Today's Training

[Mike T]

1.02 miles (according to Garmin) around a grassy park, half of which was frozen solid (and very slippy), whilst the other half must have been in the sun as it was wet and very muddy (and also very slippy).

Amongst trying, successfully, to stay on my feet on the slippy terrain, there was a bit of dog dodging from over enthusiastic four-legged friends whose owners didn't have as much control over them as they should have had. I was reasonably happy with a time of 9m 54s, which comes out at 9m 42s/mile pace (according to Garmin). My calves feel battered now, but there's no other sign that I ran a mile.

Whilst other members may have their dilemmas, I have no doubt about my way ahead; rather than continue to build up my distance, I intend to get my speed up to below 8m/mile pace before extending it.

Marco - I would suggest gradually increasing your distance at a comfortable pace rather than trying to increase your speed. Speed without distance = injury. If they have not been used in a particular way for some time muscles can increase their strength quite quickly, and can then injure themselves and other structures - tendons for example. The risk of this happening is much higher at speed.

Good luck with whatever you end up doing.

[Travs]

Whilst i wouldn't want to question Marco who clearly has far more experience than me.... i would agree with Mike and suggest increasing distance is always to be preferred over speed in the first instance.

A cold night and another steady run round the south of Coventry. The first couple of miles were indeed steady, around 5.30/km, but sure enough the three at the front picked up the pace.... i stayed close behind without going mad, as the average pace started to increase.

Caught them back up at the traffic lights across the very busy A45 Birmingham-Coventry-Northampton road which cuts through south Cov..... again the pace went up and i tried keep keep them within reach. Once the 5 miles were up the average pace finished off at 4.33/km so we must have been pushing it those last few miles.

I also did a couple of miles beforehand, and 4 easy miles AM, to total 11 miles for the day.

Tomorrow is a Birmingham League XC fixture where i hope to run well.... my performances recently appeared to have signalled that i'd pulled away a little from those i would usually finish around... but a glance at the training of some of my clubmates in other training groups, they all seem to be moving well at the moment so it could be some more inter-club competition in the mid-pack.

[Marco]

Marco - I would suggest gradually increasing your distance at a comfortable pace rather than trying to increase your speed. Speed without distance = injury. If they have not been used in a particular way for some time muscles can increase their strength quite quickly, and can then injure themselves and other structures - tendons for example. The risk of this happening is much higher at speed.

Good luck with whatever you end up doing.

At the moment I'm trying to learn how to run, as my old running action no longer works. My leg is different to what it used to be when I was racing, and my body/brain has to work out how to co-ordinate it.

My old technique was to run on the front of my foot, so my heel never touched the ground. At my current pace (just under 10m/mile) I'm landing on my heels, which is not what I want to do as it puts more shock up the leg. I have noticed that on the 'sprint' to the finish, when my Garmin says I'm doing 8m 10-20s/mile pace I can feel the reassuring pattern of landing on the front of my foot. This is why I'm looking for 8m/mile pace, and when I'm there I'll look at extending the distance

[Travs]

Despite initially feeling a bit sore from yesterday, i was pleasantly surprised to knock out a quality 8.5 miles this morning, with a gentle 2 mile cool down to finish.

Weekly total 63 miles... although i lost a full day on monday due to work... and trying to catch miles up during the week when there's a race at the weekend is usually a bad idea, so had to let go of the 70 mile target this week.

Looking on course to average 67 or 68 miles per week for 2023... which is marginally down on last year's 69mpw... but i'm certainly stronger now than i was last year.

We enter the next "block" of winter training at the club, and move to more regular 3 session weeks, with a taper before the major XC fixtures.... although my plans are to forego the club weekend session and replace it with a dedicated uphill session....

...once the National XC champs are done in late Feb, i'll have exactly 8 weeks until my first uphill fell race, and i want to get to that "8 weeks out" with my uphill base firmly in place.

[Marco]

.... although my plans are to forego the club weekend session and replace it with a dedicated uphill session....

Now that is interesting. I'd be keen to know what a dedicated uphill session looks like, with a view to a possible/if-it-all-goes-well return to uphill running at some stage (downhill is beyond me, as I've already mentioned).

[Travs]

My "base" uphill sessions between now and end of Feb will be loosely based around....

An hour uphill, 10mins steady at 6-8% gradient, 5mins hard at 15% gradient (x4).
Or similar.
On treadmill.
Longer run remaining generally flat whilst XC season is still on.

Once the XC is over at end of Feb i'll probably sharpen the session up into pure reps.... perhaps hard reps up the Lawley or Ragleth in Shropshire... but my sunday longer run also uphill, nothing manic, perhaps 60-75mins contuinuous uphill, again this would have to be a treadmill run.