Turning a mule into a race horse.

Pacing Mule

3 Miles Recovery Run @ 11:33 avg pace

Didn't really enjoy this run to be honest. Was a bit tender before, during and after but that wasn't the issue. I felt like tonights run was a chore rather than something to enjoy. This tends to happen me on recovery runs in particular where there is no challenge to be met. The recovery run was needed after the 2 days back to back harder sessions (relatively speaking for me) and I knew it wouldn't make any sense to go out at pace for this.

Paradoxically I find it harder to run when the run is easy. Hopefully that makes sense to some of you and I'm not a loony. :pac:

(20 miles into the marathon I'm sure the above statement will make feck all sense too)

Pacing Mule

Tonights lesson - everything is relative

Got down to the club for tonights run. The way the club works is Mondays are for either hills or track sessions and Wednesdays are for a straightforward run. Didn't make it down last Wednesday so tonight was my first run within the group. I had a choice of 5,6 or 8 mile groups but was warned the 5 mile would go out at a bit of pace. I felt 8 miles was too much for me personally for a midweek run so went for 6 at "gentle" pace.

The lesson: one persons gentle is anothers all out

I wore my watch but couldn't see it in the dark of the park so only got to look at splits later. What did happen though was 2 miles in I was struggling. It was going to be a huge effort to maintain this and I felt it would be stupid to do this tonight. (Now you can call that wimping out or you can call it smart - might be a bit of both but I've been feeling tender since last week and the last thing I want is to cause an injury) I let the group go on a bit and dropped my pace back and also cut a bit of a short cut back ending up at 5 mile run.

A look at the splits afterwards had the first mile at 9:00 with a grade adjusted pace of 8:38, second mile at 9:30 - much too fast for me at the moment As was mentioned before by Quirky run with faster people and get yourself faster so all is good. My plan now is to move training around to target Wednesday as a longer run / harder session. Give me a few weeks and I will be able to keep up all the way !

Ososlo

I don't think you were wimping out at all. Sounds like it's a bit aggressive for you. Is this a Fit for Life group? I've read a few times on Boards about relatively new runners (running just a year or two) joining clubs and end up getting injured as they're trying to keep up with a pace that's just too fast for them.

Is everyone else in the group finding the pace fine? Were you told when you joined that it was for your level? Were you told what kind of mileage/pace you should be capable of running prior to joining?

Pacing Mule

Ososlo wrote: »

I don't think you were wimping out at all. Sounds like it's a bit aggressive for you. Is this a Fit for Life group? I've read a few times on Boards about relatively new runners (running just a year or two) joining clubs and end up getting injured as they're trying to keep up with a pace that's just too fast for them.

Is everyone else in the group finding the pace fine? Were you told when you joined that it was for your level? Were you told what kind of mileage/pace you should be capable of running prior to joining?

Yeah it's Fit for Life but at same time the standard does appear to be above Fit for Life level. On the first night I was asked about my current running times and distances and the response was I'd be well capable.

Was chatting along way tonight (also a first for me and not helping me keep up :pac:) and afterwards and I asked about the standards there. The club website mentions 3 levels of Fit for Life - Walkers, Walk / Joggers and then Joggers but from what I can see everyone there is at Jogger / Runner level. There was mention of walkers having joined and left. In contrast another local club had warned me off joining their group as being more at couch to 5k level and I would obviously be well above that. If anything I suspect the club is a victim of it's own success in that the Fit for Life group is nearly too fit. I'm happy enough though. I'm experienced and strong enough mentally to know when I need to hold back / run to my own paces but at the same time having a target a little above me to aim for is good for progress.

Ososlo

sounds like you have it under control so. At least you're confident and sensible enough to know when to back-off. Many wouldn't I'd imagine. As we all know, nothing's worth getting an injury over. Best of luck with it. I'd say if going with a 9 min/mile group again, maybe do a slow mile or two on your own first as a warm up. I think that's what I'd have to do as I couldn't just jump into a faster pace run straight off.

ecoli

Sounds like you made the right call regarding pulling back. Perhaps look at the wednesday session as your tempo day and as Ososlo mentioned do a mile or two warm up yourself and hang with them for 2-3 miles and then tail off. This will help bring you on and supplement these two session days with your own easy running.

What can happen in these incidences sometimes is that many of these people are beginners who end up racing their easy runs and haven't learned as of yet the importance of slow easy running. It could be a case of (given your background) being ahead of the curve with regard knowing how to train smarter.

I know in my club similarly there are relatively new runners in the club (2-3 years running) who would fly by me with regards easy long run pace but their race times wouldn't match up

Pacing Mule

Bit of a mixed week on the training front. Had a session on the bike and also had a swim but that's as close as I will be getting to triathlons. :pac: The storms of the last few days were a metaphor for the proverbial **** storm I ran into in work life so running was kept to an unfortunate minimum. I did though get out for a small 3 miles on Sunday.

Missed Mondays hill session at the club but got down tonight for the weekly run in the park. Totally pissed off to a) forget my watch and b) find out after the run that my backup option of the strava app on the phone had paused 7 seconds into the run :mad: The run itself was much better than last week. Was talking to one of the lads in last weeks group before the run and he mentioned that he had found last weeks pace a bit high too. It turned out he was the only person interested in doing a 6 mile session tonight and I said I would join him if the pace was a bit slower than last week. Had a very enjoyable 6 miles at comfortable conversational pace. Thankfully he had a watch on so I was able to grab the session details at the end. Worked out at 6 miles in just over an hour @ 10:20 average pace. Very happy with that.

Pacing Mule

Not quite according to plan this one.

Set out to do / what this should have looked like:

1 mile easy / warm up
2 miles at 10k race pace (9:30)
1 mile easy / cool down.

My logic here is I am 4 weeks out from the current goal 10k race (more about that shortly) and over the next 4 weeks I want to do one run a week at race pace gradually building up to the full 10k at race pace on race week.

What actually happened:

1 mile easyish 10:07 (bit too fast)

1 mile 8:42 (way too fast)
0.6 mile 9:00 pace (again too fast)

Basically I went off at too fast a pace. Took me too long to settle at the increased pace and when I did settle was running too fast. I was like an engine stuck in gear though, was trying to bring it back down gradually but never got it down to the pace I should have. At 1.5 miles into the pace section though I turned into an almighty head wind. Enough to near stop me in my tracks despite maintaining the same effort. Decided there and then to cut the pace section short and drop to easy pace. Shortly after dropping to easy pace I started to feel tightness and pain in both lower calves / achilles area and my inner injury alarm bell went off. Stopped to walk for a bit / stretch out the tightness which cleared things up. Jogged home at easy pace:

1.3 miles @ 10:39.

Just shy of 4 miles in total. Really need to get better control of my session pacing or it will bite me in the ass.

Pacing Mule

So the race I am looking to do is the fit magazine 10k on 9th March. Target is sub 60 min. Found out today that the route is 2 x 5k laps of the course which I ran for the remembrance run 5k. This means two visits into and more importantly back out of the furry glen in the park. The hill back out is tough and the thoughts of hitting it a second time 7/8k in are not too appealing. ::( Ran the 5k in 28:23 so sub 1 hour should still be achievable. Time will tell but in the mean time I need to get a couple of practice runs in on hills.

Pacing Mule

Had my first ever track session tonight.

1 Mile warmup. Then 12 x 400m at circa 90% effort with 200m walk / gentle jog in between.

1:53, 1:54, 1:56, 1:57, 1:55, 1:54, 1:53, 1:57, 1:58, 1:54, 1:55, 1:48

Didn't really know what to pace these at. Went out quite fast (for me) but kept a little back knowing there was 12 reps to do. The fastest lads in the group were running these a little faster but I would catch them by taking a slightly shorter / faster rest. I think I had the pacing right for me as by lap 10/11 I had to really work to hit the target time. For the very last lap I picked the fastest guy and stuck like glue to him ...... for 200 metres at which point lungs were exploding and legs were aching and I had to let him go. Still a 5-7 second improvement on the lap.

Thoroughly enjoyed the session.

Tom Joad

That's a cracking session - nice and consistent too so you really nailed it.

Pacing Mule

I was originally going to sit down and throw down a very quick nothing fancy or remarkable, happened, just logging it, post about tonights run but looking at it now I am actually seeing some improvements - improvements I would have to credit to joining a club. Even though this was only a few weeks ago.

Yesterdays weather was a write off running wise so I organised to run home the 5.3 miles today from Dunboyne. This involves a 100 ft climb mostly done over 1 mile. I don't get to do this route too often so it's an interesting comparison point. The idea was to do this comfortable. Not 100% easy but comfortable. Off I went comfortable but a glance down at watch said I was running faster than my normal easy pace. My last run was a club session where I was running 400m strides and I think I was still in tune with these. Things slowed down slightly for the rest of the run partly because it was uphill. When I got to the 100ft over 1 mile climb mile I powered up it with not much problem at all. Over the past few weeks at the club I've been doing hill specific sessions and running on hilly routes too and I found today that the hill just wasn't scary anymore. Scary does sound over dramatic a word though.

Splits were:
9:35
9:58
10:06
9:53
9:52
9:08 (pace for .3 of mile)

The climb coming from approx 3.5 - 4.5 miles in.

This was a good 30 seconds per mile faster than my usual comfortable pace and on an uphill route. The particular climb has a strava segment which I smashed my PR on today by over a minute whilst not really racing. Small signs of progress being made and a happy Mule I am.

Pacing Mule

Indulged a little bit last night so scheduled a recovery / punishment run for this morning.

I'm normally up at 5.30 every saturday for work but am off this weekend so I had a good morning ...

Up at 8 = 2.5 hour lie in.
No work to go to.
4.5 mile run at easy recovery pace.
Spotify with a rock cheesefest classic ....

Hearing "Wild is the Wind" for the first time in years whilst running into a gale.
Carlsberg don't do Saturday mornings etc

10:25 avg pace - again a bit of a step up pace wise than previous recovery runs but it was at recovery pace effort.

Murph_D

Great stuff PM, you seem to be making great progress. Keep up the good work, etc.

btw didn't I tell you that Fit For Life would be grand ;-)

Pacing Mule

Murph_D wrote: »

Great study PM, you seem to be making great progress. Keep up the good work, etc.

btw didn't I tell you that Fit For Life would be grand ;-)

You did

Best running related step I have ever taken.

Pacing Mule

Disclaimer - The following info is best guesstimate figures. And forgive the waffling as I try to work this out myself along the way ...

Tonight was hill session at the club and was the first time I had brought my GPS watch with me. Probably shouldn't have bothered as the info it spat out afterwards was all over the place.

Just inside the chapleizod gate of the park there is a triangle of a hill. Up the right side is all uphill. Slight incline flat and decline off the back of the triangle and then down the other side. A total distance of .5 miles. Session was 8 of these with 60/90 seconds rest inbetween. Pace was to be constant throughout. 90%+ effort on the hill, 75% on the flat and downhill. Take a brief rest and repeat.

I had during this time tried to get splits for the run part. So first time round I had hit start done the full lap hit split for a full lap time. The rest period would be a split in itself. Second and subsequent laps I hit a manual split halfway round so I could get a rough idea of uphill time versus downhill time again hitting a split for the rest time. Finally on the last lap I hit a manual split at the top of the right side to get a split and pace for the actual hill, halfway across and then a final stop. Sounds good ! However the data from the watch doesn't match this at all. My rest periods are included in some of the splits. There was a split taken halfway through the uphill each time too. I can only imagine this was due to GPS coverage coming and going which makes sense given the location. So the info I have in front of me tonight is as close to gibberish as you can get which is a pain in the ass as I really wanted to get accurate pacing stats for the hills.

Anyway from what I can translate / surmise was the following ...

1.4 Mile Warmup
8 x .5 mile hill sessions.

5.4 mile total

Split 1 - accurate time of 4:16 = 8:32 pace.
Splits 2-8 approximate time 4:30 = 9:00 pace. Definitely a little slower.

Pace relatively constant throughout so a solid pace for the uphill of 8:30 / 9:00 miles I would be quite happy with relative to my current fitness.

Pacing Mule

Missed the club run (and run full stop) yesterday due to work in house over running time wise. Ended up with an hour free today. Not enough time to make up for what would have been a 7 mile run last night so I decided to run a shorter run with a few blocks of pace thrown in for quality purposes !

1.6 Mile Warmup.

4 x roughly 0.4 mile blocks with 1 min brisk walk and 1 min gentle pace between.

Splits / Pace
3:09 --- 8:07
3:22 --- 8:21
3:11 --- 7:53
3:19 --- 8:13

All of these were done at what I would call "give it some welly pace" I didn't have a set target pace. Just wanted to run at a pace that I felt suitably challenged at but which I could just about make the end of the blocks. I could have if pushed stretched these out to half mile blocks. This would be faster than my current 5k pace - more like current 1 mile pace. Target race pace for the 10k on March 9th is 9:30 so am happy that my legs have that kind of pace in them all be it over shorter distances.

Cooldown / gentle jog to take it up to ...

Total 4 miles at an average pace of 9:27 - nicely under the target race pace too.

menoscemo

Well Done PM; good progress going on here.
Just a little word of caution about doing back to back hard runs. Always try to make sure to get an easy run or two in between sessions. Easy paced running should still make up the large majority of your miles/runs...

Pacing Mule

menoscemo wrote: »

Well Done PM; good progress going on here.
Just a little word about doing caution back to back hard runs. Always try to make sure to get an easy run or two in between sessions. Easy paced running should still make up the large majority of your miles/runs...

Thanks Meno. Much appreciated.

Today should have been a rest day after an easy long run last night. Needed to juggle things around with the times but rest of week will be easy for sure.

menoscemo

Pacing Mule wrote: »

Thanks Meno. Much appreciated.

Today should have been a rest day after an easy long run last night. Needed to juggle things around with the times but rest of week will be easy for sure.

No worries, just keep an eye on it going forward as it will help avoiding injury.

A Long run would still be considered a hard run (whatever the pace) so best to avoid this on the run after a session. For flushing the legs a short easy (or recovery) run is much more effective than a rest day.

Pacing Mule

Woke up yesterday with slightly sore throat and bit of chesty cough. Elected not to run to be on safe side.

Woke up today unable to move my head such was the pain in my throat and neck. Chesty cough significantly worse too. I also sound like a feckin Dalek. Copious amounts of Lemsip etc being consumed.

No run today and fearing for a weekend write off too. :mad:

SamforMayo

Pacing Mule wrote: »

Woke up yesterday with slightly sore throat and bit of chesty cough. Elected not to run to be on safe side.

Woke up today unable to move my head such was the pain in my throat and neck. Chesty cough significantly worse too. I also sound like a feckin Dalek. Copious amounts of Lemsip etc being consumed.

No run today and fearing for a weekend write off too. :mad:

Sounds nasty, mind yourself and dont stress about missing a few runs

Pacing Mule

No running to report.

Still sick.

Very pissed off.

I'm fighting the urge to go out and run. I know it will be counter productive in the long run. Chest still a bit wheezy and throat sore and I feel like I have just finished a 20 mile run all the time. My goal 10k race is on in less than 2 weeks now so I can't afford to stuff things up by running too soon. That said I do need to be ready to run it and no running does not help ! I am thinking of staying off until Friday and testing the water then.

SamforMayo

Pacing Mule wrote: »

No running to report.

Still sick.

Very pissed off.

I'm fighting the urge to go out and run. I know it will be counter productive in the long run. Chest still a bit wheezy and throat sore and I feel like I have just finished a 20 mile run all the time. My goal 10k race is on in less than 2 weeks now so I can't afford to stuff things up by running too soon. That said I do need to be ready to run it and no running does not help ! I am thinking of staying off until Friday and testing the water then.

Did you go to a doctor? Don't run if you feel crap, you will achieve nothing and could set yourself way back

Tom Joad

Pacing Mule wrote: »

No running to report.

Still sick.

Very pissed off.

I'm fighting the urge to go out and run. I know it will be counter productive in the long run. Chest still a bit wheezy and throat sore and I feel like I have just finished a 20 mile run all the time. My goal 10k race is on in less than 2 weeks now so I can't afford to stuff things up by running too soon. That said I do need to be ready to run it and no running does not help ! I am thinking of staying off until Friday and testing the water then.

I can feel your frustration. Seriously do not run while your chest still feels like that - and that's the voice of bitter experience - I ran with a chest infection last year and it really fecked up a few races - I reckon I lost two months by running through it. Find another goal 10k if chest not completely ok. Hopefully it will clear up soon

Pacing Mule

Thanks for the advice lads.

Which I promptly ignored :pac::o

Actually to be fair I felt a lot better this morning and decided that if I still felt ok this evening would go out for a short and gentle leg loosener. Done 2.5 miles. Legs were a little stiff but chest and throat were 100%. Didn't want to chance anything more than that. Won't run tomorrow to make sure all is ok and will aim for Friday to do something a little more substantial.

Even the 2.5 miles was a great mood changer.

Pacing Mule

Illness is really playing havoc with the running. Mrs Mule has now come down with the same dose I had which put paid to running yesterday. Another day running around today (pardon the pun) My daughter was invited to a party this evening from 6-8 and I ended up having to bring her. Brainwave though - get a run in while she was at the party.

Plan was to do a 1.5 hour LSR. I wanted to get time on my feet and a confidence booster going into next Sundays 10k race. My thoughts were to do a bit more than 10k at slow pace. Off I went slow - and I mean slow but by 2 miles in my legs were really feeling it. Heavy, tired, sore - you name it. Ended up stopping for a walk and stretch. This was disheartening to say the least. Here I was 2.5 miles in running 2min per mile slower than I'm aiming for on Sunday and I'm on the side of the road contemplating walking back to the car. :mad: I got myself a healthy dose of HTFU and got on with it. The rest of the run was a bit strange. I settled into a nice steady rhythm, breathing fine, legs ok but tired, a bit of a stitch. Got back to the car after about an hour and felt ok to tag another bit on. On one hand it was comfortable but in the background it just didn't feel right / was too hard for the pace. If this had of been race day I'd have been screwed.

7.5 miles Avg pace 11:30

SamforMayo

Are you fully recovered from the dose?

Pacing Mule

SamforMayo wrote: »

Are you fully recovered from the dose?

That's the million dollar question isn't it :pac:

I feel that I am but performance tonight suggests otherwise.

SamforMayo

Pacing Mule wrote: »

That's the million dollar question isn't it :pac:

I feel that I am but performance tonight suggests otherwise.

It's hard to call! Had you done any running all week? It could just be an off day, we all have them. Good luck with the race, give it your best, that's all you can do!