Running Improvement

tergat

I had a PM from a poster on here and just wanted to share a success story on here with you all. He tackled the Ballycotton 10 miler yesterday and ran to a great time of 58 mins.

The reason I post this is to discuss his training and in turn his race performance and the lessons we can all learn from it. Some direct quotes below from him:

"In training (lots of 4 x 2mile/3x3mile sessions and long tempos) I was struggling to hit times, I might be at 6.20 for the first 3 4 x 2miles and then I’d drift out to 6.50; I’d hope to run 6.10 for a 8 mile tempo and I might be at 6.20-30. But I wasn’t too bothered as I felt strong and I could always do another rep. I just wondered whether 5.50s or whatever pace might be on race day might be too much of a shock to the system having not run much at all at that pace. So was delighted then when the first miles of 5.44, 5.41, 5.48 were so comfortable. The best thing was I just felt so comfortable – it never felt as hard as a tempo."

"Even though I was a good bit off my target times in training, I felt so strong on these sessions, it just felt like I couldn’t speed up, I reckoned that it wouldn’t be an issue in the race as long as I didn’t go off too fast. And so it panned out. Also the effort level in sessions seemed right so I just went with it, didn’t pay too much attention to the watch. The key for me is that the sessions were specific to 10 mile, lots of sessions with 8 or 9 hard miles but not killer."

"An interesting thing to note also is that my pace for my 10k build up race ended up being the same as my pace for 10miles yesterday – shows how one can progress or strengthen over 4 weeks or so. Also, I felt awful week of the race, but had confidence in the training not to let it get me down."

I think there are lots of lessons to be learned from this story and indeed the quotes above.

Lessons:
1) Being PATIENT and CONSISTENT in your training over months/years is the number one key to long term success in distance running.
2) You dont have to go flat out in training to gain success. Always leave something in the tank.
3) Paces in training may well feel tough to achieve at times and you may have to run slower than planned race pace, but on race day with adrenaline, nerves, competition etc it will flow if you have the work done and not over done things.
4) Go by how you feel a lot of the time and dont become a slave to your watch/HR monitor/garmin
5) Take confidence from your training. If you have had an consistent block of training and have stayed healthy, you are ready to go.

I hope this short story will help many people out there in races over the next few months. Enjoy your running.

Tergat

aero2k

Hello Tergat,

Thanks for sharing this. It does mirror a lot of my experience, particularly since I statted following your simple, common sense (backed up by science) approach. In particular, I often struggle to hit target paces in training, however come race day, while I won't pretend it's easy, I find that 10-15 secs per mile faster is usually achievable. The remark about feeling awful the week before the race was interesting too; I was well below par in the lead-up to the Adidas half '09, DCM '09, and the recent kilomathon, and in each case I ran faster than ever before for the distance.
"Trust in your training" is a great message to take from this.