Sometimes you have to push yourself to get any benefit from training. Unfortunatley that's the way running works - If you only had to run at a steady pace for half an hour to be successful we would all be world beaters. The session I did today required determination right from the off if I was going to get through it.
I decided on intervals, run faster than race pace, as I hadn't done any shortish reps for a couple of weeks. After an 8 minute warm up, I hit out the intervals, each being 2 minutes long with a 1 minute recovery. This wouldn't be too painful in a small quantity but after 13 of them you know you have pushed yourself to your limits! 13 it was and by god when you have done 1 or 2 knowing you have more than 10 to go, you wish you were somewhere else!
I gritted my teeth and got stuck into the session and I strangely have to say I began to enjoy it after I had got past the half way marker of 6 reps. This was perhaps because I felt pretty jaded in the first few efforts, but I definitley felt to get much stronger as the session went on.
The only problem was the sheet ice lieing around but the F-Lite 230s coped pretty well apart from the odd hairpin bend. In conclusion, this was a good session; very hard but definitley well worth the effort. After all, it is this sort of session that the good results come from and to get through it was an achievement in itself!
Friday, 12 February 2010
Thursday, 11 February 2010
A gentle trot under the fading Sun.
It has been a beautiful day today; very sunny and not too cold or windy. It was in fact too grand to not go for a run. Dashing off for my Bus yesterday, I had no time to warm down so this was, to be honest, a belated warm down lasting 15 minutes with a fastish 5 minutes in the middle just to get the legs moving a little and prepare me for a hard interval session in Skipton Woods tomorrow.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Reward for the efforts at last!
Today we hosted an interschool Cross Country event in Aireville Park which attracted a few schools, most notably Ripon Grammar and St Aidans. The course was yet again 3 long laps but this time took in the woods as well. Conditions were fairly firm in the park itself because of last night's frost and a few snow showers today, but up towards the top of the woods there was mud in abundance!
I set off steady knowing full well what was in store (3 laps of hell!) leaving Billy Pinder, Dan Cheeseman (5th at NY Schools here 2 weeks ago), Alex Sinclair and Duncan Birtwhistle to do the work. I pulled through nicely feeling very strong and made my way into 2nd as we started the last lap with Cheeseman chasing hard. My stomach felt a little dodgy and had done since the steep climb up the golf course on the 2nd lap. I fought hard right until the end but Cheeseman's trademark 800m finish was too strong and coming out of the woods I was summoned to 3rd. A very comfortable 3rd at that and a good result, coming in just a few seconds behind Cheeseman (closest I have all season) and around a minute behind Pinder. Alex Sinclair finished 4th and considering he is one of the candidates for the final 2 places in North Yorkshire's English Schools' team, I certainly won't have done myself any harm in staking a claim for selection. It's good to have a bit of individual silverware in the form of a Bronze Medal; all the races lately feel as though they have been to no avail but based on today's performance things are coming along nicely.
I set off steady knowing full well what was in store (3 laps of hell!) leaving Billy Pinder, Dan Cheeseman (5th at NY Schools here 2 weeks ago), Alex Sinclair and Duncan Birtwhistle to do the work. I pulled through nicely feeling very strong and made my way into 2nd as we started the last lap with Cheeseman chasing hard. My stomach felt a little dodgy and had done since the steep climb up the golf course on the 2nd lap. I fought hard right until the end but Cheeseman's trademark 800m finish was too strong and coming out of the woods I was summoned to 3rd. A very comfortable 3rd at that and a good result, coming in just a few seconds behind Cheeseman (closest I have all season) and around a minute behind Pinder. Alex Sinclair finished 4th and considering he is one of the candidates for the final 2 places in North Yorkshire's English Schools' team, I certainly won't have done myself any harm in staking a claim for selection. It's good to have a bit of individual silverware in the form of a Bronze Medal; all the races lately feel as though they have been to no avail but based on today's performance things are coming along nicely.
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Mile by Mile
I went with my original plan and so today, rather than do my regular 8 or 9 mile long run, decided to do Mile intervals with 3 minute jog recovery in between. I hoped to be fully recovered from Friday's efforts for what was to be a really tough session. The art of Speed Endurance is a concept my body seems to have not yet mastered. ' The purpose of speed endurance is to prolong the amount of time where a near maximal speed can be maintained.' I always seem to hit the wall at around 11 minutes if I try and set off at a faster pace in a race of around 15 minutes. The only other alternative at the moment is to set off steady but with races like the relay at Coventry (2.4 miles!), it simply isn't an option. Wouldn't it be great to be able to keep a good speed up for a long time? I hope this sort of session might help me reach this goal.
Onto the session itself which went superbly. A mile may not be a great distance but running it hard makes it feel a short while. It is also longer than the normal intervals of around 3 minutes. The terrain was tarmac and there was a few climbs in to make the pain a little more severe but nothing too drastic. The pain would be in having to run flat out for a mile 6 times with a mere 3 minutes in between which seemed to pass rather quickly. I didn't worry about my splits or anything whilst I was doing my efforts (this provided a psychological benefit as I didn't ponder on whether I was going too fast or slow), but just ran as the Garmin told me to; 'Run hard 1 mile' followed by 'Jog easy 3 minutes.'
So onto the splits - 5:52, 5:47, 5:43, 5:58, 5:49, 5:48
I was surprised but delighted with the splits as there is a clearly a bit of consistency and my last effort was also the 3rd fastest. I hope this is a 'mile' in the right direction in terms of combating this recurring problem I meet on race day. A great session!
I will probably rest up to Wednesday now as I have yet another race in Aireville Park - Ermysteds' annual cross country home fixture. Hopefully I will be fighting fit for that one!
Onto the session itself which went superbly. A mile may not be a great distance but running it hard makes it feel a short while. It is also longer than the normal intervals of around 3 minutes. The terrain was tarmac and there was a few climbs in to make the pain a little more severe but nothing too drastic. The pain would be in having to run flat out for a mile 6 times with a mere 3 minutes in between which seemed to pass rather quickly. I didn't worry about my splits or anything whilst I was doing my efforts (this provided a psychological benefit as I didn't ponder on whether I was going too fast or slow), but just ran as the Garmin told me to; 'Run hard 1 mile' followed by 'Jog easy 3 minutes.'
So onto the splits - 5:52, 5:47, 5:43, 5:58, 5:49, 5:48
I was surprised but delighted with the splits as there is a clearly a bit of consistency and my last effort was also the 3rd fastest. I hope this is a 'mile' in the right direction in terms of combating this recurring problem I meet on race day. A great session!
I will probably rest up to Wednesday now as I have yet another race in Aireville Park - Ermysteds' annual cross country home fixture. Hopefully I will be fighting fit for that one!
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Mixing it up
I set out with the intention of going to Skipton Woods yesterday and hitting out a really hard session. This would consist of an 8 minute warm up, followed by 14 x 2 minute reps with 1 minute jog recovery followed by a 10 minute warm down. The Garmin didn't have any juice in however and after my first effort switched itself off. This meant I had no awareness of how long I would be running for whatsoever.
I decided to vary my efforts from long to short and just run the recovery as I felt appropriate. I picked landmarks in the woods, for example running from a bench to a bridge. It worked very well and it was a very good session - I felt incredibly strong. To hazard a guess, I would say the longest effort was around 3 minutes and the shortest around 30 seconds. In reality it was more of a Fartlek session but a very good one at that. Skipton Woods is good firm forest tracks and I felt to be flying even over the stiff climbs I snuck into various efforts.
I worked out that altogether I did 12 efforts so not too far short of the planned 14 and altogether I was out for 49 minutes (8 min W/U, 31 mins, 10 min W/D). A good day's training and it was very enjoyable mixing it up rather than the normal repetitive nature of these sessions. Role on Sunday where I may mix it up again with a hard mile followed by an easy mile rather than the normal continuous long run! This may be particularly beneficial as I feel my weakness is in speed endurance; I have the speed as well as endurance for a slow pace but not for keeping up a continuous fast pace - Just like I faded in the final third on Wednesday as I failed to live up to the 12.30 ish pace I had set in the first half of the race. Hopefully Sunday will be a start to countering this weakness.
I decided to vary my efforts from long to short and just run the recovery as I felt appropriate. I picked landmarks in the woods, for example running from a bench to a bridge. It worked very well and it was a very good session - I felt incredibly strong. To hazard a guess, I would say the longest effort was around 3 minutes and the shortest around 30 seconds. In reality it was more of a Fartlek session but a very good one at that. Skipton Woods is good firm forest tracks and I felt to be flying even over the stiff climbs I snuck into various efforts.
I worked out that altogether I did 12 efforts so not too far short of the planned 14 and altogether I was out for 49 minutes (8 min W/U, 31 mins, 10 min W/D). A good day's training and it was very enjoyable mixing it up rather than the normal repetitive nature of these sessions. Role on Sunday where I may mix it up again with a hard mile followed by an easy mile rather than the normal continuous long run! This may be particularly beneficial as I feel my weakness is in speed endurance; I have the speed as well as endurance for a slow pace but not for keeping up a continuous fast pace - Just like I faded in the final third on Wednesday as I failed to live up to the 12.30 ish pace I had set in the first half of the race. Hopefully Sunday will be a start to countering this weakness.
Thursday, 4 February 2010
Down but not out...
I was left feeling absolutley shattered last night after the race and a 7 hour round trip. I did manage a run today just to try and flush the legs out. It was a reasonably paced half an hour on the fields near the house with a few good climbs which I felt very strong on. I intend on doing some speedwork tomorrow in Skipton Woods during my free periods with the hope of the race from yesterday being well and truly out of my legs. Hope it's a good'un!
12:58...
Yesterday saw us make the long journey down to Coventry for the King Henry VIII Cross Country Relays held in War Memorial Park. Rather than your average school relays, these are the national stage of school relays and this was shown by the 40 teams of 6 in the boys relay alone. Having finished 17th last year, we hoped to use the experience gained from then to make a vast improvement this year.
Billy Pinder brought the team home in 2nd in a brilliant time of 12.09 after the first leg. Billy really is on fire at the minute and his great performance got the team's hopes up immediatley. I was running leg 5 of 6, contra to last year where I ran the 1st leg. Bearing this in mind I knew it would be much tougher pacing it this year as the likelihood was I would be trying to catch/hold off runners rather than beat them (like last year on the first leg where it is an outright race!) It seemed an eternity until I finally got to go and taking over from Faisil Ismail with the team in 5th place, I was off. I set off quickly knowing there was a runner breathing down my neck and Manchester G.S. weren't too far ahead.
The wooded area was pretty chewed up by the time I ran my leg (much more so than when we walked it pre race) and so it was hard going, but I definitley felt to be reeling in the runners ahead and leaving those behind for dead. Had I gone too fast? Yes. I had a very strong first 2/3 of the race but in the final 3rd of the punishing fast 2.4 mile course I had to hang on in there and the Manchester G.S. runner was beginning to pull away again. I had moved us into a comfortable 4th by this stage but flagging, I knew there was no way I was going to catch 3rd before the handover. Battling on I was passed by a St. Anselms runner who went on to do 11.55! This made me feel as though all the hard work had been undone. Still, taking over in 5th and handing over in 5th was fairly respectable.
The team lost another place on the last leg to Sedbergh, leaving us in 6th position. Not a bad effort and a considerable improvement on last year! Hopefully next year we will be capable of bringing some silverware home!
My time of 12.58 was some 29 seconds quicker than last year in worse conditions and on a much slower leg. I was reasonably happy but felt as though had I paced it better, I could have done a time more similar to that of the M.G.S runner (12:41). All the same, a good day out and all good experience for next year!
Billy Pinder brought the team home in 2nd in a brilliant time of 12.09 after the first leg. Billy really is on fire at the minute and his great performance got the team's hopes up immediatley. I was running leg 5 of 6, contra to last year where I ran the 1st leg. Bearing this in mind I knew it would be much tougher pacing it this year as the likelihood was I would be trying to catch/hold off runners rather than beat them (like last year on the first leg where it is an outright race!) It seemed an eternity until I finally got to go and taking over from Faisil Ismail with the team in 5th place, I was off. I set off quickly knowing there was a runner breathing down my neck and Manchester G.S. weren't too far ahead.
The wooded area was pretty chewed up by the time I ran my leg (much more so than when we walked it pre race) and so it was hard going, but I definitley felt to be reeling in the runners ahead and leaving those behind for dead. Had I gone too fast? Yes. I had a very strong first 2/3 of the race but in the final 3rd of the punishing fast 2.4 mile course I had to hang on in there and the Manchester G.S. runner was beginning to pull away again. I had moved us into a comfortable 4th by this stage but flagging, I knew there was no way I was going to catch 3rd before the handover. Battling on I was passed by a St. Anselms runner who went on to do 11.55! This made me feel as though all the hard work had been undone. Still, taking over in 5th and handing over in 5th was fairly respectable.
The team lost another place on the last leg to Sedbergh, leaving us in 6th position. Not a bad effort and a considerable improvement on last year! Hopefully next year we will be capable of bringing some silverware home!
My time of 12.58 was some 29 seconds quicker than last year in worse conditions and on a much slower leg. I was reasonably happy but felt as though had I paced it better, I could have done a time more similar to that of the M.G.S runner (12:41). All the same, a good day out and all good experience for next year!
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