Off to Belfast tomorrow morning. First stop will be to the city hall to collect the race number and check out the expo. I still have not settled on a definite race plan. Originally I had harboured thoughts of going for sub 02:55 but I think that I am just not quite at that level yet. Consequently, my current thinking is to aim for 06:40 splits to mile fourteen, which will take me to the end of a long gentle gradient from mile seven. Thereafter I will let the next two miles, which give away all the elevation gain in less than two miles, speed up to the low 06:30s and then assess how I feel about pushing on in the final ten miles and whether sub 02:55 is possible.
In short, if I go sub 02:55 I expect to run a healthy positive split; if not, I hope to run an even paced race and come away with a PB at worst. Some might consider this overly cautious but the marathon does not reward zealotry very often and you cannot compensate for an unrealistically ambitious race plan by going out and running another marathon in two weeks.
Training summary: In the fourteen weeks before my three week taper I averaged fifty-six mile weeks. Every week had a marathon paced run, beginning with runs of ten miles with six at projected marathon pace and peaking at fourteen mile runs with ten at marathon pace. The first seven weeks also had interval sessions of 5x1k at 10k to 5k pace and tempo runs of 2x3 miles at half marathon pace with a two mile warm up and cool down and one mile recovery between sets. The remainder of the week was a long slow run and three recover runs and one day of complete rest.
The weather for Monday looks pretty good so far, the blemish on this outlook being a stiff easterly breeze of 13-16 mph. Thankfully the majority of the course is a north-south loop and the longest we will be consistently travelling east is the first three to four miles, so I am hopeful the wind will not adversely affect strategy or pace.
Saturday, 30 April 2011
Saturday, 23 April 2011
The taper
I have never had a very clear approach to tapering and generally reduce my mileage significantly in each of the three taper weeks on an ad hoc basis. The first taper week still registered fifty miles and I retained both tempo and marathon paced run.
12 April: nine miles with 2x2 at tempo pace of 06:12 minute/miles. Average HR for the tempo miles was 162.
15 April: ten miles with six at PMP with average mile splits of 06:31 with an average HR of 162.
The second week reduced to thirty miles and by the end of this week I felt significantly more energised. Notwithstanding the reduced mileage I aimed to maintain a similar proportion of intensity and quality sessions to that of a full week. Consequently, the following sessions took place
19 April: seven miles with three tempo miles at an average pace of 06:25 and average HR of 166.
21 April: Nine miles with five MP (marathon pace) miles at 06:41 and average HR of 161.
This was the last significant marathon paced session of this training cycle and I decided it would be good to reduce the pace a little to see what it felt like and I was a little disappointed; perhaps it was the early morning nature of the run or 'taper madness' but it felt a little more uncomfortable than I would have liked; maybe this was my 'crap' taper run. I don't have an answer for this, I think it is primarily a psychological thing, but almost everyone has a bad taper run, where they doubt their own training and ability to run race pace for 26.2. It is at this point that I am hoping the experience of running six previous marathons and experiencing similar doubts will allow me to largely dismiss them.
In other news the fastest run marathon ever took place in Boston, but does not qualify as a world record!
12 April: nine miles with 2x2 at tempo pace of 06:12 minute/miles. Average HR for the tempo miles was 162.
15 April: ten miles with six at PMP with average mile splits of 06:31 with an average HR of 162.
The second week reduced to thirty miles and by the end of this week I felt significantly more energised. Notwithstanding the reduced mileage I aimed to maintain a similar proportion of intensity and quality sessions to that of a full week. Consequently, the following sessions took place
19 April: seven miles with three tempo miles at an average pace of 06:25 and average HR of 166.
21 April: Nine miles with five MP (marathon pace) miles at 06:41 and average HR of 161.
This was the last significant marathon paced session of this training cycle and I decided it would be good to reduce the pace a little to see what it felt like and I was a little disappointed; perhaps it was the early morning nature of the run or 'taper madness' but it felt a little more uncomfortable than I would have liked; maybe this was my 'crap' taper run. I don't have an answer for this, I think it is primarily a psychological thing, but almost everyone has a bad taper run, where they doubt their own training and ability to run race pace for 26.2. It is at this point that I am hoping the experience of running six previous marathons and experiencing similar doubts will allow me to largely dismiss them.
In other news the fastest run marathon ever took place in Boston, but does not qualify as a world record!
Watch more video of 2011 Boston Marathon on flotrack.org
Monday, 11 April 2011
Approach to taper
Training of late has been very consistent and regular, such that I think for further adaptations to occur I would need to alter the workouts. However, it's now taper time, so that can wait for the next training cycle!
29 March : Ten miles with six at tempo pace. Tempo paced mile average splits of 06:21 with an average HR of 166.
1 April: Windy today! Thirteen miles with ten at projected marathon pace (PMP); PMP average mile splits of 06:46 with an average PMP miles HR of 164. A bit high - worked a little too hard against the wind.
5 April: Eleven miles with six at tempo pace. Average tempo pace mile split of 06:12 and average HR of 166.
8 April: Fourteen miles with ten at PMP. Average PMP mile splits of 06:35 and an average HR of 162. Quite a stiff breeze when moving east.
This week the taper begins, and not a day too soon; I am beginning to feel tired at the beginning of runs, nevermind at the end and think it's definitely time that the affect of recent weeks' training are fully absorbed, which I hope is what the taper will achieve.
29 March : Ten miles with six at tempo pace. Tempo paced mile average splits of 06:21 with an average HR of 166.
1 April: Windy today! Thirteen miles with ten at projected marathon pace (PMP); PMP average mile splits of 06:46 with an average PMP miles HR of 164. A bit high - worked a little too hard against the wind.
5 April: Eleven miles with six at tempo pace. Average tempo pace mile split of 06:12 and average HR of 166.
8 April: Fourteen miles with ten at PMP. Average PMP mile splits of 06:35 and an average HR of 162. Quite a stiff breeze when moving east.
This week the taper begins, and not a day too soon; I am beginning to feel tired at the beginning of runs, nevermind at the end and think it's definitely time that the affect of recent weeks' training are fully absorbed, which I hope is what the taper will achieve.
Sunday, 27 March 2011
Brief update
A quick update on training progress as measured by the key quality sessions.
Thursday 17 March: Thirteen miles with nine marathon paced miles at an average mile split of 06:35 and average heart rate of 162bpm for the marathon paced miles.
Friday 25 March: Thirteeen and a half miles with ten marathon paced miles with average splits of 06:34 and an average HR of 162bpm for those miles.
Travel for work to Cyprus this week required me to can the scheduled tempo Tuesday run. However, a nice seven miles along Cyprus's southern Mediterranean coast in the sunshine was a nice alternative!
In other news, I eventually bit the bullet and registered for the Belfast marathon.
This morning's eighteen mile long slow run, incorporating a number of miles along the Royal Canal way was a nice change from the usual route. However, the local savages' impression that setting a cat on fire and leaving the poor creature's petrol stenched remains on the canal side is an appropriate Saturday night activity took a little from the experience; something that living in D7, D15 renders an unsurprising occurrence.
Thursday 17 March: Thirteen miles with nine marathon paced miles at an average mile split of 06:35 and average heart rate of 162bpm for the marathon paced miles.
Friday 25 March: Thirteeen and a half miles with ten marathon paced miles with average splits of 06:34 and an average HR of 162bpm for those miles.
Travel for work to Cyprus this week required me to can the scheduled tempo Tuesday run. However, a nice seven miles along Cyprus's southern Mediterranean coast in the sunshine was a nice alternative!
In other news, I eventually bit the bullet and registered for the Belfast marathon.
This morning's eighteen mile long slow run, incorporating a number of miles along the Royal Canal way was a nice change from the usual route. However, the local savages' impression that setting a cat on fire and leaving the poor creature's petrol stenched remains on the canal side is an appropriate Saturday night activity took a little from the experience; something that living in D7, D15 renders an unsurprising occurrence.
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Tempo sessions commence
Last week brought the first of the Tuesday morning tempo runs. The Hanson schedule places the speedwork intervals in the initial weeks of the training plan. I am unsure of the approach's rationale as most plans place the speedwork in the latter half of a plan.
This workout consisted of two a mile warm up, three miles at tempo pace, one mile warm up, followed by another three miles at tempo pace and a two mile cool down. My aim was to achieve an average heart rate greater than 165 for the tempo portions. I ran the six miles at an average heart rate of 166 producing average mile splits of 06:15.
This pace would have its price. I delayed my marathon paced session until Friday and it was a tough session. I ran twelve miles with nine at marathon pace, producing an average marathon mile pace of 06:39 and average heart rate of 164. I felt tired during this run and the perceived effort was higher than recent weeks. I am assuming this is to be expected, especially considering I am now at the training cycle peak. All things considered I remain happy with my training and hope things continue and I can avoid injury.
This workout consisted of two a mile warm up, three miles at tempo pace, one mile warm up, followed by another three miles at tempo pace and a two mile cool down. My aim was to achieve an average heart rate greater than 165 for the tempo portions. I ran the six miles at an average heart rate of 166 producing average mile splits of 06:15.
This pace would have its price. I delayed my marathon paced session until Friday and it was a tough session. I ran twelve miles with nine at marathon pace, producing an average marathon mile pace of 06:39 and average heart rate of 164. I felt tired during this run and the perceived effort was higher than recent weeks. I am assuming this is to be expected, especially considering I am now at the training cycle peak. All things considered I remain happy with my training and hope things continue and I can avoid injury.
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Marathon paced runs and heart rate
The key training runs in the last three weeks have been the marathon paced session on Thursdays. These are the primary benchmark I use and the data emerging is encouraging.
17 February: 11.75 miles, with eight marathon pace miles averaging 06:40 and an average HR (heart rate) of 163 for the PMP (projected marathon pace)miles.
24 February: 11.8 miles, with eight marathon pace miles averaging 06:37 and an average HR of 161 for the PMP miles.
Friday 4 March, 12.56 miles, with nine marathon pace miles averaging 06:36 and an average HR (heart rate)of 162 for the PMP miles.
The plan for the next two weeks is to build the marathon pace runs to include ten miles at PMP, switch the Tuesday sessions from internal to tempo pace and complete a twenty mile long slow run in each of the next two weekends.
In each of these PMP sessions I effectively train by heart rate and anticipate that the average HR I can sustain for 26.2 is between 163 and 166. This is evidenced by my last three marathons, each of which recorded an average HR of 166. The HR is the objective feedback I now monitor in these sessions and which dictate the pace. I also ensure that any recovery runs' average HR does not exceed 140 and aim for closer to 130.
I also feel this approach can identify overtraining or sickness if you are recording slower times for an equal or higher HR than recent workout suggest should be the case. This method should* prevent any silly notions entering a runner's mind about pushing when it would be counterproductive.
* This is subject to the runner not allowing their constant need for self-validation from undermining their objectives - aka self-sabotage'.
17 February: 11.75 miles, with eight marathon pace miles averaging 06:40 and an average HR (heart rate) of 163 for the PMP (projected marathon pace)miles.
24 February: 11.8 miles, with eight marathon pace miles averaging 06:37 and an average HR of 161 for the PMP miles.
Friday 4 March, 12.56 miles, with nine marathon pace miles averaging 06:36 and an average HR (heart rate)of 162 for the PMP miles.
The plan for the next two weeks is to build the marathon pace runs to include ten miles at PMP, switch the Tuesday sessions from internal to tempo pace and complete a twenty mile long slow run in each of the next two weekends.
In each of these PMP sessions I effectively train by heart rate and anticipate that the average HR I can sustain for 26.2 is between 163 and 166. This is evidenced by my last three marathons, each of which recorded an average HR of 166. The HR is the objective feedback I now monitor in these sessions and which dictate the pace. I also ensure that any recovery runs' average HR does not exceed 140 and aim for closer to 130.
I also feel this approach can identify overtraining or sickness if you are recording slower times for an equal or higher HR than recent workout suggest should be the case. This method should* prevent any silly notions entering a runner's mind about pushing when it would be counterproductive.
* This is subject to the runner not allowing their constant need for self-validation from undermining their objectives - aka self-sabotage'.
Monday, 21 February 2011
Cupid's 10k-ish dash 13 February 2011
The week commencing 6 February ended with a 10k road race, which I thought would be a good test of fitness. I did this race back in 2009 and was the first time I broke forty minutes for 10km.
I got to the start line area and began to fear for the competency of the race organisation when they told me they had ran out of timing chips. This immediately made me wonder if they had ordered a finite number of chips and when they 'sold out' decided, 'hey let's take people's money regardless of our ability to deliver the service sold, it's no big deal, "sure it's grand"'; that time honoured Irish phrase oftentimes deployed to trivialise and dismiss legitimate concerns. Furthermore distributing the goody bags at the start/registration made me wonder where they thought people were to store these during the race, which ended one mile away from the start line. Consequently, I decided that was a problem I did not need to handle and decided to forego the good bag, which in the main are simply receptacles for advertising.
Surprisingly the race began on time. However, there was no timing mat at the start, so even those with chips were only ever going to get a gun time rather than a nett time. Quite why they bothered with chips at all was now something of a mystery.
Anyway, I should provide some commentary on running and end the rant.
This year we started with a bit of a drag up Acres road and left onto Chesterfield road. I quickly settled into twelfth place, well off the back of the lead back of about eight. Before the second mile elapsed I moved up to tenth place. However, I think I simply gave the two I passed a bit of a 'gee' up as they slowed for me to pass them and they soon passed me again. I completed the first three miles in 06:16, 06:17 and 06:16 respectively; 'there will be no PB today!'
By now I was in thirteenth place again, and as things transpired it would be where I would finish, largely running on my own with a couple of runners 100 yards behind me and the two I earlier interchanged places with about 200 yards ahead.
From here on the course became especially tough, running up and down hills, but the worst was yet to come; the long hard slog up the Kyber pass. This was very tough and you ran up this hill for two-thirds of a mile before doubling back to the finish. This approach made for interesting 'logistics' when larger numbers were coming up and down the hill simultaneously; this combined with the necessity to weave in and out between pedestrians with baby buggies and dogs (some on leashes, some not) made the finishing stretch more like part obstacle course, part game of 'British bulldog'! I was not sure who I was more frustrated with; people's obvious lack of courtesy and respect for the fact that a sporting event was taking place, or the organisers' completely insouciant attitude to it all.
On reaching the finish line I immediately knew, without ever looking at a GPS, that the course was short by at least 100-200 metres when I saw that I came within three seconds of a PB at 38:45. I finished the second three of six mile in 06:19, 06:26 and 06:31. The short nature of the course provided a re-adjusted time of 39:15. Considering the course's difficulty I was reasonably happy with my performance, however, the same could not be said for the organisers'. All in all, a good excuse for a tough workout but I'll not be back.
I got to the start line area and began to fear for the competency of the race organisation when they told me they had ran out of timing chips. This immediately made me wonder if they had ordered a finite number of chips and when they 'sold out' decided, 'hey let's take people's money regardless of our ability to deliver the service sold, it's no big deal, "sure it's grand"'; that time honoured Irish phrase oftentimes deployed to trivialise and dismiss legitimate concerns. Furthermore distributing the goody bags at the start/registration made me wonder where they thought people were to store these during the race, which ended one mile away from the start line. Consequently, I decided that was a problem I did not need to handle and decided to forego the good bag, which in the main are simply receptacles for advertising.
Surprisingly the race began on time. However, there was no timing mat at the start, so even those with chips were only ever going to get a gun time rather than a nett time. Quite why they bothered with chips at all was now something of a mystery.
Anyway, I should provide some commentary on running and end the rant.
This year we started with a bit of a drag up Acres road and left onto Chesterfield road. I quickly settled into twelfth place, well off the back of the lead back of about eight. Before the second mile elapsed I moved up to tenth place. However, I think I simply gave the two I passed a bit of a 'gee' up as they slowed for me to pass them and they soon passed me again. I completed the first three miles in 06:16, 06:17 and 06:16 respectively; 'there will be no PB today!'
By now I was in thirteenth place again, and as things transpired it would be where I would finish, largely running on my own with a couple of runners 100 yards behind me and the two I earlier interchanged places with about 200 yards ahead.
From here on the course became especially tough, running up and down hills, but the worst was yet to come; the long hard slog up the Kyber pass. This was very tough and you ran up this hill for two-thirds of a mile before doubling back to the finish. This approach made for interesting 'logistics' when larger numbers were coming up and down the hill simultaneously; this combined with the necessity to weave in and out between pedestrians with baby buggies and dogs (some on leashes, some not) made the finishing stretch more like part obstacle course, part game of 'British bulldog'! I was not sure who I was more frustrated with; people's obvious lack of courtesy and respect for the fact that a sporting event was taking place, or the organisers' completely insouciant attitude to it all.
On reaching the finish line I immediately knew, without ever looking at a GPS, that the course was short by at least 100-200 metres when I saw that I came within three seconds of a PB at 38:45. I finished the second three of six mile in 06:19, 06:26 and 06:31. The short nature of the course provided a re-adjusted time of 39:15. Considering the course's difficulty I was reasonably happy with my performance, however, the same could not be said for the organisers'. All in all, a good excuse for a tough workout but I'll not be back.
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