Time to put up

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So actual running then

Wednesday -
66 mins with 22@tempo was the plan.
66 mins with a half arsed attempt at a tempo was the outcome. First serious attempt in a while though. I'll do a better job next time
c. 7.5 miles (not sure exactly as it took 5 - 6 mins for Garmin to find a signal)

Friday -
66 mins with 33@m-effort was the plan.
66:36 with 28@m-effort and 5 as quick as I could (when I realised I was late). I did it along the seafront in an out and back style expecting to come back faster than I went out but I hadn't counted on the wind and in the end both 33 min sections covered roughly the same distance despite an increase of 15bpm in heart rate for the return.

I took the dog with me and he really suffered in the heat but we both made it back just in time.
7.23 miles

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Sunday 9th June

95 mins easy (135) - 10.02 miles.

I think that's the first time I've gone over 10 miles since I got injured. It was a nice little target for me towards the end as I tried to keep my heart rate below 140 while also getting the 10 miles in. Baking hot again - heart rate was dropping by 3-4 beats when I went into shade.

Turns out the dog may not have been suffering from the heat on Friday. The out layer of one of the pads on his front left paw has been worn away though so no running for him for a few days. Crossing my fingers he'll be able to work in the morning (he's my wifes guide dog).

My wife has a two day conference tomorrow and Tuesday which means that I won't be able to make the club session on Tuesday so I might have another go at a tempo then or maybe some of Daniels' cruise intervals which might be easier to hit given my current level of fitness/concentration.

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Tuesday 12th June

72 mins with 24 @ tempo was the plan. I completely forgot about the idea of doing cruise intervals for the tempo and again didn't get too close to tempo effort. Maybe it's my body telling me to be a bit more patient. Anyway, the ankle started complaining a bit and I wasn't at all smooth running much faster than 8mm pace so I changed it to a steady effort. Did 4 strides at the end where I focused on leg turnover. I'll probably need to get some short intervals done before I have a chance of hitting proper tempo effort. There may be a track session on Thursday but I'll probably leave it until two weeks time. Now is not the time to be forcing anything.

72:03 - 8.01 miles, HR 132, BPM - 1187 (about a hundred less than Sunday which gives an idea of the impact the sun was having).

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Thursday 13th June

72 mins with 36 @ 145 - 150 HR was the plan.

72 mins with 36 @ 145 - 150 was what I got.

It was nicely progressive starting at 9mm (lot of uphill) and finishing with 6:58 (corresponding downhill). It's probably telling me something that I have done this session pretty well a couple of times but not really come close to a tempo. It's all good for the moment. Another small improvement of BPM. Would like to get it down to <1000 but that's a few months away at best.

72:01 - 8.62 miles - HR 139 - BPM 1161

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Saturday 15th June
69:32 mins easy covering 7.39 miles with a HR of 128.
This being my first attempt at two days in a row running in a while I opted to take it easy. An uneventful run.

Sunday 16th June
Puddletown Plod 20k -
I only definitively decided to this late on Saturday night. The forecast was for heavy rain and I thought that it would be more enjoyable to run in the rain as part of a race and to catch up with a few from the club than to head off on my own.

The plan was to use the start of the race as a warm up, gradually let the heart rate get to 150 by about the 5 mile point. Hold it steady until the 10 mile point where I would let it drift to 155 and if I felt like it take the shackles off for the last km.

I more or less stuck to plan although the HR for the 3rd mile was 150, partly because it was largely uphill. Undulating would be a generous description as mile splits of 8:12, then 7:16, 8:47, 7:33 and 8:05 indicate. For the first few miles this meant a lot of toing and froing as I went past people on the flat and they went past me on the hills. From about the 4 mile point though it flattened out and I spent the rest of the race overtaking. Until the last couple of km's I was looking pretty good for going under 1:40 but it got hilly and when I hit the last km I worked out that I needed to go at 6mm pace to get under 1:40 - no hope. Fortunately, the last marker was in the wrong place and I slipped in 30 seconds under the 100 min mark.

Got to be happy with that all thing considered.

99:31 for 12.41 miles at a HR of 149, BPM of 1194

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Wednesday 19th of June
Plan: 78 mins with 26@155-160

A bit stiff three days on from Puddletown. I'll probably add a short recovery run in on the Tuesday of this week from now on. Trying to learn from previous failures I broke the tempo into two sections and ran it on the promenade which has much better traction than the park where I do a lot of my running.

26 mins @ 128
13 mins @ 156 -
20 mins @ 145
13 mins @ 161 -
6 mins @ 150

I'm happy with that. It was hot at about 21C (hot for me anyway) and my 2 year old climbed into bed at some point last night and spent the rest of the night kicking me so I'm quite tired.

I started the second tempo section early to take advantage of somebody going past me whom I could chase. They stopped after 4 mins unfortunately but I was locked into the effort enough to continue. The tempo efforts came in at around the 8mm mark which is a bit disappointing from a speed perspective but it was hot and I'm pleased to get the right effort levels in for the first time since I started the plan.

78:01 for 8.73 miles. HR: 149, BPM: 1286

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Wednesday 21st of June

Plan called for 78 mins with 39 @ marathon pace effort. It was warm, I was feeling tired, the ground was hard. Essentially my head wasn't in the right place so I changed plan at the last moment and decided to take an easy run over the local hill. Completing the loop after 41 mins I realised that if I did it again putting in a bit more effort I could more or less do what the plan called for. Got the second loop done in 36 and half minutes.

I'm adding in an easy run to the plan for next week but I wonder if I'm getting the proportion of easy, m-pace and tempo runs right. Of course the 20k at m-pace effort wouldn't have helped that. I'm not going to do the 10k that I had tentatively scheduled in for Sunday. Instead I'll just go out for time on my feet. Maybe 1:50. Next week is a recovery week which seems superfluous in some respects but better to get the right foundations in place now so that I can build on them in the future.

So 77:30 with 36:30@ m-pace effort for 8.61 miles. HR:136, BPM: 1239

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Unexpected family stuff has been rearing its head and finding the necessary windows to run has been a bit more challenging. I'm also a bit sleep deprived and at the moment which means I need to be careful not to slip into previous bad running form habits. Fortunately it's my recovery week so the impact is limited a bit and things should begin to settle down again over the next week or so.

I did my long run on Monday and a short run yesterday. I'll follow that up with Saturday and Sunday.

Monday 24th June

Just an easy run to develop time on feet. I planned for 1:50. I did it on a short grassy loop near the house and on the spur of the moment decided to use a short hill for about 8 second hill sprints. I felt them the day after but think that they were probably a good thing to do over all.

110:02 for 11.59 miles. HR:123, BPM: 1168

Wednesday 26th June

Tired so decided just to do an easy run

50:47 for 5.35 miles. HR: 121, BPM: 1149

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Saturday 29th June
6.09 miles in 54:34, HR 137, BPM: 1230

A reminder of just how unfit I am. Given that it had been an easier week than even a recovery week would dictate I decided to run this a little harder than normal. Once my heart rate got to 140 though I held it there and watched the mile splits (I was running a loop that is just over a mile long so splits are directly comparable) get slower. They went 8:44, 8:53, 9:19 and 9:30. When I'm fit there won't be any drift in pace. I also did 6 strides after focusing on running tall.

Sunday 30th June
10.53 miles in 1:39:38, HR 137, BPM: 1296.

36 years young today so I got an opportunity I wouldn't normally get to disappear off to the New Forest at lunchtime. Baking hot again (20C+ yesterday and today) but a little bit more shade plus the company of a few deer and lots of horses - lots of foals about - not to mention the odd human. Again I ran it a little bit harder than my usual easy run effort when measured by heart rate. The ankle was getting quite sore until I remember to 'belly breath' whereupon it got better quite quickly. The legs felt fine albeit a bit tired towards the end although the cardiovascular system hasn't caught up yet. I expect to see that change at some point in the next two weeks. There will be a little less of the drift I mentioned in the previous days run but I'd expect it to take another 2 cycles or 12 weeks after that before even short runs are showing minimal drift.

The months summary for June shows 118 miles at an average pace of 9:04. 14 days of running, 1 race, 0 PB's. Something to build on.

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Tuesday 2nd of July

More of a shuffle than a run as I tried to get my various joints moving. Followed it up with 45 mins of stretching which is an area I have neglected recently. I have physio tonight who I'll ask to try and get my spine moving again which I'll then need to focus on maintaining. My left hip is also very tight but I think that's something that will only ease when I remove all of the muscular imbalances. BPM is lower because it was much cooler than of late and the short run. I don't think that the cardio improvements I'm anticipating have kicked in yet.

3.09 miles in 30:12, HR 115, BPM: 1124

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Wednesday 3rd of July

The plan was for 84 mins with 3 * 10@tempo. Was going out and back along the seafront and quickly realised that the wind was against me on the way out so decided to do the first 10 min tempo section against the wind and the last two with. It was a pretty abject effort for the first 10 min section but I got going on the 2nd with the incentive of seeing a 6 at the beginning of a mile time. Faded (not unexpectedly) for the last section but the effort levels were there. Overall I was pretty happy with the run. Starting to think about how I might progress when my mid-week runs get to 90 mins next week. If I feel that my body can handle it I'd prefer to run extra days than let them get too much longer but continue to increase the length of the effort sections.

At physio last night I ended up spending a lot of time trying to learn how to breathe properly. I thought I had cracked it before but I hadn't (although it's better than it was) so still some work to do there. She did a bit of work on my back but it was stiff as a board this morning and took a lot of work to ease out.

9.61 miles in 83:26, HR 140, BPM: 1215

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Friday 5th July

With a race planned for Sunday I should have taken this easy but I completely forgot to think ahead and by the time I realised that I should not be doing any marathon pace effort it was too late for me to back off and get back to pick up my son from school on time so I did it. The legs were still feeling a bit heavy from Wednesday as well so I was kicking myself as easy effort would have been ideal. The m-effort section came in at c. 8:25 with a HR of 148.

9.48 miles in 84:11, HR 135, BPM: 1199

Sunday 7th July

As it turned out family stuff got in the way of me going to the 10 mile race anyway so not too much was lost by my failure to plan on Friday. The only time I could get out was 2pm which was far from ideal. I parked the car in the shade and when I got back in afterwards it registered 28C - it felt every one of them. I was doing the local 1 mile loop and decided to leave water in the car and see if I could get 2 hours done without any . I couldn't and started to tail off from about the 6 mile point. I realised that there was something wrong about 8 miles in and stopped for water. I felt fine for the first few minutes but quickly started overheating again. When I very nearly twisted my ankle because I wasn't paying attention to how I was running I decided to cut my losses and call it a day. No sense in hurting my ankle again just by being stubborn (either that or I needed to HTFU).

9.25 miles in 91:30, HR 129, BPM: 1276


Steve Way is preparing for an 100km ultra at the moment with some seriously impressive training. Last weekend it was a marathon on the Saturday followed by 40 miles on the Sunday. Today on the hottest day of the year by far he did a 50 mile training run. His blog is over here if anyone is interested.

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Tuesday 9th July

So 3rd time lucky as I finally made it to the club session with a view to getting some speed done. The session was 7*4 mins w/2 mins recovery. I wasn't hoping for much with the simple aim of having each 4 min section have an average mile pace beginning with 6. This would give me a bit of practice running faster than I normally do and hopefully make tempo and marathon pace runs a little easier.

I ended up doing just 6 as I got a little greedy, went a bit faster and lost my form but otherwise the session went really well. The prom was busy and I did almost stop dead to avoid skittling a boy on the 5th rep but otherwise the speeds were surprisingly consistent:

6:36
6:36
6:34
6:39
6:40
6:30

Overall:

9.53 miles in 82:57, Max HR: 169

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Thursday 11th July

I hadn't done the appropriate recovery work after Tuesday's faster running and my legs were still complaining a bit so I made this an easy run with no faster bits. It was a lot cooler than it has been recently but I was still pleased to see very little fade in my heart rate/pace relationship.

9.76 miles in 90:13, HR 124, BPM: 1146

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Saturday 13th July

Didn't run. I had the boys at the waterpark all morning and by the time I had a window to run my legs were sore and tired. In that state I was more likely to run with bad form so I decided not to run

Sunday 14th July

The only window I had to run was at 2pm. The weather was hot and humid. 24C in the shade, plenty warmer out of it. The plan was for 2 hours easy. After last weeks debacle I brought plenty of water with me and stopped twice to get replacement bottles. At the start I wondered whether I might get a half marathon in. By the end I was hanging on for dear life. I definitely decided to stop at one stage but got my second wind and kept going. The pace was diabolical. In short my body was just not handling the heat. Meanwhile in the next field over Steve Way had run 40 miles that morning... I expect that I'll adapt to the heat but that was one of the toughest training runs I've ever done. I've a long way to go before I can call myself fit!

Don't think I'll be signing up for Badwater any time soon!

1:53:48 for 11.42 miles. HR 129, BPM: 1285

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So, I had a new plan this week. The aim is to run on an additional day each week - so 5 days a week and the main way to achieve this is to break the 90 minute run with a m-pace/tempo section down so that the first run of the week is mostly m-pace/tempo and the extra day is Wednesday. I also plan to do the shorter/faster club session on a Thursday.

I'm not even through week 1 though and I think that I may have to reconsider. It seems to be taking me about 45 mins of easy running to loosen up. Trying to run faster before I've loosened up just doesn't work. I've started going to the gym in the morning a bit more regularly which will eventually help this I think but for the moment I'll just have to live with a shorter m-pace section so that I can fit in the lengthy warm up because the extra day is more important.

Tuesday 18th July

Screwed this run up on a couple of different levels. I went at the hottest part of the day, I went out too fast and I wasn't loose enough before I tried to do a section at marathon pace. It didn't help that I decided that m-pace was <8mm which it probably is on a cool day for the first couple of miles but definitely wasn't on Tuesday. I made a pitstop for water but couldn't quite retrieve the situation so called it a day early.

I did go to my physio that evening who confirmed that lots of the vertebrae in the middle of my back aren't moving well. Lots of pushing and shoving ensued. Some progress was made but there's a good bit further to go.

4.63 miles in 38:24, HR:138

Wednesday 19th July

Screwed this up too. Was getting the kids ready for bed when I bent over and picked something up. Strained my lower back, not badly thankfully but running would have been stupid. Took some ibuprofen and went to the gym the next morning to loosen up.

Thursday 20th July

Given that I strained my back yesterday and it has been a very long time since I did any serious speed training I decided to just do an easy run this evening. I think that I've adapted to the heat a bit because 22C felt pleasantly balmy.

7.31 miles in 67:12, HR: 122 BPM: 1121

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So it has been a little while since I logged a run here. Two weeks ago my wife started the Special Carbohydrate diet. It seems a little bit quacky to me but it's not totally nuts. She had tried to do it before and it had fallen down I think largely because it was different food for her and for everybody else so this time I said that I would do it with her. I was also hoping for some weight loss although in an apparent paradox she was hoping to use it to gain weight.

It's essentially an exclusion diet and for the first week or so the only carbs are carrots - dilute apple juice is part of the diet too but neither of us think fruit juices are healthy and if we have them around the boys will want them. It was bland but fine for the first couple of days but I quickly started to lack energy for runs, was clearly crashing and had to given up one run after just over two miles because I was wobbling all over the place and my ankle was complaining. I modified the diet to include more carbs but not that I'm not following it closely I suspect it's falling apart again. It doesn't help that there's another option (FODMAP) in the background so I imagine that that will be attempted. A surface look suggests that it's easier to follow.

Inevitably my running has been all over the place for the past couple of weeks. I need to decide on a concrete goal. It turns out that I'm almost certainly going to be in Dublin for the week of the marathon so there's a certain temptation to dig out P&D and do a 12 week plan. There's a fast half marathon about an hour away from where I live 3 weeks after Dublin (obviously mutually exclusive) and then there's a local 10k near Christmas which I've entered twice but not yet run. Need to make my mind up soon!

Saturday 20st of July
5.51 miles in 51:47, HR: 124

Sunday 21st of July

7.53 miles in 75:14, HR: 122
This is where I started to properly bonk/crash

Monday 22nd of July
2.25 miles in 22:15, HR: 115
My wobbly run

Thursday 25th of July

6.66 miles in 62:55, HR: 124

Sunday 28th of July
13.32 miles in 119:37, HR: 135

Pleased with this. No need for food or water as I had eaten enough carbs beforehand.

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I decided to loosely try and follow the P&D 18 week 55 - 70 plan mostly because I can't put my hands on the book at the moment but I still have that plan in an excel spreadsheet. Even so it's a reasonable choice for me. My running technique/ankle has been steadily improving and I think that it should be able to handle more frequent running. None of the individual runs should be out of reach but putting it all together is the challenge as I've never gone much over 50mpw before. It also leaves open the option of doing Dublin or the half at Gosport as at my current level base building is what I need to focus on. A race specific block of work is a luxury I'll leave to at least another training cycle.

Tuesday 30th of July

9 miles with 4@HM pace was the plan. I did this at the local undulating park (they're starting a new park run there in a few weeks) so that the dog could get a run out too. It's not ideal as LT work doubles as speedwork in this plan and I think there's a lot to be said for getting out somewhere flat and fast. I also find it a bit easier to hold an effort level on a flat course and I did to the HM section at an effort level that ended up closer to marathon effort than half marathon effort. Still, conditions were perfect and once I got going I enjoyed the run.

9.01 miles in 77:26, HR: 135, BPM: 1160

Wednesday 31st of July

Got a bit of a shock when I realised that 11 miles was in the schedule for tonight as I had convinced myself that it was an easy 5 which I was going to turn into a recovery 30 mins. Zipped up the man suit and went for it though. Out and back as it was late and thus too dark for the park but also because it meant that mentally once I had gone out I had to come back.

11.6 miles in 100:30, HR: 135, BPM: 1169

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Some first world problems on Thursday. First off I picked up my new pair of prescription sunglasses because some **** broke into the car. They left the satnav, stole the prescription sunglasses, took the Euro coins (I'm living in Bournemouth), emptied out my box of eyedrops (looking for drugs?) and left a pretty rank odour in the car. Anyway, I picked up the sunglasses which I was looking forward to having for the 260 mile drive to the in-laws on another of the hottest days in the year. We were looking at 33C when we stopped. Unfortunately, about 45 mins in the air-con decided that this was the journey that it should break down on. Cracked open the windows but the eldest and the dog weren't happy in the 'back-back' (Mazda 5 has a 3rd row of seats but no corresponding windows). I contemplated going for a jog in the evening but my back was telling me not to so I listened. I then realised that I had a pretty bad headache which is surprising because I never get headaches. Mystery solved this evening when I went for a run though - it's the sunglasses. I really wanted wraparound sunglasses because I'm still a tiny bit light sensitive and to get lenses to fit they had to adjust the prescription a fraction in my left eye. I'm disappointed because otherwise they're the best sunglasses I've ever had.

Friday 2nd August
The garmin discharged itself on the trip up but mapmyrun says that my 78:30 run brought me about 8.5 miles. It's pretty undulating around here (North Wales - near Chester) so I'm happy enough with that. It's my youngest's 3rd birthday tomorrow but I should be able to slip out for a short jog in the morning.

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Sunday 4th August
Fully carb loaded on chocolate rice crispy cakes (youngest's 3rd birthday yesterday) I did 15 miles in 2:11:45 going through several small villages/towns with challenging names - Pennyfford followed by Caergwyrl. Only one detour when I somehow found myself on a railway platform... Very happy with this. My HR was 130 bpm which gives me a BPM of about 1140 which at the moment is good for a long run especially on undulating surfaces. Am tentatively planning to run a 10 mile race next weekend as a training run but no decision made yet.

Meantime my clubmate Steve Way ran 100kms in 6:40 at the Stockholm ultra! He won the race by 44 minutes having lapped the entire field (approx. 5 mile lap). Although he did win the 50km world championship race last year this was his first serious dip into ultra waters. He seems to be quite suited to it. The training that he did was eye-opening so the result is not a huge surprise but you can never be sure when you're dipping into the uncharted territories of an ultra.

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Tuesday 6th of August

Did some strides and a few drills in the morning while the kids were at the playground (Grandpa was looking after them before I'm accused of child neglect!) and although I didn't feel great doing them it seemed to do the trick later on as I found myself able to run at a faster pace a lot more comfortably. I think that I'm finally seeing some progress on BPM.

8.01 miles in 63:55, HR 138, BPM: 1101

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Wednesday 7th of August
12 miles in 1:40:46, HR 133, BPM 1117. Took it a little easier after the previous day but still a steadyish effort.

Friday 9th of August
9 miles in 1:18:58, HR: 124, BPM 1088 . Proper easy run as I hadn't done any easy pace this week and I was planning to incorporate a 10 mile race into my long run on Sunday. First run where my BPM was below 1100 . I think that I'll need to regularly break 1000 in order to go under 3 hours for the marathon so still a way to go before I can hit one of my goals. I realised after the run though that my runners needed replacing immediately as there are a couple of badly worn patches on the soles. I made my way into Chester on Saturday having located a tri shop that does gait analysis. Not as good as Amphibian King's service but I ended up with some Mizuno's. I had planned to give them a short test run that evening but it didn't prove possible.

Sunday 11th of August
15 miles in 2:01:43 including Great Warford 10 mile race in 72:09. A little bit of drama at the start as I somehow convinced myself that the race started at 10:30 instead of 10. Fortunately I was a little late with my planned 5 mile warm up so I made the start albeit with a few squats as my warm up. Then my Garmin decided to go to sleep just as the hooter went which was a bit of a PITA. The course was described as slightly undulating and the previous year had 15 under the hours so I reckoned it would be reasonably quick. After the first 4 miles I though I might break 70 mins but then the hills hit and 2 miles of 7:30 and 7:36 put paid to that thought. As it was a 2 lap (plus a mini lap) course I got them again 2nd time around. Pretty happy with it all things considered. I still lack endurance as even allowing for the hills I was fading from about the halfway point but it's a nice step up from the 8mm that I managed at the 20k 8 weeks ago. I plodded around another lap of the course to bring up 15 for the day and 44 for the week.

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Been a little while since I posted. Dublin obviously didn't happen as ITB and my attempts to get through it lead to a bit of a dose of CNBA.

I went to one of the workshops run by James Dunne and he quickly had me running like I used to when I was a teenager, problem is that I got shin splints then and sure enough I quickly got shin splints. Working on my back quite a lot to try and get it working. This drill is an absolute killer for me (key thought is to keep your knees low) with 20 - 25 lifts being as far as I can go before I start to lose form.

Also came across an interesting blog on orthotics. The author's main point is that by putting something like an orthotic in a shoe we change the way that the person runs but we really can't predict how they're going to change and tha there's no good rules for 'fixing' somebody not least because there's no ideal position to aim for. In a related note I came across a study in the army where they found that deliberately giving people the wrong type of shoes lead to lower rates of injury. I'll post a link to it if I can find it.

Well done to all those who ran Dublin today. In the end I wasn't even able to make it over to Dublin as my youngest's passport had run out. I'm planning to try and get out a bit more over the next couple of weeks. Should help me deal with the stresses of moving house which we're doing in a couple of weeks. There's a Christmas 10k at the beginning of December which I've entered for the 3rd time. I've never actually run it yet as I've always been injured but hoping for 3rd time lucky. At the moment I'd be happy with a season's best but we'll see if I can't improve over the next few weeks.

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So, the 10k that my son's school organises as a fundraiser was on today which meant that I was doing it if I could finish it. Training has been limited to 1 - 2 times a weekfor the past couple of months as even if I think it may be improving I'm still getting a lot of ITB pain.

So to this morning. I was getting cranky the past day or two which is a sure sign I'm taking something seriously. Why I'm taking it seriously I don't know. I have two numbers in mind. 1 is 46:12 which is what I think I did this race in last year and the other is 45 mins which I hope I might be able to have a shot at given that I have actually been doing some running compared to last year when I really hadn't been doing any.

At the start somebody is wandering around with a handheld loudhailer turning this way and that giving us instructions. It's a bit pointless as at any one time 75% of the runners can't hear. I did hear the advice to run without headphones but if you did have them to run with them in only one ear. This brough a smile to my face as an image of somebody running along with a loose earphone flapping into their face at every other stride.

Somebody starts us off and after a few seconds I get going. The usual mess at the start as faster runners try not to trip over the walkers who thought the front would be a good place to start but it begins to settle down after a few minutes. Good for motivation as I steadily pass other runners. 1st km marker came up at 4:24 which I put down to the start and a short downhill even though I had taken it easy. 2nd km also comes in at 4:24 though. I'm not pushing too hard because I'm not well trained enough to run 10k at 10k effort (if that makes any sense). I'm please with this until it hits me that there's a gale at my back which is going to hurt on the way back. 3rd km comes in at 4:30. Focus on my form for the next while and miss the 4km marker (discovered on the way back that the wind had blown it around a lampost so that it couldn't be seen. The turnaround is also (nearly the) the 5km point and there's no marker. Momentary leap of hope as I see the 4km marker only to realise that the 6km marker is a bit further down the road. The wind is hitting hard and I seem to have paced it better than those around me. I suggest to a few as I pass that they tuck in behind and take turns at the front. To be fair, one eventually does but I had about 2.5km dragging people through. I wasn't looking around but I knew that I had caught about a dozen on the run back and thought that at least some of them had hung on. One guy took a turn at the front and then another tried to jump off the front. I tracked him for a while but the effort level was just above what I could hold and I had to let him go. Hit the 9km marker with 41:2x on the watch which told me that 45mins wasn't going to happen. I did manage to put myself in the hurt box for the last km though passing another half a dozen and crossed the line in about 45:30.

As I'm writing I'm wondering whether I'll be going through the same experience next year talking about another 45 min 10k or will I make the commitment and finally start hitting some of the times that I'm capable of? I don't know is the honest answer.

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6 months on and have I run at all?

In short, yes but I'm pretty unfit again. I did a bit of easy running and followed P&D up to 55 for 6 weeks, then tried doing 30mpw but the body was beginning to break down again and the youngest started school which meant half days which entailed a lot of ferrying from creche to school so for the last 6 weeks I've barely run at all.

Sadly I've noticed over the past year or two that I'm not getting fit again as quickly as I used to and I lose fitness more quickly than I used to. Guess I'm just getting old .

Before his recent account closure (hopefully to be swiftly followed by his return) ecoli posted a link to 5k training on runners world (the American version). It's quite different to what I've been doing for the last while (several failed attempts at base building with almost nothing faster than LT pace) so probably exactly what I need. I guess I'll find out soon enough if I've bitten off more than I can chew although I've been chewing a bit too much lately given that (embarrassingly) my 40" trousers have begun to feel tight.

There's a series of 5k races over the winter/spring which I plan to take part in. When there's no wind it's a lightning fast out and back course with only a 180 degree turn to slow you down on pancake flat concrete so I'd hope to be taking aim at my PB which is 19:11 (I think, it might be 19:07).

Last night was a gentle reminder of speed with 7*1 min at 5k effort with 2 mins recovery. Unfortunately I have no idea what 5k pace feels like any more so looking back I managed to run between 6:30 and 7:05 except for the last one where I pushed a bit harder and got 4:59.

4.5 miles w 7*1min in about 45 mins.
Also 2*1 mile with lots of stretching in between at lunch time.

Clearlier

A quick update. I did a 45 min run as planned last Thursday but then picked up my sons cold. It hit my throat in some way as I briefly lose my voice if I try to talk at any length. No running since then.

Wondering if I'm just being a wimp as I feel fine aside from my voice and a heaviness on my chest. I'm planning to go to the gym a few times next week. It's only a mile jog away so I don't reckon it'll do any harm even if I shouldn't be running.

Looking forward to seeing how everybody gets on on Monday and over the weekend.