Post Connemara blues, redemption and Belfast?

barkar

Sorry a bit long winded but here goes.... I had a bad day in connemara a fornight ago, the week before i had a calf strain and the day of the race i was as weak as a kitten (later found out i had some throat type infection ) the upshot was i ran to about mile 16 before realising my race was run and would have to tackle it another day .....

The disappointment the last week was soo bad at not being able to go out and finish on the day, i knew my form was good in the lead up but whatever happenned i suppose will never know.

Anyway decided to treat connemara as a long run in my head and rehabilitated myself and felt fairly ok to go out and run a few short runs last wed thursday and friday. Had a feed of pints on friday before spending all day on my feet saturday going around baby shops (never thought when i told mates i was tesing a maclaren it would be a pushchair !)

Went out Sunday for a run on my usual long run route and decided early on in it if i felt good i would try and redeem myself from the disaster the previous Sunday (I have garmin forerunner 305 so i could use this to check progress fairly accuratley)
I ended up doing the full marathon distance in 2.55for me this would be 6 minute improvement in my time from dublin last year and also a pb by about 3-4 minutes . Obviously i was deliroius with the time but wanted to make sure it was the distance , i know garmins can be a little unpredictable some time depending on shade cloud cover trees etc. Went out in my car and clocked the course which came in at 42.42km or 26.36miles! I dont know how to link to motion base but will post the summary when i do.
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/dashboard.mb?episodePk.pkValue=7895671

Just wanted to see from other posters how they would treat this run , ie
A) PB (i know i can never use for london or new york marathon entry)
nice to see on garmin , but no cigar
c) Unreliable and potentially dangerous to do with the liklihood of getting injured for future runs

I was subsequently thinking on foot of this could you have sufficient time to recover for Belfast in 4 -5 weeks ? I am having an operation in may so cork and future runs are out in the short term.

Also on preparation prior to both runs (conn and last week), i would have abstained from alcohol for a couple of months and had a very low gi carb load leading up to conn (brown rice and porridge) compared to a normal week (pasta) with a bit of indulgence in beer, sweets and stuff this week. The results are kinda misleading arent' they ?

Any way thanks for reading the post and any comments would be great
Barry

buck65

Congrats on your new PB.
Richard O Donovan ran 7 marathons in 7 days and they weren't all official "races".
Anyone who runs 26.2 miles has run a marathon. If your Garmin says so and you checked it by car then fair play.

ultraman1

A pb is a pb....

Woddle

I personally do not count training runs as PB s but you could call them TB s training best. It was an impressive time but I hope it won't lead to a below par performance in Bellfast for you. I would not repeat this run and would tone my training down a notch as a result of running 26 fast miles a month before your chosen marathon. You now know you can cover the distance well, which is great for confidence so go make up a fun 4 week plan that includes a few fun speed sessions nothing to strenous. I should add that I can see you going quicker in Belfast so best of luck.

donothoponpop

Congrats on the great time. You ran the marathon distance in 2:55, a pb in training is still a pb. I'd think there is a mild caveat in not having achieved this in a race, but for the life of me I can't work out why. I guess a race is more "official", but the garmin is pretty accurate...

Fair play to you in any case.

barkar

Thanks guys , yeah i will do light running this week with some mild speed training the next couple of weeks, i have a couple of weeks before belfast closing date, id say ther is faster there if i stay relatively injury free (if you had seen any of my earlier posts i am very prone ). I suppose the fact that i clocked it in the car and it came out over the distance i am happy with it as a standard or a training best:D. I should point out as well that i didnt really hydrate during or bring gels or sweets (found d remains of a bottle of water that was discarded on the road a round half way!):eek:

TFBubendorfer

Congratulations on a fantastic training run, but in no way would I call this a PB. On the plus side, if you are able to pull this off in training you should be well able to better that in a race.

Btw., Richard O Donovan's 7 marathons were certified.

Krusty_Clown

barkar wrote: »

I suppose the fact that i clocked it in the car and it came out over the distance

Congrats on a great run. Hopefully you can improve on it, with gels, water-stations, etc in a marathon real soon. On the accuracy of the Garmin, over a long straight run, it will be far more accurate than your car's odometer, particularly if it has good GPS signal quality (and your MB page says it was excellent). It won't be as accurate on a short round run (like a track), or somewhere with a lot of tree cover. Your car's odometer can be thrown by things like different size wheels/tyres, tyre pressure, tyre wear, even temperature of the road.

But anyway, enough of the boring logistics, congrats on a great run!

buck65

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

Congratulations on a fantastic training run, but in no way would I call this a PB. On the plus side, if you are able to pull this off in training you should be well able to better that in a race.

Btw., Richard O Donovan's 7 marathons were certified.

hi tfb what exactly does certified mean? he ran the UK leg at night in 6 inches of snow with one runner beside him if my facts are right. Surely the run distance was certified i.e the run was 26.2 miles. If I run a PB in training I rate this a s a PB full stop. Any of my pbs have been races though as I would always have an extra 10% for a race.

misty floyd

Krusty_Clown wrote: »

(and your MB page says it was excellent).

sorry for jumping in but whats MB page?

Krusty_Clown

My PB for the half-marathon is 1:42, even though I've run 1:33 in training, and regularly run around 1:35 for the distance (and ran 1:38 for the first half of my first marathon). I just couldn't convince myself that I've run a PB, until I run it in a race environment over the official distance.

But then, I always run faster in a race, and it gives me targets to achieve and surpass at a later date. As the OP says, he can't use it in an official capacity (London/Boston etc) but it doesn't diminish from the achievement, and should only serve to make him faster.

Krusty_Clown

misty floyd wrote: »

sorry for jumping in but whats MB page?

Sorry, his MotionBased page that he linked to in his original post.

TFBubendorfer

buck65 wrote: »

hi tfb what exactly does certified mean? he ran the UK leg at night in 6 inches of snow with one runner beside him if my facts are right. Surely the run distance was certified i.e the run was 26.2 miles. If I run a PB in training I rate this a s a PB full stop. Any of my pbs have been races though as I would always have an extra 10% for a race.

Certified means that someone who knew what he was doing walked the distance with a wheel counter and measured it accurately before the run.

Have a look it this article. I quote:

"Donovan relied on the goodwill and cooperation of friends at each location, and, through his running contacts, got each route officially measured and certified. In fact, such was the goodwill that he ended up with company on most of his runs, and at some points even enjoyed a police escort."

barkar

Krusty_Clown wrote: »

Your car's odometer can be thrown by things like different size wheels/tyres, tyre pressure, tyre wear, even temperature of the road.

But anyway, enough of the boring logistics, congrats on a great run!

I would have though the car would have been the most accurate , when i looked at the run on the satelite map , it doesn't look like it sometimes following the road and similarly at one point it showed i had turned and went back 100 yards shorter than i actually did ,

i hope i haven't openned a can of worms here re certified and uncertified times, in anyways i know it was a good training run and shows potentially i could take more time off it , if it all comes together on the day , dont think i will be scoffing pints 2 days b4 in preparation tough !

BTW how flat or hilly is belfast route, comparable more to dublin than let say connemara ?

buck65

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

Certified means that someone who knew what he was doing walked the distance with a wheel counter and measured it accurately before the run.

Have a look it this article. I quote:

"Donovan relied on the goodwill and cooperation of friends at each location, and, through his running contacts, got each route officially measured and certified. In fact, such was the goodwill that he ended up with company on most of his runs, and at some points even enjoyed a police escort."

Yes but it seems to me if the OP run was certified you still wouldn't recognise it as a PB?

shels4ever

barkar wrote: »

I would have though the car would have been the most accurate , when i looked at the run on the satelite map , it doesn't look like it sometimes following the road and similarly at one point it showed i had turned and went back 100 yards shorter than i actually did ,

i hope i haven't openned a can of worms here re certified and uncertified times, in anyways i know it was a good training run and shows potentially i could take more time off it , if it all comes together on the day , dont think i will be scoffing pints 2 days b4 in preparation tough !

BTW how flat or hilly is belfast route, comparable more to dublin than let say connemara ?

I havent run belfast yet myself but doing it this year, from all accounts its flat with jsut a few hills around the 10 mile mark, i've heard from different accounts that they are not too bad, But doing some hill work myself at the moment jsut to be on the safe side.. see you at the start line... but after that you'll be gone

ClashCityRocker

I ran Belfast last year, and I can't recall any significant hills, one or two drags here and there but nothing to worry about. It's definitely more Dublin than Connemara.

TFBubendorfer

buck65 wrote: »

Yes but it seems to me if the OP run was certified you still wouldn't recognise it as a PB?

I would not count it as a PB if I ran 26.2 miles on a certified course on my own, that is true. But if anyone else did the same run and decided to have this as his/her PB, that would be totally up to that person. My personal approval isn't required. :P