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.Originally Posted by Marco
Good luck with whatever you end up doing.
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.
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
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.
Last edited by Travs; 03-12-2023 at 06:37 PM.
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).
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.
Although i do have a copy of "Training for the Uphill Athlete" coming from santa in a few weeks... which is specifically for uphill mountain running, cross country skiing, etc.... so i might tweak few things once i've digested the pearls of wisdom within.
Thanks for that. I guessed that a treadmill would be involved, but I was checking just in case you'd found a suitable hill to train on in Warwickshire
A very slow paddle up to Buck Hill and beacon Hill today: one of those days when my shoes are clean when I get back home, because the standing and flowing water on the paths is mightier than the mud.
The 4 hours of jet lag and the roughly 25C of temperature lag didn't make it unpleasant, just very slow. Yesterday I returned from a 9-day trip to Oman: part work, part holiday; yes, I am retired, but retired academics are never completely retired, and a former colleague who is now at Sultan Qaboos University invited me there for some research collaboration. It would have been rude to turn it down. Daytime temperatures typically 28-31C. No training runs during the 9 days, for various reasons:-
1. The dress code applies to men as much as women, although it is a matter of politeness rather than being strictly enforced. I did see a fair number of tourists in shorts.
2. Running just isn't a thing in Oman. I saw no more than 4 people running in the whole time I was there (not even on the University campus), and all but one of then was wearing leggings rather than shorts. I did have running shorts with me, but I just didn't feel like making an exhibition of myself.
3. There was nowhere very nice to run, either from my accommodation at the University, or from the city centre hotel where we stayed later.
In his lifetime he suffered from unreality, as do so many Englishmen.
Jorge Luis Borges
2 x 2km with 3 minutes rest. Actually, the rep is 80-100mtrs longer than 2km, depending on whose watch you believe, and its a tricky one to pace, as the first half mile is downhill, and the rest uphill.
7:35
7:26
Still felt a little stiff from the weekend, but clearly it didn't affect me too much.
9.5 miles.
Thursday night is 400mtr reps on the track.
Last edited by Travs; 06-12-2023 at 08:26 AM.
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