Run Efforts, WK8 Wednesday 25th November

Comments from coach Joe on the diagram above:

"Ive just seen the diagram for the ru efforts its really good.
Just want to say that you need to run the 400s all in under 1.30.
1.35 is far to slow even in to the headwind. The first block of 4 was o.k but the first two in that set let you down.
The 800s were good which makes me think your holding too much back on the 400s. The last block of 400s wasnt bad its just that 1.35.
In general it was o.k.
Next time you do 400s try and aim for 85 and see how many you can make on that time and if you blow up don't worry just let me know afterwards.
Just think not to long left till the ironman and if you want that hawaii spot its going to hurt but i know you can do it. "

Swam in the evening at UEA in a 25m pool.
1000 warm up as 200 f/s, 200 pull, 200 f/s, 200 pull, 200 f/s
20x 100 as
4 as 50 drill, 50 swim on 1:50
4 as 25 fast, 75 steady, 1st length hard on 1st one, 2nd lenght hard on 2nd and so on. Rep 1:50.
4 as pull on 1:50
8 on 1:40. Was doing well upto this point, with the previous all sub 1:30, but only just managing that full stroke.
16x 25 on 30s. Managed sub 20s for nearly all of them.
200m warm down.
Total of 3600m in 63minutes.

3x 10minute efforts on Turbo - Wk 8 Tuesday 24th November

Todays session comprised a bike effort session on the turbo trainer. The third session doing the 3x 10minutes at 10mile TT pace.
As the last two times that I've done this session I've built each effort harder than the previous, this time I aimed to do all at the same intensity. And of course the intensity I selected was that of the third and final effort from the previous two occurances of this session.
For the efforts I was maintaining over 300watts (equivalent of 27.9mph in a 53x15 gear). Total session took 65minutes with a warm up, 5minutes recovery between efforts and a 10 minute warm down.
I've now learned to take a towel into the garage with me for these sessions. I need it to mop up the sweat.
Helping me through the session this week was Story of The Clash with a bit of Tom Jones on the warm down and in the kitchen after the session whilst I had home made lamb jalfrezi from the freezer.
Swimming tomorrow morning seeing as I failed to make it this morning, and run efforts later in the day.

Chelmsford 10k, Sunday November 22nd (wk 7)

This 10k race was intended as a test of where I am with my training. The hope was that after a few weeks of speed work I'd prove to myself that I was making progress and was indeed becoming a better athlete.
The 40 minute 10k barrier has long been a goal and my PB of 41:15 was set 4 years ago. My coach was confident that I'd get a PB and stood a good chance of a sub 40.
In hind sight the 1ks on Thursday should have been a prediction of how the race would go yesterday. It was similarly windy with a twisty and slightly undulating course. For a 10k it was surprisingly, and confusingly, marked out in miles rather than kilmeters.
My time was 42:28.
Not even close to what we wanted. I'd have settled for sub 42, but didn't even get that.
For sub 40 I needed sub 4 minutes per kilometer (sub 6:26mpm) and for a pb sub 4:07 (6:38mpm).
There was a good turn out and a fair amount of josselling at the start.
Managed 6:35 for the first mile, so that 40min was already off the cards, but PB was still there.
6:37 for the second mile and the PB is still possible. The 40 is going to be hard and I'm already feeling the effects of my exertions.
7:04 for the third. Oh dear. That's my mile pace of my half marathon PB and to do a sub 90 minute half I need to be doing 6:52.
6:56 for the fourth. Well, at least I've sped up from the third.
6:56 for the fifth. Some consistency.
6:57 for the sixth leaving 1:22 for the final 0.22 of a mile.
Average heart rate was 160bpm, max of 167bpm and didn't feel that I could have given anymore on the day.
42:28 I know is an okay time. I can remember back to a time when I was aiming for 1hour for 10k, but I can't help but be a little disappointed. As we learn more from our mistakes than our successes hopefully this will be a learning point. Should I reset expectations more accurately? Was the wind such a factor? Had a tapered right? Had I trained too hard earlier in the week? Had blood doning taken more out of me than expected? Was I too tired? Was I dehydrated? Was I just not focused? Do I need more 10k race experience? Was my pacing slack?
We'll find out over the next couple of weeks with a half marathon and a full marathon coming up.

Tapering
Since the efforts on Thursday the only training I'd done was an hour swim on saturday in a 50m Sportspark pool:
1200m warm up as 200 f/s, 200 drill-swim, 200 pull, 200 drill-swim, 200 pull, 200 f/s
4x 100 on 1:40
400m with 30s rest
4x 100 on 1:35
400m with 30s rest
4x 100 on 1:40 (had planned on 1:30, but wasn't quick enough)
200m warm down

Windy 1km efforts

Not sure if I found today's 4x 1k efforts particularly hard due to the efforts of the last couple of days, blood doning on Tuesday, 20mph head winds or a combination of the lot.

The aim was to do the 1km efforts at 3:50 and then have 2.5min rest between each of them. Times were 3:53.6, 4:05.5, 3:56.2, 3:51.5. The second and fourth were into the wind. Thought I was going to have to stop on the last one.

Raising awareness of prostate cancer - http://uk.movember.com/mospace/374624

Bike Turbo session Wed 18th November wk 7

Today's training involved a bike effort session on the turbo trainer. For the uninitiated that's a stationary device that enables a bike to be ridden without actually going any where.
The Tacx Flow that I have allows for variable resistance and provides stats on what you are doing.
Since I had a hard run yesterday and gave blood I was cautious about not over doing it. But felt good so went with it.
The session involved a 15 minute warm up. 10 minutes at a cadence of 90-95rpm and 280+ watts. 5 mins recovery. 10 mins at 95-100rpm and 290+ watts. 5 mins recovery. 10 mins at 100+ rpm and 300+ watts. Then 15 minutes warm down.

Numbers from the turbo:
Session duration of 1:10:02 cobering 25.8 miles, well rear wheel anyway. Takes the total on the turbo to 2,093.8 miles. Max speed this evening of 31.3mph and an average of 22.1mph.
Legs turned over 6,515 times with a max of 113rpm and an average of 93rpm.
The session used up 884kCal and my max power output was 346watts and the average was 220watts.
Throughout this my average heatt rate was 123bpm and my max was 155bpm

Being stationary in the garage for over an hour is a bit boring so helpinge through the session was Depeche Mode 101.

Raising awareness of prostate cancer - http://uk.movember.com/mospace/374624

Wk7 Tuesday 17th November

Had a good day today.

Made it to UEA Sportspark for an early morning swim. Had set myself a session of 600m warm up including 400m of drill-swim, 10x 200 on 3:20, 16x 25 on 30 and 200m warm down.
Found Oli Milk in the lane next to me when I arrived and he was doing 8x 200 on 3:15. His presence helped me to doing all 10 in under 3 mins and 7 of them in under or on 2:55.
Oli then joined me for the 25s and his presence on my heals helped me to 20s for each of them.
There was another Oli in the lane the other side. Young Oli Rix from Norwich Canoe Club - another ex swimmer that knows the value of swimming for paddling. After the session I spotted him inHis GB track suit. Well if you've got it flaunt it.

Run efforts of lunchtime saw Lynn Emmett and I doing 10x 400m efforts on Whitlingham Lane. Was really pleased with how consistant they were: 1:32.9, 1:31.9, 1:29.8, 1:30.1, 1:29.5, 1:32.2, 1:27.7, 1:31.2, 1:28.5, 1:27.3

Gave blood after work. Received a present from the NHS as thanks for my 25th donation. A nice little label pin, though I was hoping for chocolate when I saw the box. Figure I'm allowed some this evening, so now on a mission to find some.

Raising awareness of prostate cancer - http://uk.movember.com/mospace/374624

Sent from my iPhone

Sunday wk 6 - Norfolk Nips Audax

Schedule said Norfolk Nips Audax. However that was on the Saturday not the Sunday. I do feel sorry for the guys who did do it on the right day. As we'd missed it, and because Will Hall and Jonathan Briggs were also after a ride we did our own 100k audax. Well, okay it was 99k.
My legs felt heavy. The didn't want to turn round at 90+rpm, nor did they want to work hard enough to get my pulse up to 75%. I hadn't been set any targets in either regard, but after the previous weeks ride I was a bit disappointed with how I'd ridden. Though guess I should be too disappointed with 17mph average over 3:45 when feeling tired.

wk6 Saturday Brick sessions

Glad this was another turbo based session as it was throwing it down. Glad I wasn't out on the bike in it, though did have to venture out on a couple of runs in it.
Session involved:
20 minute warm up on the turbo.
20 minutes hard on the turbo at a pace sustainable for 30-35minutes. Was hoping to do 260watts, but it proved hard to maintain 250watts. In fact it was hard to maintain a cadence of 90bpm (cadence is the rate that the legs are turning over at). Guess the turbo thursday was too hard and I hadn't flushed it out on the friday - active recovery can be better than rest.
After the hard bike I then had to go out for a 2mile run at faster than 7mpm pace.
10minute recovery back on the turbo
20 minutes hard on the turbo for a second time
2 mile run at 7mpm for a second time
Then a 20-30minute recovery ride on the bike. Schedule said to do this out on the road. I opted for the turbo.

wk6 Friday - Rest

wk 6 Thursday - Turbo session

A hard turbo session to work on some bike speed.
I really enjoyed it. Produced a lot of sweat. It was hard, but the satisfaction made it enjoyable. The aim was 3x 10minutes with each at 10M TT pace. I aimed to maintain 280watts then on the final one got carried away. I have a really nice trace and some big numbers from the turbo to share with you. But not now, still playing catch up on my blog.

wk 6 Thursday - Tempo Run

Same variant as the 8 mile tempo run of a couple of weeks back. Same route. Mile warm up. Mile warm down. This time I was joined by Christian Trotter, Phil Smith, Lynn Emmett and David Archer. We all ran out together, but only Lynn and I ran the whole course whilst the others ran shorter versions of our route.
I'm sure we ran quicker than two weeks earlier - I need to get the traces analysed and up here.

wk6 Wednesday - easy ride

or not so easy as I went out on the single speed

wk6 Tuesday Swim and Run

Early morning UEA swim. 25m session on a tuesday and none of the usual 50m morning culprits.
At lunchtime it was a repeat of the 5x 1 mile efforts. I had company from Danny Mann, Phil Smith and Paul French. Phil and I were sporting a weeks worth of Movember growth and got a bit competitve on the third effort.
The aim was to do the miles at a consistent pace of 6:20 - 6:25 with a 2.5minute rest between each. The first two were bang on target at 6:22 and 6:24, but the competitive third one was 6:15 then four and five were 6:40 and 6:32. The others only did 4 of them, so again I was nervous about pushing on my penultimate effort against others doing their final effort.

Seals and Dunes - wk5 Sunday run

The choice was a hard efforts session or a 10mile tempo run. However I'd already made plans to join the Norwich Road Runners at Winterton for a beach run, so I adapted the tempo run to fit that social run. It was a gorgeous morning. Running on the beach was tough. Soft sand, groins and then some seals to dodge. Was sureal running towards a rock groin to then have the rocks start moving. That groin wasn't all rocks, some were seals. They do blend in rather well.
Having run out along the beach the run back was through the dunes. Paths through dunes aren't straight and they aren't flat. Trying to maintain a pace there is just as tough, perhaps tougher than running a pace on the beach.
Was really pleased with how I went.
Cafe at the end was really nice. I did get confused with the menu. I couldn't work out what food I was going to get if I ordered mermaid ball, tennis ball or any of the other items. Colin Browning needed to point out that it was a menu for beach toys not food.

wk5 Saturday Ride - 7th November 2009

A rest day on the Friday at the end of 5 days recovery and we're back into the swing of training.
A 3.5 hour ride aiming at 17.5-18mph average and an average heart rate of 75% of HRM. Met Will Hall at UEA and together went on a 62mile route to Cringleford. Was easy getting the heart rate up and holding it there. Probably averaged 80%. Aim wasn't to keep at a steady 75%, going up to 85% was permitted it was the average that was important.

wk5 Thursday

An early morning easy run. Legs still hurt a bit, though it is nice to be out on them again.

Wk5 Wed Turbo session

A recovery turbo session to get the blood flowing through the legs to flush out some lactate from Sunday.

3rd November

Legs still hurt - but in a nice way. Managed to cycle in. Walking home on Monday wasn't fun.

2nd November

My legs hurt

Comrades - Yippee I'm in

Have been successful and got one of the 5,000 places for Comrades Novices. 60k earlier in the day will be good experience for running 89k in South Africa next May. There will be 20,000 of us in Pietermatizburg to participate in the 85th Comrades Marathon. I'm quite excited.

Marriotts Way Ultra - Sunday 1st November

39 miles up and down the disused railway line that is Marriotts Way.
Immensly satisfying to complete it. I actually enjoyed it whilst doing it too even though it was raining and blowing a gale. A tree line dissused railway was probably the best place to be running in such conditions.

wk 4 Thursday - Taper

A few days taper now ahead of an ultra marathon on Sunday. Beer Festival in the evening and a day off work on the Friday.

Wednesday Wk4, Swim, Run and Ride

Following a rest day on the Tuesday, up for an early morning swim at UEA. I linked in the Mike and Tom on 20 x 100m efforts. Simon Edye and Karl Sherry were there too. The aim was to do 8x 100 on 1:35, 6 on 1:30 4 on 1:25 and 2 on 1:20. I managed to stick with it upto and into the 6 on 1:30 but was dropped when we got to 1:25.
Lunchtime was an 8 mile tempo run, which I adapted to a 6 mile tempo run with a mile warm up and mile warm down. Danny Mann provided company, pacing and encouragement.
A recovery turbo session in the evening.

(as you can see I'm playing catch up with my blog and will add the traces etc later).