And the beat goes on...

With the Ironbridge half finished for 2009, my appeal for a fresh target drew only the suggestion that I move up to a full marathon, which was not quite what I had in mind. Firstly, to run twice the distance I would probably have to do twice the training, midweek runs of 3 & 4 miles become 6 & 8 miles, long Sunday runs of up to 2 hours would now take 4 hours, and I just don't fancy committing to that much time spent running. Secondly, my initial target was a podium finish in the over-60s, which would probably require a time of about 1:45. So, I had a time to aim for. The sort of target that I was looking for was more along the lines of a 4-minute mile, or make the Welsh team for the 2010 Commonwealth games. Bearing in mind how far my last target was from a world-class performance, and that I failed to achieve it, I probably need a more realistic goal!
Time rolls on, and the Telford Sexarathon starts with the Lilleshall 10km. Perhaps I should explain. The Sexarathon is a six-race series, one race a month from April to September, with an overall winner being the person who gains most points in the series - a bit like the F1 championship, but without the sponsorship.
My first clever thought was to save money by entering the series right at the outset, and get a discount for entering all 6 races - a bit like buy 5, get 1 free. But before I did that, I thought that I'd save another £12 by joining a club, and not paying the surcharge for being unattached. So I joined Telford Harriers. As an unemployed, it cost me £9, so I'm £3 ahead on that deal. In order to join, I went along on a club night, and joined a group going for a training run, including a woman called Lisa.
And last night was the Lilleshall 10km. I'd left it quite late to enter, what with waiting until I'd joined the Harriers, so I still hadn't received my number when I left just after 6 pm, got there to find parking was getting rather crowded, and I looked as if I'd left it a bit late. However, I found registration, got my number, got it pinned on, and still had time to spare when I got to the start. The race itself started uphill, then ran around the gardens of Lilleshall Hall. Very attractive gardens, but did we have to use those gravel paths? It's like running through sand. Then, we head out along the main entrance drive, passing kilometre markers as we go. I pass the 3 km in what looks like 16 minutes on my watch, and I do a quick conversion into 3 km = 2 miles = 8 minute miles = OK, then I remember that 2 miles is a bit further than 3 km, so it's not quite so OK. After all, I was running 8 minute miles for about the first 7 miles of Ironbridge. Then we go through 4 km in just over 20 minutes, about 5 minutes per km = 8 minute miles, so I'm feeling a bit better about my pace. Just then, the pace car comes the other way, reading 19 minutes. Obviously, we must have started just after 7 pm on my watch, and I'm well ahead of 8 minute mile pace. Also, the leader is now about 2 km ahead of me, and on course for what I worked out to be about 35 minutes. It turned out that he was on course for a much faster time, just over 31 minutes, winning by a clear 2 minutes. He was certainly well clear at that point.
One of the things about the sort of course that we were running, where we ran out from the hall along the entrance drive, turned around at the entrance gates, and then ran back, is that you can see how many people are ahead of you as they all come streaming past you before you reach the turning point. You also get to see how many people are behind you, including...a woman called Lisa. Plugging away uphill back towards the Hall, and it's starting to get a bit tough, even tougher when Lisa comes past me, asking if I'm allright!
It gets tougher still when we get back into the garden, and have to plough through those gravel paths again, but I keep going, encouraged by passing a youngish guy in Wrekin Road Runners strip, and finally pick up the style to cross the line in decent form, but with no big finish left in me.
Results were out today, and I finished 167th out of 276, my worst performance since Delamere in terms of the % of the field who beat me, in a time of 49 minutes 39 secs, which at 159% of the winner's time, is again my worst result since Delamere. On the positive side, I was 3rd 60 year-old, disappointingly only 10 seconds behind 2nd man, and I DID beat 5 minute kilometres for the entire distance, and the Lucozade site converted to a 1:49 half-marathon, nearly 4 seconds faster than the converted time for Action Heart, and the actual time for Ironbridge.
How do I square the "worst performance" figures from the start of the paragraph above with the "best performance" figures at the end? Firstly, the winner was 2 minutes clear of the field - I ran 150% of the 2nd man, much the same as Ironbridge. Secondly, this was a much more professional field, with much less of a turnout of "fun" runners. A final thought on Ironbridge, where my actual time was slower than that predicted by Action Heart: At Action Heart, I was so bushed that I had nothing left for a big finish, whereas at Ironbridge, I had saved something. It would seem that running at a steady pace, and finishing the race with nothing left is the way to get your best time (University of the Bleeding Obvious)
Now, the rest of the Sexarathon is shorter races, 3 & 4 milers, so it's down to speed training, and let's see if I can make up those 10 seconds...

The Last Post. Or is it?

Some more thoughts on the numbers...accountants rule, OK?
1/ After the Action Heart 5, my time there converted into 1:52:55 on the Lucozade website, and yesterday I only ran 1:53:09. The last few weeks of training didn't unlock a better performance, on the other hand, it was well within tolerance. And my time was 149.7 % of the winner, against 151.6% of the winner at Action Heart. It will, of course, take me forever - at that rate of improvement - to reduce my time to 100% of the winner!
2/ My time for the first mile was about 8 minutes, if fact for the first 5 miles I was averaging 8 minute miles (i.e. running this 5 miles pretty much as fast as Action Heart. Either I was running faster, or there's a lot of downhill up to this point (which is before the plunge down Coalbrookdale).
3/ I reckon that I was pretty much on 8 minute miles all the way to Coalport - about 7 miles, so that's 56 minutes, and the last 6.1 miles then took another 57 minutes - that's 9.34 minute miles. OK, it's a tough uphill slog from Coalport to Madeley, but I averaged 9 minute miles for the 4 miles from Coalport to Stirchley last weekend, so it looks as if I need to do something to supercharge my homeward leg - perhaps the Carbo Gel that I forgot made a difference?
4/ My charge over the last 200 yards gained me 14 seconds on Colin Pheasant, so if I had maintained that pace for the full 13 miles, it would have gained me - let's see, 13.1 miles is 23,056 yards, so divide by 200 and multiply by 14 gives me 1,614 seconds = 27 minutes. That's a finishing time of 1:26, still 11 minutes behind the winner! Encouragingly, though, the same calculation at Delamere would have had me finishing 17 minutes behind, and that over a distance of only 6 miles.
5/ Wendy commented that my running style changed from droop-shouldered shuffling - for most of the way round - to something altogether more dynamic for my finish. Certainly, I was consciously lifting my knees and 'running' on the run-in, and I did seem to pick up speed in two stages, first when I changed into 'running' gear, and then again when I put in the effort and started to sprint. Lesson seems to be that I need to learn how to run. I know that if I could maintain the fast shuffle for the whole distance that I could reduce my time to 1:45, but it seems that, to do better than that, a change of style is indicated.

So, I've run my half-marathon. Where do I go now? I know that I will continue running, but - What is my motivation?
Answers on a postcard, please.

It's Over!

I intended to blog last night with all the "the preparations are over, all that's left is to run the race tomorrow...", but I ran out of time, and here I am having completed the run without having charted my last preparations. Not too good, really. After last week's long run of 8 miles, I tapered with a couple of shorter runs, where I didn't exert myself, on Tuesday and Thursday. The "glycogen loading" high-intensity short run on Saturday just didn't happen, and I left it too late to get any energy gel to give myself a boost during the race - when I got to Asda, they were sold out.
Owain came around with Leyla on Sunday morning, and we discussed the points where the groupies were going to cheer us on from. Ten O'clock we headed for the start, with them expected to show up at various points around the course. Twenty minutes of hanging around, and then we set off, just an "on your marks", 2, 3, and then the hooter. We lapped the arena once before setting out on the course proper. About half a mile out, we went down a fairly steep slope to the bridge that carried us over the Silkin way, and I let gravity take me, and flew away from Owain so that when I reached the groupies (Wendy, Rhiannon and Leyla), I was clear ahead of Owain. Went through the 1 mile mark in 8 minutes - on target for 1:45. At the bench (second groupie check point) at about 2 miles (done in 16 minutes) I was still clear of Owain. However, he caught me up, and pulled ahead when I slowed to a walk at the drinks station. Past the 5 miles in 40 minutes - still on schedule, and heading down Coalbrookdale, and Owain is nowhere in sight ahead of me, when who should come jogging past me! He'd stopped for an unwatering pit stop, and was only now catching up! He was still ahead of me as we went past the groupies on the Ironbridge, and they were giving me grief about letting Owain beat me. I said to myself "this is where the tough get going", and started picking up places as we headed out alongside the river, including passing Owain again.
We recrossed the river at Coalport (last groupie check-point) and started the long climb out of the valley, still picking off people ahead of me, but still finding that there were people behind me coming past me. Eventually, we re-entered the town park, and went past the 12 mile mark in about 1:45, so that target is beyond reach, but the 2 hours looks comfortable. It's all about how fast, and how far down the field now.
There was one guy (he looked as if he might be in my age group) whom I had passed just as we headed out of Coalport, and who had re-passed me (etc., etc.) several times since then. Now, about haf-a-mile out, he comes steaming past me again. This awakens my competitive instincts, and I track him until we start to go past Wonderland, a couple of hundred yards from the finish, when I change from long-distance fast shuffling style to big-finish actually picking my feet up and running style, and I go steaming past him (I later found out that he was about ten years younger). And then picked up the speed, and picked off another 3 places before the finish, in what turned out to be 1hour 53.09 seconds, with the groupies whooping me home.
Results, 293 out of 660, and Owain finished just over 8 seconds and 134 places later! I was 7th finisher out of 20 in the over-60 class, and I managed to beat all the over-65s, and I finished 5 minutes behind the 6th over-60. At least he didn't beat me by an embarassingly narrow margin, where I'd have kicked myself for not trying that much harder.
It's now nearly midnight, my buttocks are still aching, so I'll have an early night, with more analysis of the numbers tomorrow.

A Mixed Bag

Another week of exceeding the planned mileage - of course, last Monday's 12.5 miles got me off to a good start, then 5.7 miles of interval work, combined with running every day since Wednesday contributed to a total of nearly 30 mies against 20 planned. As with most of last week's runs, the times were disappointingly slow. In particular, the 4.29 miles around the town park, where I've been close - but not quite making it - to breaking 38 minutes. This week was the furthest away from that since I stopped wearing my boots!
However, today was a great improvement. 8 miles down to Coalport and back, 8 minute miles on the way down, and better than 9 minute miles on the way back up. I was as quick coming up as I was going down the last time that I ran this, and 5 minutes faster over the whole route. Now to taper off for the last week, with girly rest days, and softy short and easy runs in between.

One last throw

After reading Katherine's blog about how hard she's training in China, Wendy more or less challenged me for my girly training methods, taking a day's break between sessions and the like. So on Friday (which would normally have been a rest day) I ran 6 miles, then on Saturday another 4. Disappointingly, the 6 miles was in 53 minutes - slightly slower than my time at Delamere way back at the start of January. This brought the week's total up to 34 miles, against a planned 22. Since the race is in a fortnight, it's perhaps a little late in the day to intensify the training, but an extra week of hard training, before I taper for the last week, may just make all the difference.
Then I started this week with long run day, basically running the whole course, only omitting the start and finish, but including an extra long loop to bring the mileage back up to - well, only 12.5 miles. Completed this in just over 2 hours, again disappointing. Somehow those last couple of miles are a killer, either that or I really need the taper to find me some extra zip, otherwise I won't even break 2 hours, let alone reach my target of 1-45, or even my predicted 1-52.

Going the distance

At last! I've run a half-marathon distance. In fact, I've run more than a half-marathon distance - 13.84 miles. Part of Marshal Zhukov's "train hard, fight easy" philosophy. I think that I said a few weeks ago that I intended to do at least one training run over the full distance, so that, come the day, I wouldn't find the extra couple of miles from my previous longest run as an unwelcome surprise. Certainly, this much extra (my previous longest, a month ago, was only just over 11 miles, so this is nearly 3 miles further) gave me some real grief on the homeward stretch. The course that I'd plotted was home to Coalport, then back up the long slog as far as Aqueduct, then turn around and go back down, and then back up. The result was doing the climb out of Coalport twice, intentionally, since it looks as if this climb is going to be what sorts out the men from the boys, after about 9 miles of running. It was a hard run, enlivened by passing groups of people whom I'd already seen as I went down (or up). One pair of women I passed as I approached Aqueduct on the first climb, passed them again as I headed back down, and then passed them again as I climbed back up again!
The time, 2 hours 15 minutes, was disappointing considering my target time, and the predicted times that I'm getting. I'm just going to have to push it a bit harder this week, before beginning to taper down my effort in the last fortnight.
And today, I received eMail notification that my race number (142) should be with my in the post in a few days.

Another week, another 23 miles...

Results for Action Heart are in - I'm 236 out of 762 in a time of 40 minutes 41 secs, which predicts a half-marathon time of just under 1 hour 53 on the Lucozade site, which comes in pretty close to the time calculated on the % of the winner's time.
This week, other commitments (like a job interview and taking Katherine to the airport) interfered with my normal training days, so I trained Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Monday I followed the Coalport Dodger route from Stirchley and Dawley Station, past Madeley Market Station, and down into Coalport. And then back! Part of my intention to remove the sting from that long gruelling run back up into Telford. It seemed to work, this time (I don't know whether it was second wind, or the slope actually eases) I was able to pick up the pace as I neared Madeley, and I covered the 8 miles in 1 hour 12 minutes, 35 minutes going down, and 37 minutes coming back up. Wednesday was only remarkable in that, for the 3rd consecutive run on this route, I've completed it in just over 38 minutes (38:02, 38:09, 38:08), and Friday was about 5 1/2 miles - when I tried to measure it on Runfinder, it packed up on me! I'll do it later!

Take Heart

After last Sunday's long run, the rest of the week's training was relatively light. Tuesday saw a return to intervals - 3 laps of just over a mile, with a half-mile recovery between - and the interval time was no real improvement over my first attempt, except that the later laps were closer to the first lap. Speed not really improving, but the ability to maintain it is. Thursday was a fairly fast straight 4 miles, at just better than 9 minute miles. Still a way to go. The Saturday run I pulled forward to Friday, and just ran an easy 3 miles, to leave me fresh for Sunday's race. When I say easy, my Heart Rate averaged 133 - I'm usually pulling somewhere in the 160s!
Sunday's race was the Action Heart 5, starting from Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley, so plenty of medical backup in the event of a mishap! Again, plenty of professional-looking athletes, many of them seem to be wearing heart monitors, certainly some of the wrist watches wouldn't look out of place as Tuvok's tactical array!
Having made the mistake of starting at the front at Delamere, I lined up some distance back from the start line, only to find the space in front of me filled with even slower runners. The hooter goes, and off we set, with me alternating between running and walking, because it was so congested that I was in danger of running into somebody! We get clear of the hospital grounds, and I start passing people, generally getting more of a feeling of being in a race than I did at Delamere, where I only passed about a dozen people in the whole 6 miles. Unlike Delamere, however, it's much more of a road race - actually being run on the road, with cars in side roads having to stop to let us pass, and cars on the main roads keeping towards the middle to avoid running us down. I tend to keep on the pavement, and I'm looking around at every junction, something that other runners don't do. Am I the only one who doesn't totally trust drivers?
We reach the "1 mile" marker, and somebody behind me says "8 minutes - quite good", and I mentally agree. That will give me a respectable 40 minutes for the distance, although I'd like to do better. Perhaps I can pick the pace up later.
About half-way round, and we start down the hill along Himley Road, and I put my fell-running expertise to use, and start flying past people, using gravity to take me. Finally, we hit the 4 mile mark, and turn for home, and start up another hill. Somebody near me complains about it all being hills - I invite him to Ironbridge next month! I plan my big finish, when I will pull back another couple of places, to begin with about 200 yards to go, as we re-enter the hospital grounds. Somehow, the legs don't seem to want to know, and the guy in front of me actually starts to pull away (his big finish beats my big finish!), and I can hear the patter of tiny feet closing in from behind me. The fear of losing a place does what the carrot of gaining a place failed to do, and I manage to pull the last bit of performance out of my legs, and I at least hold my place to cross the line in ?th place. (No results yet - watch this space!). I know, however, that I finished in just over 40 minutes, because the pace car, with stop-watch on top, is parked near the finish, and I can see that it's already over 40.
Over the line, make sure that they've got my number, pick up my Large commemorative T-shirt, collect a drink, and sit and let the legs recover. Then, back to the car (fortunately, I've got on-site parking, rather than about half-a-mile away on the Servosteel car park), get changed, drink a bit more, eat a banana, then back to the race marquee and look around the Sweatshop stand, where they've got a rail of vests and t-shirts, most at reduced prices. I spot a nice red singlet reduced to a fiver, and I'm just about to put my hand in my pocket when I overhear somebody say something about a discount. Back to the car again, collect the discount voucher for a fiver off anything from Sweatshop that came with my race information, and I am now the proud possessor of a singlet that cost me nothing!
All in all, a pretty good day, a new t-shirt and free singlet (both in my racing colour of red), and a time that is about 150% of the winner's, compared with 168% at Delamere. Taking the Ironbridge winner as 1 hour 15, 150% is 1 hour 52, whereas 168% is 2 hours 7. The 7 weeks between Delamere and Dudley has reduced my Ironbridge time by 15 minutes, and I've got 4 weeks left to go - another 7.5 minutes would get me home in 1 hour 45. The dream is still alive, at least in my calculations!
Finally, back home, a bite to eat, and I'm off with Owain to get some upper-body strength training in on the Severn, while helping him with some paddling practice for Devizes-Westminster.

Wrong kind of snow

Finally the snow disappeared, and I was able to get back into training shoes - heavenly light after nearly two weeks of running in boots! Again, I exceeded the planned training mileage, and this Sunday's long run (nearly 11 miles) was in only 1 hour 41 minutes. 3 weeks ago I ran 10 miles for the first time, in 1 hour 47, now I've run a mile further in 6 minutes shorter. If I can add another mile and reduce by 6 minutes every 3 weeks for the next 6 weeks, that's the half in 1 hour 29! Unfortunately, I've only got 5 weeks, but anything like that rate of improvement will knock spots off my target time.
I seem to be vacillating between unreasonable optimism (see above) and a certain despondency that I haven't yet covered 13 miles in 1 3/4 hours. So, I need a backup plan. Checking on last year's results, 2nd in the over-60 class was run in 1 hour 42 by Colin Tether, number 613, so look up photos of last year's race, go through them until I come across number 613, and clock what Colin Tether looks like. Admittedly, out of a field of 540 in last year's event, one person will be difficult to pick out, but there won't be that many that look old enough to be in the over-60s. So, if I can pick him out, stick to him like glue, and outsprint him, as long as there isn't more than 1 new 0ver-60 coming up from the under-50s, the podium is mine!
Something else that I need to check up on is how glycogen loading works, to plan my pre-race diet. Come to think of it, I have another race next Sunday, so this week would be a good time to experiment. Googling "Glycogen Loading"...

Cold Snap

After last Sunday's bitter cold, the snow finally arrived on Monday, and the UK, apparently, ground to a halt. The mobile phone network was overloaded with people calling in with the excuse that they were snowed in, the broadband internet took a beating from all those people who stayed and worked from home, and even SatNavs failed - the snow blinded the satellites!
The effect it had on me? I put on my hiking boots, and ran in those for three out of this week's four runs (the snow disappeared for Wednesday before coming down again on Thursday). Having spent all that money on state of the art running shoes, it may seem silly, but Emil Zatopek and Roy Fowler used to deliberately train wearing army boots - runnning shoes were a piece of cake after that! It does make it hard to compare this week's times with previous efforts, because of the extra weight that I'm carrying, the closest that I've got as a comparable run is this Sunday, but again I exceeded the planned mileage over the week.
Long run, and bearing in mind the extra weight of the boots, I'm thinking of a shorter run to balance out, but just how much shorter? Wendy suggests that, as I'm training my body to run for about 2 hours, I run outwards for an hour, then turn around and head back. Fair enough, point my feet in the direction of the Wrekin, and set off. Check my time at the All Labour in Vain, just over half an hour, out across Lightmoor, and slog up into Little Wenlock, barely managing to put one foot in front of another by the time I reach the top, and then on towards the Wrekin. Up ahead there's a little coppice, that will make a good landmark to use on Runfinder, and I've reached there in just under 54 minutes, I'll probably take longer on the way back, with fatigue setting in, so I'll turn around here.
A couple of weeks back, I checked with the organisers as to what would be provided at the drinks stations - wisdom says that you should train with it, to ensure that you don't get some sort of unwelcome reaction during the race itself. Anyway, this is an event that isn't sponsored by one of the energy drinks makers, and what's on offer is water (sponsored by Severn-Trent?). So any energy (and wisdom says that you WILL need some!) has to be provided by the individual runner. I could take my own energy drink with me, but it seems to make more sense to use an energy gel, and wash it down with the water provided. And the recommendation is that it takes a LOT of water, not just the quick splash that you can get with the regular bottle.
So, I'm testing the gel today, and I take a break of a couple of minutes to get my breathing back to normal so that I can take a big swig of water, and then I set off walking, not running, to make sure that I've drunk enough. About half my water bottle (I measured it to about 500 ml) later, it's taken me 4 minutes, say quarter of a mile covered, and I've taken on board the whole gel pack. Now, it's back to running, and (maybe it's the placebo effect, maybe it's the chance to get some oxygen into the bloodstream) I'm feeling thoroughly energetic again. Going through Little Dawley, I overhaul a man on a bike - OK, so he's a pensioner, but...
Finally, I get back, in 1 hour 46 minutes, so the homeward half, notwithstanding the walking at the turnaround, was fractionally faster than the outward half. Energy drink + (I think) downhill on the way home just beats fatigue. Plug the route into Runfinder, and it comes out as just under the ten miles, marginally further than a fortnight ago, and a minute faster. And in boots!
I did some research into the railway line from Coalport, and I was right, the climb up into Madeley is along that route. I also found out that this climb is "1 in 31 - believed to be the steepest gradient over which locomotive-hauled standard gauge passenger trains have ever travelled in the UK"! Having felt like the little engine that could, I believe it!

Half-way there

Well, slightly more than half-way - I've completed 9 weeks of training, and the race is in 7 weeks time. A good week, for the first time I felt that I was running, instead of just shuffling quickly! Again, I exceeded the planned distance by 3 miles, this time without the benefit of a free session at Fitness First. The Thursday run was especially encouraging, taking in about 5 miles of the Silkin way, and doing it in 43 minutes - just a little slower than the 42 minutes that I predicted to the Action Heart 5 organisers when I put in my entry. And, if Delamere is anything to go by, my competitive instincts will chop a few more minutes off!
Of course, Sunday is Long Run Day, and the (revised) plan was to run to the foot of the Wrekin, which is about 10 miles, again. The reason for the revised plan is that last Sunday I came home rather muddy, and my wife suggested that NOT getting muddy would be a good idea. So come up with a route that, unlike that current state of the Ironbridge course, isn't too muddy. OK, www.runfinder.co.uk/ shows a route to the foot of the Wrekin that takes in some back roads, so I can go that way, and come back the normal way through Little Wenlock. Now, last night's weather forecast was talking about temperatures that were pretty low, but then just look out for that wind-chill factor! Thermal vest on, and I'm trotting along quite happily, sun beating down out of a clear sky, and not feeling too cold at all. Turn off down Dog-in-the-lane to start the "back roads" section of the route, and it quickly (well, as quickly as anything does at 6 mph!) turned into an almost unused lane leading to a farm, where it was obvious that visitors are infrequent, and probably unwelcome - certainly the dogs didn't seem too welcoming. I've passed a sign indicating that this was no through road, but I'm on foot, so I'm guessing that it's only impassable to wheeled vehicles. After about a mile of decent track after the farm, I come across a couple of large rocks in the way, that would clearly prove a problem for a car, even an off-roader, but us runners are more agile than that. Unfortunately, there appears to be a stream rising at that point, and the track that continues after the rocks is more stream than track. Bearing the muddiness injunction in mind, I give it up after a cursory attempt, and return the way that I'd come. Having failed to reach my destination, I added in another loop to make up the mileage, and started on the return leg. NOW the sun had gone in, and I'm heading across Lightmoor straight into an Easterly wind that may not be direct from the Urals, but there's precious little shelter up there - the clue is in the name! - and it's going through my jogging bottoms as if they weren't there.
I go past a couple of little boys, whom I can hear, as I head off, mimicking my breathing. You run 10 miles and then take the mick, little so-and-sos!
All along, I've felt as if I haven't been really hitting it as hard as in earlier sessions this week, and I'm already making excuses to myself about how I haven't really recovered from last Sunday, and the other session were hard, so it's not surprising that it's a poor performance, and, surprise, surprise, I get back in just under the 2 hours - 10 minutes longer than last Sunday's time for 10 miles. Then I go onto Runfinder, and plot the actual route that I followed. Bigger surprise, it's over 11 miles! Over a mile more, and only 10 minutes longer! Further AND faster than last week!

Captain's Log - Supplemental

A last thought - last week's 7.87 miles was at 10.9275 minutes per mile, this week's 9.89 miles was at 10.819 minutes per mile. A minute improvement, but done over a longer distance. Maybe, just maybe...

Bottom Half

Saturday, 4 miles in 38 minutes, OK time, but the important thing was that I did the planned mileage every day. In fact, with the extra session on Wednesday, I was 3 miles over the weekly target!
Sunday is Long Run Day, this week upping the mileage again to 10. I've got a map of the actual course of the Ironbridge half, and it passes not too far away, so by cutting off the first and last couple of miles, I've got a decent ten-miler. As with the actual race, the first half of it is not too difficult, a few upgrades but nothing too serious, generally downhill as you descend into Ironbridge itself. Running alongside the river weaving around the tourists (in January?!), the river itself doing an impersonation of Mike Tyson - big and brown, powerful and dangerous, then up and over the bridge and picking up the footpath along beside the river. Shortly after crossing the bridge, I catch up and overtake a trio of horsewomen! By the time I recross the river at Coalport Bridge, the legs are starting to complain a bit, and then there's the climb up into Madeley. Most of it is done along the Great Hay Inclined Plane, I think part of the railway track for the old Coalport line. Certainly it is a very steady climb - all two miles of it! By the time I'd reached the top, at Madeley, my muscles were so set in "steady-climbing mode" that I couldn't stretch out and take advantage of the slight down slope after a bridge. Eventually, I'm back home in 1 hour 47, slightly longer than planned for the whole 13 miles. Good job that I've still got 8 weeks to up the mileage and the speed.
The course itself is quite a pleasant run, mostly through mature woodlands, and generally fairly level - a legacy of the old railway lines that form most of the course, with reminders in the archaelogy along the way, with, inter alia, roadbridges, Madeley station, now converted into something else, and the remains (an overgrown brick-built platform) of a station at Stirchley. On the way I met several runners coming towards me, all seeming to be going faster than me. The only comfort that I could take was that none of them had a water bottle, suggesting that their run wasn't going to be anywhere near the hour mark, let alone nearly 2.
I also stumbled across a blog from a woman who was doing ANOTHER half-marathon. Depressing was that the training that she was putting in was all faster than mine, and yet she still (after at least three attempts) had failed to beat the 2 hour mark. The big difference seemed to be that she would do a few weeks with almost religious adherence to a regular training regime, and then she would bunk off days at a time. Now, with 8 weeks to go, seems to be the time when her enthusiasm waned, and her tale is a cautionary one for me!

A Little Experiment

Tuesday night, lying awake in the wee small hours, a thought that has been troubling me crossed my mind. Right back in the very beginning, what got me into doing the half-marathon followed on from my son talking on his blog about running at 7.5 mph - equivalent to a mile in 8 minutes. Now, I've been plugging away, and the best that I've got was 9 minute miles at the Delamere dash, which was a considerable improvement on the 11 minute miles that I'd managed the previous weekend. I've also been getting junk eMails inviting me to take up a free day pass to Fitness First. Light-bulb moment!
First thing Wednesday morning, I sign up for a day pass, and resolve to phone the number later when I've had a chance to work out when best to fit it in. An hour later, Wendy from Fitness First calls me - eager, or what! So, Wednesday, I turn up for my free session at 6 pm, and get shown around. I start on the treadmill - of course - gradually upping the speed until it reaches 12.3 kph, equals 7.6875 mph. It probably has a facility to show figures in imperial, but it was easier to do the maths than work out how to use a machine I'll probably never use again. Kept that up for about 20 minutes, and by then I was getting bored. A number of things combined, firstly, I couldn't keep going at the pace of the machine (the guy on the adjacent machine just kept going like an automaton - plod, plod, plod) - I kept having to speed up to catch up with it, then slow down as I overtook it, and all the time I was conscious of the video I'd seen of some guy who had obviously set it too fast, tripped, and ended up being shot off the back of the machine - ouch! The result of this was that I had to concentrate very hard on just staying on the road, not usually a problem on REAL road. I'd also just picked the first free machine that I saw, in front of which was a TV set showing some cycle racing. All that I learned from this was that guys with blue bums seem to go faster than anybody else (the picture was either an aerial shot of the field, from which you could tell nothing, or taken from a support vehicle that was just behind them - from which you got a good view of their best feature...) because the commentary was turned down so low that you couldnt' hear it. Perhaps if I'd taken more care to find a channel that interested me? I ended up clicking to "Cool down", and gradually slowed down with the machine, ending on a funereal 2.8 kph. All in, nearly 4 km in 24 minutes of extra exercise this week. Then I went into the weights room, and did a number of repetitions on various machines. All in all, a bit of fun playing with the different machines, and proof that I CAN run at 8 minute mile pace - just need another 11 miles at that speed and I'm home and dry!
Thursday's run was a repeat of that on Saturday, just over 4 miles. This time, I didn't feel as good as I did on Saturday (perhaps the extra session on Wednesday was taking its toll), but I did run it nearly 4 minutes faster. Again, encouraging progress.

A Spoonful of Sugar

Having a daughter with a new-found interest in physical exercise and a long-standing love of cooking means that I now have a resident source of nutritional advice for my running. She's insisting that I get properly hydrated after a run, and she's even gone so far as to bake a batch of energy bars. I don't know if they're better than what you can buy in the shops, but I'm sure that she's thrown in all the complex carbohydrates that you could want. From what I can tell, they're from a recipe in a book on sports nutrition that she's borrowed from the library, and which I have started to read to get what I can from it.
With my different attitude to things, what I've picked up is that, as you start to exercise, the first "fuel" mechanism that kicks in is the anaerobic cycle. This is because the body, starting from rest, takes a time to react to exercise by increasing heart-rate and breathing, so that there is very little oxygen in the blood. THIS is why it's important to warm up - because if you don't, when you start to run, you got straight into lactic acid debt, and the body then has to catch up and repay that debt by breathing faster than you need to for the exercise that you are doing, plus having the painful muscles that follows from lactic acid, so that you very soon are unable to run as fast as you might otherwise do, and in more discomfort. With my rather wholesale lack of warming up at Delamere, it's surprising that I went as well as I did.
So what I need to do is warm up beforehand, so I tried for this Tuesday's interval session - especially important for that. A short jog got the heart rate up to 140, which is about 60% of my working zone - bottom end of recovery running. I think that I probably need a longer warm up, but still only raising the heart rate to 140. Certainly, the later intervals (I walk/jogged the heart rate back down to 140 in between) were OK, so I'll just have to work on the opening warm up.

Miles on legs

Tuesday night is interval training night, so I head off down the path of my 1-mile circuit at a fair pace - and only get a couple of hundred yards before, at the bottom of the hill, I come across where the bridge taking a stream (the Mad Brook!) under the path had become blocked, the stream was overflowing, and the path was under water. Slowly picking my way through the driest mud was obviously going to play havoc with my speed work (not to mention trainers that had been new and shiny only 3 weeks ago) so I aborted the interval training for tonight, and just ran about 3 miles. Felt OK during the run, but my right hamstring seemed to tighten up later, so my intention to add an extra midweek run went by the board, and Thursday I just satisfied myself with a game of football.
On to Saturday, and a nice sunny day for a 4 mile run through the town park, and I felt good about it - late on, trotting along the Silkin Way, I felt as if I could keep this up for ever. Perhaps I wasn't pushing the pace enough - certainly, the group of half-a-dozen women (ranging from young to half my age) whom I met coming in the opposite direction seemed to be going faster than I was.
Sunday, and my longest run yet. 8 miles to Shifnal and back. Cutting through the Hem on my route out I came across the first obstacle - overnight hail had left a 30 yard stretch of the road completely flooded from side to side. The only way past was to climb onto the muddy grass verge, and fight my way through the brambles, not emerging until I had been bloodied! However, it was nice to be out in the sun again - until I turned around at the roundabout at Shifnal, and headed back - into a wind that was quite strong (I didn't feel that on the way out!) and rather icy. Back at the turnoff for the Hem, and I obviously can't go back that way (not that I'd intended to anyway - I needed to go the long way back to make up the mileage that I needed) so I carry on along the road to Halesfield. Now, from Shifnal to the Hem there is a footpath (albeit, sometimes rather narrow) but this ends at the Hem. So I have the option of running in the road - and there's a fair amount of fast-moving traffic - or running on the verge, which is rough and hummocky, with the occasional mole-hill. I end up running in the road until a car comes, and then leaping up onto the verge and plodding along through a very resistant medium. It's a bit like the obstacle course in "An Officer and a Gentleman" where you have to run through a field of car tyres. I've never been gladder to get to the corner by Link 51, where the footpath resumes. Good old civilization! By now, with the extra effort of leaping through the clods on the verge, I'm starting to feel the pain, and the last couple of miles I'm digging deep. Perhaps unsurprising for my longest run yet, but it does underline that I need to up my training mileage to encompass at least one half-marathon distance run.
A quick check back over my training diary and I see that I haven't yet run as far as the weekly mileage required by my training schedule - once I have been only 1 mile short, and twice only 2 miles, but never the full mileage. That's something that needs to be addressed!
A final point about my Delamere Dash time - I plugged this in to the Lucozade Sport Running Coach, and this gave me a predicted half-marathon time of under 1 hour 56. Some improvement still to be made!

A Frustrating week

Having finished the Delamere Dash last week, I was feeling good, really motivated to get some serious training done, and really frustrated to find that, not only was there a snowfall, which would have made training awkward, but I'd also come down with a dose of flu - so I've got to take a week off!
On a positive note, the results came through, and I'd finished in 53 minutes 17 seconds - even better than the 55 minutes that I'd been so pleased about, and I was 5th out of 6 in the over-60s, 232nd of 343 overall, and the guy that I blew off with my final sprint was Simon Large, and I took 12 seconds off him in the last 200 metres!
Now, if I do some maths, 200 metres is 1/50 of the full 10k distance, so if I could have maintained that sprint for the whole distance, I would have finished 50 x 12 seconds faster, which is 6 minutes - so 47 minutes, which would have got me up to about 120th overall, and onto the podium for over-60s! Disappointing that, in order to reach 8 minute miles, I'm going to have to sprint all the way!
Now, this Sunday, I have returned to training with a somewhat made-up route, picking up the Silkin way as it goes past Stirchley, and following it down towards Ironbridge gives me some idea of the half-marathon course, and a change in route. Plugging it into http://www.runfinder.co.uk/ came out at close to 5 miles, and I felt good doing it - certainly I felt as if I could have kept going, so I'm beginning to feel as if there will be enough in the tank to complete the distance without feeling too dead!
Also, I did a bit more arithmetic while running. You may remember my fag-packet calculations that if I could run 1 yard per stride, 240 strides per minute, I could run a mile in under 8 minutes? Well, I tried to put some meat on these bones. First, my stride IS about a yard (measured as one and a half flag-stones, which I think are 2 feet wide - THAT'S precise!), but I only counted about 180 strides per minute. So that's 1,800 yards per 10 minutes, which IS better than 10 minutes per mile, but not by enough. I need to increase my stride length to 1.22 yards - say 1 and a quarter, or to increase my stride rate to 220 strides. Either way, that's close on a 25% improvement.

After 45 years...

it felt strange to be, finally, re-starting my competitive running career. This was Sunday, January 4th, with the Delamere Dash, a 10k Trail Race combined with a 2 mile fun run. Getting up at 7 am on a Sunday seemed wrong, especially at the end of the Xmas fortnight of lying in as long as I wanted. It seemed even more wrong looking at the frost on the car, and remembering that the weather forecast that I'd seen was for -7 degrees overnight. Driving up to Cheshire and I've got major league butterflies, not improved by having trouble finding the car park, and then, when I got parked, seeing all the other competitors.
Hundreds of them (I spotted one number in the 500s), and all looking so much more - well, professional, than me. Got my number, pinned it on, all the while feeling as if everybody was nudging everybody else and muttering words to the effect of "What DOES he think he's doing here?" Follow the crowd down to the start (a mile walk!) - a light dusting of snow has started - and get to the start 15 minutes early. Doing a bit of self-conscious stretching, everybody else seeming much more at home with this, certainly I was the only one in a pair of Matalan cheapo jogging bottoms, an old rugby shirt, an original Buff done up to keep my ears warm, and a pair of kayaking gloves. One guy who looked about seventy was just wearing shorts, singlet and gloves (somebody joshed him about it not yet being British Summer Time), and he was jogging to and fro to warm up - but he was warming up faster than I was going to run! Finally I spotted a couple of guys whose getup looked about as amateur as mine - but they were probably taking their kids around in the fun run.
Time rolls around, and we get the pre-start speech, and then we're off. No gun, just a one-two-three-go.
I'd made the tactical masterstroke (and psychological blunder) of being near the front for the start. Tactically, it meant that I didn't have to run fifty yards just to cross the start line. Psychologically, it meant that I was mixed in with a lot of people who were faster than me. In previous endurance events, I've started relatively slowly, and then come through the field as they tired, and that feels good. Setting off at my "my aim is to avoid finishing last" pace, I was subjected to every man and his wife (and five-year-old son) pelting past. After about a mile, the fun runners followed a track off to the right, and us serious athletes (sic!) carried straight on. There was a ten-year old lad about twenty yards ahead, and it was only at the last minute that he veered right. For a moment I really felt as if he was taking the mick!
Steadily, I found myself slipping further and further back in the field as, one by one, other runners passed me. Not quite as frequently as in the first mile, but at a steady rate. By about three miles, I'm starting to re-pass them, though, when we hit a downhill stretch, and I just let gravity take me, only to see them pass me again on the uphill. It's also starting to get hard, and I'm having to push myself, especially on the uphills. One guy, just in front of me, kept slowing to a walk and rubbing his hamstring. Eventually, I pass him on one of his walks. He sets off again, and passes me again. I pass him on a downhill, and he comes past me again. Finally, I asked him, as he caught and passed me again, if he was determined not to let me beat him. He agreed. Apparently, I was keeping him going. Did I look so amateur that he was ashamed to let me beat him? We're still side-by-side as we pass people who've already finished, and are telling us it's only a couple of hundred yards, and I go for the big finish, and leave him floundering in my wake. Not only that, I make up about twenty yards on another guy, and pass him about twenty yards out. I hear somebody, a marshal I think, comment about my sprint finish.
It looks as if, at my level, you're expected to put all your energy into tottering over the line! I was also pleased that my time was about 55 minutes (I'll have to wait to see the results for a better one than just looking at my own watch), which is about 9 minute mile pace, a big improvement on the 11 minutes that I've been taking in training. So, I've raced over a distance nearly half a half-marathon, and very nearly my target pace.
Before the race, queueing for the toilets, there were a couple of young women in front of me, dressed in serious looking kit, talking about Personal Bests, and where they were running last week, and what conditions they prefer to run in, for all the world like serious athletes. So I'm feeling good, quite emotional, while queueing for some orange squash, when I see one of the girls finish - some way behind me. Quite encouraging!
I still feel as if I look an impostor, but at least my time would have finished me about 180 out of 212 last year. Altogether a good result.

Heart Rate

This is the second time of trying to record this post - last time the computer crashed on me - honest, it wasn't New Year's day fever!

I think that I've worked out how the Heart Rate Monitor works, at any rate I'm getting Telemetry out of it - although it does seem to be coming from a different Space/Time continuum!
You see, one's maximum heart rate decreases with age, and there is a formula for working it out - in fact, I found 4 without really looking very hard at all. However, they seem to agree that my MHR should be between 159 and 165, so I should work my training on various percentages of those numbers, dependent upon what I am trying to achieve with each session. Except that the MHR can be anywhere up to 25 out. So my MHR is somewhere between 134 and 190. Very scientific!
Time for a reality check, and some data from a real run with my real heart rate, my first run since Xmas day. Firstly, this was the longest run that I have done so far (in my life, not just since I started training for Ironbridge), 6.66 miles over to Shifnal and back. Noteworthy was that I startled a buzzard into flight on my way out. On the way back, there were 3 of them circling overhead! Also noteworthy was my average heart rate of 162. This puts my (average) effort firmly above the lactic threshold - i.e., in the area that my body can sustain for about 5 seconds! Sadly, the area of science that I am breaching appears to have to do with how close to maximum my heart was, rather than how I can cover 6 miles in 5 seconds (fast this may be, but it doesn't even come remotely close to upsetting Einstein's theories). Support for this comes from the fact that the MHR recorded was 172 - the figure for a 52-year old - and this was while just striding out downhill, rather than desperately pushing myself. It appears that my MHR falls somewhere nearer to the "25 either way" rather than the figure calculated with reference to my age!
Since the whole point of the Heart Rate Monitor was to increase the scientific rigour of my training (I have about 10 weeks to increase my speed from 11-minute miles to 8-minute miles if I'm going to reach my target of a podium finish) I need to know whether I'm running in the "Aerobic Zone", the "Anaerobic Zone", or the "Red Line Zone" if this Heart Rate stuff is going to be worth anything.
So, let's look at this a different way. If I need to run 13 consecutive miles in 8 minutes to hit my target 1:45, can I even run ONE mile in 8 minutes? Hmmm... Now I reckon (count ONE and TWO and THREE...) that I'm hitting about 4 paces a second (the light infantry marches at 120 paces per minute, and running would equate to double time, so that makes sense) and at 1 yard per pace, that's 240 yards per minute. 220 yards per furlong, 8 furlongs per mile, so that's easily a mile in 8 minutes. In fact, all that I have to do is increase my stride length to 2 yards and that's a mile in 3 minutes 36 seconds - let's see, the current world record is 3:43. Perhaps stride length is the problem. Let's put some facts into this dream of immortality, and actually run a mile - actually, it's about 1.1 miles, but will give me more of an idea of what I can really manage than these glib calculations. And I'm off - pounding down the path, feeling good, along the level past the sports centre, and turn the corner up towards the Rose and Crown and it's getting harder. It gets harder still as I go past the Rose and Crown itself (no, not dehydration, it's just a rather serious uphill stretch), past the Old Rectory and the new Church of Somebody or other, stretch out as the path turns downhill towards home, put in some effort as I near the end of the circuit, and I've made it in 8:54. That equates to a mile in 8:05- close enough for now. Take a short walk to regain my breath, and do another circuit - this time in 9:36 (8:43 equivalent). Maybe this interval training is the way to do it - work my way up to running 13 consecutive miles in the magic 8 minutes, and I've got it - it worked for Roger Bannister!
So, from now on, you'll find me on a Tuesday night running an ever-increasing number of consecutive miles. Incidentally, while pushing myself to set a personal best mile time, my average heart rate was 166, and I maxed out at 193. That's the heart of a 28-year old! And as for personal best, I can remember as a scrawny, 5 foot tall 16-year old I was running under 6 minutes, and not being competitive then, either.