsmouth on Sunday morning with Lucy Rona & Steve leaving home at about 06:00. Got to the outskirts of Portsmouth at about 08:30 and got the train into Southsea and met Tim & Angela. Then we had about a 20 min walk to the start.
My right heel seemed somewhat painful since yesterdays cross country but the more I walked on it the easier it got. There were a lot of people around the start area as 25000 had entered the race and it was still very cold and there was some very light rain. After changing and warming up we got into our relevant start areas, I was lucky I had a good club runners place and was right behind the elite start. In the few minutes before the start, the TV crew (Channel 5) were interviewing Sally Gunnell And Iwan Thomas and on the start line I was standing right next to Iwan (reason being I thought he would be easy to spot on the telly!!!!!). Anyway got away cleanly and running fairly well, at about 2 miles I could feel my quads and thought it must be from yesterdays run but still tried to push on as much as I could and try and use the runners around me to do this. At approx 4 miles saw Tim heading the other way down the dual carriage way I had previously come along before doubling back, soon I was at five miles and back on Southsea sea front, quick look at the watch showed 29:04 through 5 miles and 36:30 through 10km. Really concentrating and trying to keep the miles under 6 m/m and wind was behind us up to 8 miles, then we turned onto the sea front into a head wind for the last two miles home, this was very tough and I was beginning to feel yesterdays race now but stuck in and tried to keep with two guys that came up on my shoulder letting them passed and then tucking in behind to try and get out of the wind. Then saw signs for 800m to go and tried to move up a gear and two of us broke away from the third guy and with 200m tried to put in a sprint but could not quite catch the guy in front and finished in 74th place in 59:15, missed my target by 15 seconds but when I set it I didn't realised I would be racing cross country the day before. So all in all very satisfied: 5km splits were
5km = 00:17:59 10km = 00:36:30 15km = 00:55:09
= 00:17:59 =00:18:31 = 00:18:39
Also 1st Place in Vets Age Group Category (45-49)
Tim , Steve, Angela & Lucy all got fantastic new PB's, and my cousin Vanessa was commentating at the finish line so got a big shout out from her over the PA system.
Rona had taken part in the Elite Ladies race and was enjoying the hospitality when we called her, she managed to get us into the hospitality tent as her guests so we all enjoyed hot shepherds pie, raspberry roulade and coffee as well as seeing the winners interviewed and then getting our photos taken with Kelly Holmes and Jo Pavey!!!!
Friday 24 August 2012
PM: Been fine all day long and as soon as I step out of the door it starts raining!! Had a message today that might be needed to do a Southern League Match next Saturday, but I am not sure what kind of shape I'm in as I've had the easy month and and not raced since mid July. So thought I would tonight just go out and run hard and see what I could do! The route was two laps of Lyminge and the results was as follows: 6.57/ 7.01/6.37/6.56/6.40/6.28 - Not to bad perhaps I hadn't lost as much as I though!!
Distance: 6 Miles Time: 00:40:44 Ave Pace: 6.47 m/m
Distance: 6 Miles Time: 00:40:44 Ave Pace: 6.47 m/m
Thursday 23 August 2012
AM: Easy run went out up to Tolsford Hill along the North Downs Way which is cross country and quite hilly, it was a nice morning and I thought it would make a change! So due to the nature of the route the first three miles were very slow and the second half which changed to road at Postling Frith and followed Brady Road all the way down into Lyminge and then round it and back across golf course, was a bit quicker as can be seen by the splits: 9.03/ 8.30/ 9.15/ 7.26/7.12/7.29
Distance: 6 miles Time: 00:48:58 Ave Pace: 8.10 m/m
Distance: 6 miles Time: 00:48:58 Ave Pace: 8.10 m/m
Wednesday 22 August 2012
First run in 8 days and felt really fresh and eager to start new season. Did two laps of Lyminge. Pace was left to how I felt. Splits 7.16/ 7.30/ 7.18/ 7.46/ 7.07/ 7.19
Distance: 6 miles. Time: 00:44:20 Ave Pace: 7.23 m/m
Distance: 6 miles. Time: 00:44:20 Ave Pace: 7.23 m/m
READY TO GO!!!!!!
After about a month of easy running having had days off as and when needed, and doing any harder session at striding pace rather than flat out and after a week in some glorious sunshine in Greece I now feel refreshed and ready to start the Autumn training.
After the reflecting stage at the end of July I have now used this period to set my main GOAL for the Autumn and hopefully how I am going to achieve this. Planning is vital, my goal Sub 59 mins at the GREAT SOUTH RUN in Portsmouth on Sun 28 October 2012. I have one mesocycle to plan to get me fit and fast ready for this race, which I will break down into 10 weekly microcycles, building the endurance and speed on a weekly basis with a taper at the end so I am refreshed and ready. I will be doing other races along the way, but will not be easing off for them but training through them. Therefore I will be using these as pointers and indicators to how my training is going but will not be disappointed if the times are not to hot.
The Cross Country Season will also be starting in October and hopefully I will be looking for strong performances in these as well.
After the reflecting stage at the end of July I have now used this period to set my main GOAL for the Autumn and hopefully how I am going to achieve this. Planning is vital, my goal Sub 59 mins at the GREAT SOUTH RUN in Portsmouth on Sun 28 October 2012. I have one mesocycle to plan to get me fit and fast ready for this race, which I will break down into 10 weekly microcycles, building the endurance and speed on a weekly basis with a taper at the end so I am refreshed and ready. I will be doing other races along the way, but will not be easing off for them but training through them. Therefore I will be using these as pointers and indicators to how my training is going but will not be disappointed if the times are not to hot.
The Cross Country Season will also be starting in October and hopefully I will be looking for strong performances in these as well.
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