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Delusions of ability - sub 2:50 Frankfurt or bust
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Tuesday - 10.6M including 5x1200m with 2:40 recovery.
Like pretty much everyone else I got caught in the wind and horizontal rain for some of this session (around the football pitches in PPark). Dropped the pace by a few seconds from recent sessions since I had a feeling I was being a bit pushy. Glad I did. This was tough enough as it was. Splits: 4:15, 4:12, 4:13, 4:12, 4:19. HR peaking at just under 170 (about 93% HRR).
Wednesday - 14.2M MLR @6:50, AvgHR 145 (73% HRR). I have a love/hate thing going with these late night runs. On the one hand it's a royal pain dragging my arse out the door after 8pm, then having to eat/stretch/shower/waste time on boards before getting to bed. On the other hand they're usually fast, and going fast in the dark is like flying
(words before a fall if ever I heard them).
Sports massage tomorrow where I get given out to for not stretching and pay for the privilege of someone taking meat tenderiser to my calves.0 -
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Thursday - 6.6M @7:13. Aerobic run home from work with backpack. Supposed to be a bit longer, but just didn't have the energy.
Friday - 6.4M @7:33. Recovery run.
Saturday - 22.M LR with 8M PMP in the middle. Still trying to get this one straight in my head. So skip the rest if you don't want to hear me thinking aloud
P&D call for 20M LR, but I wanted to get something a little tougher in before the taper. The plan was for 8M steady, 8M PMP (6:27 is the goal), 6M steady. I had one of those sneaky caveats in the back of my mind about doing a few more PMP miles if possible.
Well the 8 steady flew by @7:11 avg. It was a struggle to keep the pace down. Stopped briefly for a gel & water.
The first 4 of the PMP were also lovely at 6:26, 6:20, 6:21, 6:22, then I turned uphill and in to the wind for the second 4. These felt *much* tougher, and it was struggle to keep the pace close to target, 6:35, 6:30, 6:30, 6:30. Funnily enough the HR never got high enough to explain the discomfort. Another stop for gel & water. Any plans to do more PMP went out the window, and I shuffled home for the last 6 @7:36 stopping again for water which was unusual for me.
So job done, but those PMP miles shouldn't have felt so hard. I'm not going to freak out, just chalk it up to a bad day/end of training cycle tiredness (I know I've been whinging a bit about lack of energy for the last couple of weeks). I definitely have more in me than this, but damn it's not how I wanted to finish before the taper. Fishing for positives, I'd say I felt pretty OK after the 22, certainly stronger than the couple of others I've done in this training cycle. It was also a good lesson in self-control (things may have gone better if I'd reigned in the first 4 PMP), and has forced me to have a plan B in case sub 2:50 doesn't work out on the day.
Squeezed in some core work and stretching after the kids were in bed.
Anyway, enough bellyaching......IT BEGINS!!!.....
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Monday - 7.7M @7:15 with 9x100m strides. Recovery run home from work with backpack. The legs were feeling fresh after taking Sunday off, which gave me the idea for Tuesday...
Tuesday - 12.6M with 10M @PMP. Lovely lovely lovely run I couldn't get Saturday's catastro-feck out of my head, so decided I'd give the 8PMP another go (the plan just called for a 12M MLR). Things went so well it turned into 10M PMP, and it was comfortable with occasional bits of comfortably uncomfortable the whole way. I love these night time runs. Here's hoping for a solar eclipse on Oct 28th.
PMP miles: 6:21, 6:18, 6:20, 6:23, 6:23, 6:23, 6:20, 6:23, 6:21, 6:23
Horse well and truly remounted.
Wednesday - 5 recovery miles with 5x100m strides. My first outing with the Boards AC t-shirt from rom. Disappointed by the lack of wolf whistles. It's possible people were too busy swooning. Core and stretching later on.0 -
Monday - 7.7M @7:15 with 9x100m strides. Recovery run home from work with backpack. The legs were feeling fresh after taking Sunday off, which gave me the idea for Tuesday...
Tuesday - 12.6M with 10M @PMP. Lovely lovely lovely run I couldn't get Saturday's catastro-feck out of my head, so decided I'd give the 8PMP another go (the plan just called for a 12M MLR). Things went so well it turned into 10M PMP, and it was comfortable with occasional bits of comfortably uncomfortable the whole way. I love these night time runs. Here's hoping for a solar eclipse on Oct 28th.
PMP miles: 6:21, 6:18, 6:20, 6:23, 6:23, 6:23, 6:20, 6:23, 6:21, 6:23
Horse well and truly remounted.
Wednesday - 5 recovery miles with 5x100m strides. My first outing with the Boards AC t-shirt from rom. Disappointed by the lack of wolf whistles. It's possible people were too busy swooning.
You're spending too much time reading my log 0 -
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Thursday - Off
Friday - 5M recovery. Unexpected recovery runs, first sign of a taper.
Saturday - Simon Community 5M race, 29:37, 14th, and a sneaky 5.5M recovery run @7:09 that evening. The last sharpening race of the plan. Not much to report. I might have gone off a little fast, but it's an uneven course so hard to judge. Effort felt consistent (painful) the whole way around. Sticking the last 1km on the Khyber is the move of a psychopath though :eek:
Sunday 17M LR @7:19. Not fun, unhappy stomach
At first I thought it was down to eating too soon beforehand, but things got steadily worse, and didn't improve after the run either. Mrs C was kind enough to wrangle the kids and let me slope off to bed early. Felt much better the next morning, so just some 24h thing. I'll be wearing a full biohazard suit the week before DCM.
Here is a picture of a running Tapir
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Not a great week. Not a terrible week. Just meh really. Combination of hard-to-shake stomach bug, busy at work, and taper fatigue.
Monday - 7M @7:27 with 9x100m strides. Turned out that whatever lurgy I picked up on Sunday was going to take a little while to shake. Felt weak and crappy.
Tuesday - Off
Wednesday - 4.1M @6:59. Supposed to be another recovery run, but pushed a little harder trying to prove to myself I was well again. Still not 100% though
Thursday 8M with 3x1600M@5km pace with 4m recovery. Finally, a tough session, never thought I'd miss these Still not feeling top form, but almost there. Splits of 5:37, 5:45, 5:37
Friday - 5M @7:04. Just another boring recovery run, but with rain.
Saturday - 6M with 8x100m strides. Did I mention I'm sick of recovery runs?
Sunday - 13M with 3M PMP, 6:45 avg. May have gotten a little carried away here, but I was feeling good and really wanted to stretch the legs out. PMP miles were 6:24, 6:24, 6:21.
8 more sleeps!0 -
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Thanks guys, like many around here I'm a bag of nerves right now Must.stop.refreshing.yr.no.
Was going to post an update for the week, but it's just a bunch of low mileage boring taper stuff, mixed with phantom niggles and psychosomatic sniffles.
Here's hoping we all get the weather and PBs we want. Roll on Monday, and with any luck I'll see some of youz in McGrattan's!0 -
Thanks guys, like many around here I'm a bag of nerves right now Must.stop.refreshing.yr.no.
Was going to post an update for the week, but it's just a bunch of low mileage boring taper stuff, mixed with phantom niggles and psychosomatic sniffles.
Here's hoping we all get the weather and PBs we want. Roll on Monday, and with any luck I'll see some of youz in McGrattan's!
Best of luck on Monday! Go out there and nail it...0 -
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2:54:23 - not the result I was hoping for, but still a 4 minute PB. Honestly I don't think I had 2:50 in me on the day, but maybe 2:52 if I'd paced it better (complete blow up and mile 19, pretty much identical to last year).
Was in McGs for about an hour with the family but the kids weren't feeling great and had to get them home to bed. Did manage a quick hello to KC (took a guess that the guy in the climbing trousers was himself), Ultrapercy, and Ronnie. I was expecting a more obvious group of people 'from the internet'. You know, star wars costumes, sarcastic t-shirts and neck beards
I need to figure out what went wrong, what to do about it, and what spring marathon to aim at, but for now it's beer, Indian takeaway, and crappy television. Hope you're all doing similar.0 -
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Right better get this down before the rose tinted glasses kick in
(All splits are from the Garmin since I had mixed luck spotting the mile markers as they went by).
The plan 2:50, with even splits. So 6:29 in reality, 6:26ish on the Garmin. The reasoning being that even effort is supposed to give best results, effort goes up for the same pace as the race goes on, but the second half of the course is more downhill so it all kind of cancels out.
Preparation - perfect if I do say so myself, I had a spreadsheet and everything. Well hydrated, fed and rested for days beforehand. Turned up in plenty of time and no last minute toilet emergencies like last year (don't ask). Proper warm up and stretching and inserted myself just behind the 3:10 pacers at 8:45. Could have tried pushing up further, but it was jammers and there didn't seem that many people ahead.
Mile 1 More congested than I'd guessed. Effort mostly spent trying to get past people who shouldn't have been where they were (so many Guards) 6:31
Miles 2-4 More and more room to breath with groups starting to form on the North circular stretch. Lots of energy from the crowd and excited runners, plus the slight downhill made it very tempting to get carried away, but I was sensible! 6:15, 6:25, 6:23
Miles 5-8 Latched on to a group with a couple of lads from Crusaders leading it. They were in or around my target pace and I knew I'd want some bodies to hide behind on Chesterfield avenue. As it happened they pulled away a bit on this stretch, but we all regrouped in the last mile. First gel at mile 6. Feeling very good at the end of this section, but then again it did end on a big downhill. 6:14, 6:29, 6:20, 6:21
Miles 9-11 Like others have said, a great wall of sound exiting Chapelizod gate. Another drink station, and someone got briefly confused and thought they were a shot-putter because a water bottle went in a great arc barely missing bystanders Solid crowds all the way, and just like last year some people in fancy dress in their front garden going through Inchicore. I wasn't sure if I'd hallucinated them last year Still hanging on to my pacing group. Feeling a bit less comfortably comfortable, but there had been a fair few uphill bits towards the end. 6:20, 6:26, 6:27
Miles 12-13 Rough going. We turned in to Crumlin road and it was a long drag into the wind. I decided not to try and hang on to the group who were maintaining pace. Tried to concentrate on a decent pace without going in to the red. Gel at mile 12. 6:31, 6:39
Miles 14-16 Very glad to be out of the wind, and starting to find my feet again. Although there was a weird point around mile 15 where I felt awful and DNF flashed in my mind. It passed in a few hundred meters, but was probably the first serious warning sign of things to come. I was surprised when I found my group again though. Side note: I'm not a big one for motivational signs, but there was one which got my blood pumping "run like your late for mass". Nothing gets me going like my inner grammer Nazi
6:27, 6:19, 6:33
Miles 17-19 Still motoring, but things were starting to feel a little creaky and heavy. Right quad and hip in particular. Things also start to get a bit blurry here. I do remember a small hill that was enough to separate me from the two Crusaders again. Gel number 3. 6:21, 6:18, 6:32
Mile 20 BOOM. Deja vu, the wheels came off. Just like last year, the legs got seriously heavy, and every bump and dip in the road became a struggle. Well at least it was familiar territory The crowds were great, but I all I could see was the growing stream of people starting to pass me 6:49
Miles 21-25 Death march. More people passing. More torture from undulating roads. My imaginary buddies from Crusaders were long gone, and the miles that had gone by so quickly at the start were dddddrrrrraaaaggggiiinggg. I think purceninho (2:53, good man!) passed me around mile 24 and tried to get me going, but I was beyond help I also saw a tall lad in blue repeatedly stopping to stretch out cramps, maybe ecoli?
Mrs C and the kids roared as I went by at 25.2M and waved an upside-down sign Brilliant stuff, and a marked improvement on last year when the young lad got confused and started shouting 'go Daddy' at some randomer . Another gel at some point, can't quite remember. 7:00, 6:33, 6:53, 7:24, 7:31
Last 1.4 miles The finish line felt like it would never ever come. For some reason I thought it was the junction with Kildare St. I could have cried when I got close enough to see the extra 200 meters :eek: 7:34, 6:48
Finish Staggered through in 2:54:23, and managed to keep walking unlike last year. Bumped in to one of the Crusader lads, and William Owens from the same club. I think the first managed under 2:50, and William beat me by about 10 seconds :pac: There ensued a very slow creaky walk to get my gear, meet up with the family, and head to McGs for food, coffee, whiskey. The kids weren't well unfortunately so we had to pack up early and head home after only briefly meeting a couple of boards heads.
So that's that. I'll take a lot of positives from it: a 4 minute PB, a tough training cycle where I stayed injury free and really enjoyed the extra mileage, a solid base for bigger and better things, a lesson (finally) learned about conservative marathon pacing, a serious desire for revenge on that race, and getting involved with the A/R community.
The negatives are obvious
I would like to ask for some advice though, because I'm not exactly sure what to take away from this second, almost identical blow up. Some poorly structured questions:- My heart rate was steady the whole way through this race. Just on or below LT (88% HRR), dipping to 84%ish when the wheels came off. When the wheels did come off, the main thing I felt were heavy heavy legs, no problems breathing or with the stomach.
* Is this sort of HR level normal for a successful marathon?
* What should I be focusing on to prevent this from happening again? Am I missing something particular in my training, or did I just run the first 3/4's too fast? - My gut instinct from this training cycle and race, is that I could do with spending a couple of months focusing on shorter distances to raise my LT and strength.
* Does that make sense?
* What's a good plan for this if my ultimate goal is to improve my marathon time ?
* Vague plans right now: focus for the Dungarvan 10M in Jan, then switch to a 12 week marathon plan a couple of weeks beforehand in preparation for Paris. Make sense? - Any other opinions? Abuse doesn't count as an opinion Gavlor
For those who made it all the way to the end and were paying attention, I now realise a constant split pacing plan depends on being able to hold those splits, something I hadn't thought enough about beforehand
0 - My heart rate was steady the whole way through this race. Just on or below LT (88% HRR), dipping to 84%ish when the wheels came off. When the wheels did come off, the main thing I felt were heavy heavy legs, no problems breathing or with the stomach.
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Funny you say that. It was only as I was writing it down that it the same thing struck me. Bit of a gob****e me.Great report and an excellent run. Sounds like lots to think about going forward. I'm by no means an expert on HR stuff as I don't really use it but 84-88 percent sounds pretty high for MP? Ideally I would think you'd want your HMP to be close to your LT and your MP a good bit off that...
Quite possibly, you even warned me beforehandOh and just from a quick glance it looks to me like you might have gone out a bit fast... I think the. 6:07/ 6:12 miles I ran in my race messed me up a bit and you hit those really quick miles pretty early!
Edit: no recent HM as a representative PB (ran the DCM series half in 1:23 as a PMP session), and around 1:00:50 I think for the Eco2Run 10M about a month and a half ago.0 -
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First up, well done on your run, great stuff. I’ll attempt to answer your questions as I find them very interesting, but I am no means an expert on any of this, just thinking aloud!
- My heart rate was steady the whole way through this race. Just on or below LT (88% HRR), dipping to 84%ish when the wheels came off. When the wheels did come off, the main thing I felt were heavy heavy legs, no problems breathing or with the stomach.
* Is this sort of HR level normal for a successful marathon?
Not sure about HRR, but 87-90% HR max is often quoted for well trained runners (and up to 92% for the best, e.g. Radcliffe, Hall). For the less well trained, 85% might be more realistic. However, these HR max percentages might be more useful for training than racing. As hydration levels, glycogen levels, race day anxiety etc. etc. can all affect HR, I’m not sure how much I’d trust HR on race day.
The drop in HR can be a sign of glycogen depletion. Your heart is working hard pumping oxygen to the muscle fibres where it can react with the glycogen to provide the energy for the muscle contractions needed to propel you forward. The less glycogen you have, the less oxygen is needed (as it would be redundant) so the heart rate drops.* What should I be focusing on to prevent this from happening again?
The million dollar question. I suppose it depends on why it happened in the first place. Traditionally the wheels coming off has been attributed to a fueling issue, although newer research is putting things like cramping down to muscular damage issues*. If you slowed down because you were running out of glycogen, then you want to a) train your body to store more glycogen in the first place and also to b) use the glycogen more sparingly.
Increasing mileage and long runs are probably the best way to achieve a) by increasing the number of muscle fibres that are trained (as the more you run and the more long runs you do, the more muscle fibres you will have to recruit [as those recruited earlier get fatigued], and hence train, and one of the training effects being increased ability to store glycogen). Don’t fall into the trap of thinking eating loads of carbs the few days before or taking gels will resolve a fuelling issue, the months and years of training the muscles to be able to store more glycogen beforehand is the key.
To achieve b) you need to improve your running economy, i.e. use less glycogen at any given pace, and particularly marathon pace. Most training probably contributes to this. It would seem logical that the more running one does at MP, the easier (more economical) it will get. But I would prefer using effort rather than pace, e.g. run at marathon breathing effort rather than pace. Early on in a programme this might be 7:00 pace and a few weeks or months later this might be 6:30 pace for the same breathing effort. Running faster than MP occasionally might also help - e.g. increasing lactate threshold allows more room/scope for aerobic threshold (MP) to improve.
*Runners who cramp in the latter stages of the marathon tend to be those who
a) tapered less
b) had elevated creatine kinase just before the race (a marker of muscle damage, indicating inadequate recovery, so maybe related to the shorter taper or else perhaps doing the last sessions or long runs too hard)
c) started faster relative to their PBs[*] My gut instinct from this training cycle and race, is that I could do with spending a couple of months focusing on shorter distances to raise my LT and strength.
* Does that make sense?
* What's a good plan for this if my ultimate goal is to improve my marathon time ?
* Vague plans right now: focus for the Dungarvan 10M in Jan, then switch to a 12 week marathon plan a couple of weeks beforehand in preparation for Paris. Make sense?
[/LIST]
I think improving at any distance, whether it be 5k or HM will help. You want to improve at all the distances, so pick one that you like and go for it. Training for shorter distances and then going back to the marathon is a good plan. Don’t think of it as a 12 week plan, think of it as a 3 year plan, or a 10 year plan, however long you have been running / plan to keep running, it all contributes.
Finally - tell your inner grammer nazi to look out for the inner spelling nazi
TLDR - I’ve gone the long way round to say very little...
more mileage, more long runs, some marathon effort runs, some faster than MP runs, improve at shorter distances... no secret, just consistent training, carry on as you’ve been going and it will come.0 - My heart rate was steady the whole way through this race. Just on or below LT (88% HRR), dipping to 84%ish when the wheels came off. When the wheels did come off, the main thing I felt were heavy heavy legs, no problems breathing or with the stomach.
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Thanks for detailed response Larry!
Me neither, mostly thrown out their since it's a hard data point vs "I felt tired". P&D list 88% HRR as the upper bound of marathon pace, but I don't remember there being any more context around it.Larry Brent wrote: »Not sure about HRR, but 87-90% HR max is often quoted for well trained runners (and up to 92% for the best, e.g. Radcliffe, Hall). For the less well trained, 85% might be more realistic. However, these HR max percentages might be more useful for training than racing. As hydration levels, glycogen levels, race day anxiety etc. etc. can all affect HR, I’m not sure how much I’d trust HR on race day.Larry Brent wrote: »The drop in HR can be a sign of glycogen depletion. Your heart is working hard pumping oxygen to the muscle fibres where it can react with the glycogen to provide the energy for the muscle contractions needed to propel you forward. The less glycogen you have, the less oxygen is needed (as it would be redundant) so the heart rate drops.
The million dollar question. I suppose it depends on why it happened in the first place. Traditionally the wheels coming off has been attributed to a fueling issue, although newer research is putting things like cramping down to muscular damage issues*. If you slowed down because you were running out of glycogen, then you want to a) train your body to store more glycogen in the first place and also to b) use the glycogen more sparingly.
Increasing mileage and long runs are probably the best way to achieve a) by increasing the number of muscle fibres that are trained (as the more you run and the more long runs you do, the more muscle fibres you will have to recruit [as those recruited earlier get fatigued], and hence train, and one of the training effects being increased ability to store glycogen). Don’t fall into the trap of thinking eating loads of carbs the few days before or taking gels will resolve a fuelling issue, the months and years of training the muscles to be able to store more glycogen beforehand is the key.
I forgot to add all the gels I took in the report, fixing that now, but basically I took 4. One at mile 6, 12, 18, 21.
FTR, I didn't cramp, but the legs did feel damn tired. It wouldn't have surprised me if they did.
My training was P&D 55-75 miles, with a few (3-4?) 22+ mile runs, and maybe twice as many 20+ mile runs along the way.
It's an interesting point about needing more long term effort to improve glycogen storage and efficiency. I'd been thinking that 18 week training plan would take care of that, but then I was coming from a base of no running for a couple of runs due to injury, and not very huge mileage before that (marathon training at the start of the year, but not such a serious plan).
No way, I hate that guy, he's almost never on my sideLarry Brent wrote: »I think improving at any distance, whether it be 5k or HM will help. You want to improve at all the distances, so pick one that you like and go for it. Training for shorter distances and then going back to the marathon is a good plan. Don’t think of it as a 12 week plan, think of it as a 3 year plan, or a 10 year plan, however long you have been running / plan to keep running, it all contributes.
Finally - tell your inner grammer nazi to look out for the inner spelling naziLarry Brent wrote: »TLDR - I’ve gone the long way round to say very little...
more mileage, more long runs, some marathon effort runs, some faster than MP runs, improve at shorter distances... no secret, just consistent training, carry on as you’ve been going and it will come.
What, no quick fixes? I'm disgusted 0
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