The Road to Berlin

macinalli

tHE vAGGABOND wrote: »

Im hoping to be able to get out or a run at the weekend, maybe let me know your plans and we could get out together, since we are both going for around the same ballpark time in Berlin and therefore should be sorta going the same pace..

There is a chance I wont be able to join you due to this back thing I have [seeing Physio late on Friday for weekend go/no go], but no harm in being prepared..

Hey Vagga, my plan was to do about 18 at the weekend, although I'm a bit up in the air about when. I'll be aiming for Sat morning in the Phoenix Park, but at this stage I've no idea of time. Not v helpful, will hopefully know more on Friday evening :rolleyes:

Good luck with the physio on Friday!

macinalli

Haven't updated in a while, but this was to be the last serious week before Berlin. Not the best start in that I had a rest day on Tuesday -think this was needed after the race/LSR the previous weekend. Wednesday was a stupid day at work, wasn't sure if I'd get any run in. Was supposed to be a VO2 max session but in the end I just did fartlek with the guys at work. It was a good quality session, but probably didn't test me as much as the VO2 max - still, some session is better than no session.

Thursday was nice easy running - 11.5k at lunch. Friday was another silly day, but got an easy 10k done around the Phoenix Park that evening. Today was my last LSR - not the best start when I realised that I'd left my garmin at work and had no watch at all. Planned out a rough route at the start, but had to make a few diversions along the way due to the Race Series half marathon. My only guide for time was that the episode of marathon talk I had lined up was 90 mins long! In the end I ran 2.34 and to be honest the pace felt relaxed throughout. I just tried to work out the distance on mapmyrun and I reckon about 27.5k - about 8.50 per mile! My slowest LSR of the campaign - guess I can't run by feel after all! Still, my goal was to get some more miles in to make up for the LSR I missed due to a cold 2 weeks ago and I'm happy with that. 2 weeks now of taper before hitting the mean streets of Berlin - can't wait!

macinalli

Taper time, starting with a nice easy 10k with some strides thrown in. P&D saying there's only 7 runs left til race day!

macinalli

Today was my last session before race day, P&D were calling for 600m intervals but the guys at work were doing fartlek and I decided to join in that instead. We had a good group today and the legs were feeling good. The session followed the usual pattern - 12 legs of between 1 minute and 2.30 with 30 seconds recovery in between. Pace for the longer legs started at around 7.30/mile but was soon under 7.00, while for the shorter legs it was under 6.00/mile by the end. It's always a good session, did a 2k warm down at the end to bring me to 9.5k for the day.

macinalli

Not too much to report of late, just keeping things ticking over as we get nearer to Berlin. Last Thursday was a slow recovery run - an easy 4 miles after the previous days fartlek. Friday was planned day off - suited fine as I was travelling tp Liverpool that day. Sat morning was a lovely run - 11 miles along the promenade by the Mersey. There's a lovely walkway that follows the river all the way into town, really popular with runners, cyclists, dog walkers, anglers. Conditions were perfect too - all runs should be like this!

Today was the complete opposite - 8k in torrential rain at lunchtime. Was a cold run too, the worst conditions I've run in for a while. Not what I want to see next Sunday...

macinalli

Today was the last run of note before Berlin - a nice easy 10k with a couple of k in the middle at race pace. Nothing to report really. This evening I decided to follow the good example of others and went for a sports massage off Ciaran Fitz in Ballinteer. My first time getting one of these, wasn't really sure what to expect. Was well impressed though, he takes the time to work out any niggles, feel great after it!

Plan for tomorrow is a couple of easy k at lunchtime before joining the hordes heading to Berlin on Friday. Took a peek earlier at the Berlin website and it allows you to filter the entrants by nationality. 399 Irish!!

The_Boy_Wonder

macinalli wrote: »

Today was the last run of note before Berlin - a nice easy 10k with a couple of k in the middle at race pace. Nothing to report really. This evening I decided to follow the good example of others and went for a sports massage off Ciaran Fitz in Ballinteer. My first time getting one of these, wasn't really sure what to expect. Was well impressed though, he takes the time to work out any niggles, feel great after it!

Plan for tomorrow is a couple of easy k at lunchtime before joining the hordes heading to Berlin on Friday. Took a peek earlier at the Berlin website and it allows you to filter the entrants by nationality. 399 Irish!!

Best of luck!

TRR

Best of luck. Room 22 expects

macinalli

TRR wrote: »

Best of luck. Room 22 expects

Yep, that's been made quite clear!

menoscemo

Good luck on Sunday.
See you in the Oscar Wilde

pconn062

Good luck with the race, your training has been good so I hope you get what you want.

PDCAT

Best of Luck Sunday. Hope you get the time your looking for.

Dory Dory

Best of luck to you at the weekend!

Krusty_Clown

+1. Really looking forward to hearing how you get on. Very best of luck on Sunday.

Younganne

Best of luck at the weekend. Enjoy!:D

belcarra

Best of luck Mac, tear up that course!!

macinalli

Just back from Berlin and have had a day and a bit to digest yesterdays race. My first *big* city marathon and it really was a super experience. I've run Dublin a couple of times, but Berlin is just a different scale altogether. Target for the day was to get under 3.20 and we got to the race at about 8.10, thought we were in loads of time. Not so! By the time we got the bags dropped, figured our way around the start area etc, it was about 8.57 before we got to the start area. Not the best beginning! Ended up in a queue to get in to the right pen, but this wasn't so bad as I was in wave 2. As soon as the first wave moved off, we joined the melee and all was good for starting the race.

Didn't last too long though as at the start I was really struggling with the crowds. I was in the 3.30-3.45 band, but there were a lot of people there that clearly shouldn't have been. This was very start/stop and I was really struggling to get any sort of a rhythm. Saw a balloon in front of me after about 4k, thought it must be the 3.30 pacers so all still ok. Turned out to be the 3.45 pacers:eek: This led to me trying to speed up too much, get blocked by slower runners, get frustrated - and repeat. At about 7k I made a good decision, which was basically just to try and start the race again. I don't have auto laps set up on my Garmin, so I started a new lap at that point and just decided to start trying to get the pace down towards 7.40 per mile (pace was 8.01 per mile for the first 7k:eek:). For no particular reason I picked 8k as a good number to work off and started a new lap at 15k, 23k, 31, and 39k. This turned out to be a great strategy as my pace started to come down all the time. Rough splits were:
0-7k: 8.01 min/mile
7-15k: 7.46 min/mile
15-23k: 7.43 min/mile
23-31k: 7.40 min/mile
31-39k: 7.40 min/mile
39-end: 7.59 min/mile

In effect I abandoned all notion of a target time and just aimed to try and pick up my pace as I went on. I think I judged it well - my fastest split was the 31-39k stretch but I died over the last couple of k. My finish time was 3.27.43, a PB of 11 minutes but 8 minutes outside the planned race target. Looking back on the race there were a couple of things that cost me:

• Racing line: Garmin says that I ran 26.72 miles! I know that it's not easy to run exactly 26.2, and that there is always room for error, but I've never been that far over in a marathon before!
• Toilet breaks: It was my 7th marathon, and I've never had to stop before for a break. This time I had to stop twice - wtf??
• Slow pace at the start: I don't know what this is about, but I also found this on my MP runs when my initial pace was slow and I was improving as the miles went by. Needs to be worked on!

Still, the whole race was a positive experience. The atmosphere was amazing, I had an 11 minute PB and my first ever time to negative split (1.44 & 1.43!). After the race we ended up staying far too long in the Tiergarten drinking non-alcoholic erdinger, so that we missed out on the hurling and were then too hungry to go the Oscar Wilde. From the quick look I've had at the results, I expect there was some celebrating done!

The_Boy_Wonder

Congrats on the super run and the PB. I know you came up short of the target but an 11 minute PBs is not too be sniffed at. I'd happily take that in DCM!

macinalli

It's been about 2 weeks since my last post but since then I've been recovering and trying to come up with a plan for what to do next. Have also been looking back at the Berlin training diary to see what I did/didn't do. Over the 16 weeks I was pretty good and did over 90% of the planned miles. I think that figure hides some blips in my training though. For the first half, I was very good and did most of my planned sessions. That didn't last though and for about the last 4 weeks before taper things started to go astray. Things like a head cold, work and other stuff all meant that these key weeks weren't as hard as they should have been. Some of it was out of my hands, but others I definitely could have handled better.

Anyhoo, the week after Berlin was very easy - just a couple of very easy paced runs. Last week was a bit more testing - joined a tempo run and a fartlek session with the work gang which felt great. Today I joined that tempo run again - 4 miles in 27.30 and feeling really good. Will join the fartlek again this week and then look towards building a training plan towards future races.

In terms of races, the only race that I'm specifically targetting is the Waterford half on Dec 1st. I'll probably also do one or two of the Christmas races but that depends on important considerations like Christmas parties etc. Have missed enough nights out training for Belrin! In terms of training plans, I only really have 2 planned sessions per week:

1. Steady paced tempo run: a lot of our tempo sessions have been more progression type runs, but I think I'd benefit more from a hard steady pace. They should be good for my speed endurance so will try to do these every week.
2. Interval miles: I'm going to include these into more of my weekend runs, and over time look towards including something like like the McMillan type 10k sessions. For at least the next 6 months the focus will be on shorter stuff so I think this should help.

macinalli

A good weeks running for me, managed to get out every day and think I'm now fully recovered from Berlin. Starting from Monday, my week was 8k, with 6.4k at tempo, 4.5k recovery, 8k fartlek, 4.5k recovery and a hill session on Friday. Yesterday I went out for my first longish run since the marathon - about 15k in 74 mins. The plan was to do this run in 78-80 mins, but was feeling very fresh and just couldn't keep a lid on the pace - ended up doing 30 seconds per mile faster than I wanted:o The fitness you get from marathon training really is a great feeling, will definitely have to do a few races soon. The only down side is that there are very few organised this close to DCM!