Sunday, 25 January 2009
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!
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!
Friday, 23 January 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, 18 January 2009
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!
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!
Sunday, 11 January 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, 4 January 2009
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.
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.
Friday, 2 January 2009
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.
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.
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