Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

adrian522

Saturday:

Warmup 2.3 Miles @ 9:52

Tymon Park run 3.1 Miles @ 8:11

Cool Down Recovery 2 Miles @ 10:12

Headed out to do the parkrun this morning, even though I feel I'd lost some fitness the last few weeks I decided to give the Park run a go. It was my first parkrun and I decided to go out quick and try and hang on.

The first mile was fine 7:39 pace, felt pretty good. The second mile was tougher and I was hanging on a bit. 7:39 again though. In the last mile I was really struggling and feeling a bit of a stitch, felt the breakfast wanting to come back up so had to essentially drop out, walked a bit before jogging back to the finish at 8:52 pace.

The park run is a great concept, it was very well organised and a very friendly atmosphere.

I feel the run will have done me good and I hope to do another one soon.

Total 7.46 Miles

Weekly Totals:

Distance 23.96 Miles
Time 3:53:16

adrian522

Let;s see, a few days since my last update. My physio recomend I go to this "running clinic" called inform running. Essentially he put me on a threadmill, videoed me, slowed it right down and picked my technique apart.

So he gave me a few things to work on. Essentially trying to improve how I run. He doesn't want me running too much while making these changes as I'll be using different muscles and probably be more out of breath while running so he wants me taking a day off in between runs. Not great with marathon plan starting soon.

Up until about a month ago I was flying along with 40ish MPW, last few weeks I've struggled to put up much miles.Anway with my days off I've decided to work on strength and also been cycling in and out of work for an extra bit of exercise (only 20 mins each way.)

Anyway,since last update:

Sunday:

Rest

Monday:

3 Miles @ 9:13 m/m

First run trying after the appointment and a little over eager and went way too fast, not hydrated enough and was totally spent after just 3 miles and needed to walk home as had no energy. Lesson learned.

Tuesday:

6.5 Miles @ 9:41 m/m

I know I'm not supposed to run on consecutive days but needed to correct the mistakes of Monday so went out slower, about 10:00 m/m with a quick strava segment towards the end. Felt good to do some fast running for a change.

Wednesday:

Strength work. Did a bit of weights followed by some body weight stuff, about 60 mins in total.

Thursday:

7.01 miles @ 9:49

Enjoyable run in the late evening sun as it started to get a bit cooler.

Friday:

More strength work, same as Wednesday.

So far so good, hopefully do around 10 miles tomorrow, take Sunday off completely and start back on Monday. The 5 mile on 28/06 should be interesting, doubt i'll get close to my time in Terenure a few weeks back.

Still planning to start the BAA plan either on 30/06 or 7/7, depending on how things go, luckily it starts out quite slowly.

Onwards.

adrian522

OMG I'm really neglecting my log these days, apologies, most of my runs are mentioned in the mentored novices thread at the moment.

Anyway most of what I'm doing is pretty boring, straight forward easy runs, on the advice of the physio/running clinic. The disappointing thing is that my HR seems especially elevated even while going pretty slowly.

Essentially supposed to be only running every other day and while I haven't quite stuck to it I feel I am losing fitness a little unnecessarily doing this. I'm going back to him on Monday and I'm hoping he'll say plow ahead with the marathon training but not that optimistic.

Anyway I'll post below what I've done since my last post

Saturday:

LSR 12 miles @ 10:21

Bit of a slog particularly towards the end, not a good sign that the HR was pretty high considering the pace was so slow, first run of this distance for quite a while though so it is to be exptected

Monday

6.5 Miles @ 9:38

Nice run, going on a new route through Tymon from Greenhills Road over to the Spawell side of it, nice run to be honest.

Wednesday:

Early morning run, 7 Miles @ 9:56 m/m

Tried on my new pair of shoes for this to try and break them in and to be honest I noticed a few aches in places I didn't ache before, probably should have tried them on a shorter run first.

Thursday:

6.2 Miles @ 9:51 m/m

Breaking my every second day rule but wanted a day off before the race on Saturday but still wanted to get this in. Run was fine nothing too exciting.

Saturday:

1 Mile WU with Strides @ 8:55

Race: 5.1 Miles @ 7:58 m/m


5 Mile today in the park. Went nearly 2 mins slower than the Terenure 5 mile 1 month ago, I guess you can't tip around with only easy runs and expect to maintain that level of fitness.

Garmin time 40:22. I kind of knew going in I wasn't going to PB but was hoping for sub 40. I reckon if I really pushed myself I could have gone 39:xx, anyway not too bothered as I have already achieved my 5 mile target for the year.

Now to get stuck into marathon training.

adrian522

Sunday

Recovery Run 3 Miles @ 10:30 m/m

Nice run, took it very slow,

adrian522

Monday

5 Miles @ 9:43 m/m

Well it's 17 weeks to the big day so the marathon plan starts here, which gives a week extra to deal with any issues that pop up between now and then.

This first run was probably a bit too fast, was aiming for between 9:45 and 10:00 m/m.

Anyway we are under way now. it feels like I've been looking forward to this marathon for a long while already but only really getting started now!

adrian522

Tuesday

4 Miles @ 10:01 m/m

Well the intention was for this to be a run with 3 miles of marathon pace in the middle, bu I was feeling pretty wreacked after the easy miles and had no energy for the marathon pace and ended up walking home from there.

It was obvious that something wasn't right so I decided that the marathon plan would have to wait for the following week.

Thursday

5.7 Miles @ 10:45 m/m

After the previous outing I really wanted to just keep this one easy so kept a close eye on the HR monitor ensuring that 78% was the highest reading. This felt painfully slow but at least I got through it. I feel I can up the intensity from there but need to make sure I am not really struggling on "easy" runs or it will all end in tears.

Saturday

13.1 miles @ 10:09 m/m

So I decided I would give myself the leeway of allowing the HR creep up around 84% but no more. I felt good most of the way around, the last mile or 2 being pretty difficult, given I haven't hit this sort of distance much in recent weeks.

I now feel in a much better position to start the plan next week. I'm not 100% sure hitting the BAA intermediate is a great idea but I will start it anyway and see how I get on.

Interesting week if nothing else.

adrian522

Sunday:

35 Mins jog @ Recovery Pace

3.2 Miles @ 10:38 m/m

I ran this in the new Kinvara's. This is my 3rd time running in them and still feel they will take a bit of getting used to so for the moment I will only venture out in them for short runs like this.

Total for the week is 31 Miles.

I feel I am ready now to start into the marathon training properly.

adrian522

Monday

5 Miles @ 10:13 m/m

Happy with this run. Had a **** day in work, got a puncture on the bike on the way home so had to walk, then some asshole in a van shouted abuse at me as I was crossing the road for delaying him for about a half a second.

I then almost decided to bail on this run as I was tired and hungry so just decided to have dinner. But at 10pm decided to get out and get it done and glad I did.

I found the running a lot easier, the time was still slow but the HR was low and it just seemed easier. Maybe it was the cooler temp at that time of night, who knows!

Bulmers74

adrian522 wrote: »

Monday

5 Miles @ 10:13 m/m

Happy with this run. Had a **** day in work, got a puncture on the bike on the way home so had to walk, then some asshole in a van shouted abuse at me as I was crossing the road for delaying him for about a half a second.

I then almost decided to bail on this run as I was tired and hungry so just decided to have dinner. But at 10pm decided to get out and get it done and glad I did.

I found the running a lot easier, the time was still slow but the HR was low and it just seemed easier. Maybe it was the cooler temp at that time of night, who knows!

Sometimes we obsess with HR, pace, sessions & all this kinda stuff but this is probably the real reason we do what we do

kerrylad1

adrian522 wrote: »

Sunday:

35 Mins jog @ Recovery Pace

3.2 Miles @ 10:38 m/m

I ran this in the new Kinvara's. This is my 3rd time running in them and still feel they will take a bit of getting used to so for the moment I will only venture out in them for short runs like this.

Total for the week is 31 Miles.

I feel I am ready now to start into the marathon training properly.

At that mileage you are more than ready to start the marathon plan,you are making great progress.Keep it up.

adrian522

Hopefully, I'll find out soon enough if not!

adrian522

Tuesday

Tempo with 5 K at Marathon Pace

The plan called for 6-8 miles with 5K at marathon pace. The problem is I'm not sure what marathon pace should be. Given my easy pace is about 10:00 I decided to go for 60-90 secs faster than this which would be 8:30 - 9:00. This would also tally with what McMillan would have based on recent races.

The problem was I didn't really know what this felt like having not run this pace before, so times were a bit all over the place, but in essence I think it was a successful workout, the only issue is probably that the M-Pace miles were a bit too fast.

The good news is that there is so much M-Pace work in this plan I have plenty of oppurtunity to figure this out.

1|Easy|9:44
2|Easy|9:25
3|Easy|9:41
4|Pace|8:34
5|Pace|8:21
6|Pace|8:20
7|Easy|10:01
8|Easy|9:52

Total 8.1 Miles @ 9:15 m/m

adrian522

Wednesday

6 Miles @ 9:54 m/m

Not much to say here. Easy miles, there going to be a lot of these over the next few months. The body is still adjusting to running everyday again but this run wasn't too bad.

Tomorrow brings more M-Pace miles.

statss

tomorrow evening would be a good time to drop down to Sportsworld if you fancied it, there'll probably be some sort of tempo / fartlek session on, perfect to get your M pace miles in over a few laps of Bushy Park.

adrian522

statss wrote: »

tomorrow evening would be a good time to drop down to Sportsworld if you fancied it, there'll probably be some sort of tempo / fartlek session on, perfect to get your M pace miles in over a few laps of Bushy Park.

I guess I should look at joining at some point alright. They kick off around 7?

statss

adrian522 wrote: »

I guess I should look at joining at some point alright. They kick off around 7?

yep down at the clubhouse by the tennis courts - ask for Paddy (the chairman who generally welcomes new people) if you want to introduce yourself otherwise hang back and coach Emily or Myles will give an outline of the session at about 7.05-7.10, they usually ask the crowd if there's any new people so you can group together with others before the session gets going. There'll be a big enough attendance, as its the summer, so just follow the herd and you'll be grand anyway.

Not sure yet if I can make it myself this evening but if I do I'll probably be wearing an orange Athlone 1/2 marathon t shirt if you wanna put a face to the name

adrian522

statss wrote: »

yep down at the clubhouse by the tennis courts - ask for Paddy (the chairman who generally welcomes new people) if you want to introduce yourself otherwise hang back and coach Emily or Myles will give an outline of the session at about 7.05-7.10, they usually ask the crowd if there's any new people so you can group together with others before the session gets going. There'll be a big enough attendance, as its the summer, so just follow the herd and you'll be grand anyway.

Not sure yet if I can make it myself this evening but if I do I'll probably be wearing an orange Athlone 1/2 marathon t shirt if you wanna put a face to the name

Cool, thanks for this. I don't think I'll make it down tonight myself actually, I've a few things to do after work but hopefully next week I should get down!

adrian522

adrian522 wrote: »

Cool, thanks for this. I don't think I'll make it down tonight myself actually, I've a few things to do after work but hopefully next week I should get down!

That and the fact that it's pissing rain!

adrian522

Thursday

Tempo with 3 x 1K @ M-Pace

I didn't get out until late after 8 tonight and didn't get much of a chance for dinner, but off I went and started with 3 easy miles, then went into the marathon pace intervals (3x1km with 4 mins recovery), funnily enough the first one seemed the most difficult and they got easier from there.

I had intended on 2 easy miles to finish and bring it to 8, but had what I'll politely refer to as "stomach problems" and decided to finish up at 7 miles.

Happy enough with the session, slowed down the M-pace to a more realistic level.

3 Mile WU|9:57
1K|8:46
1K|8:49
1K|8:30
1 Mile CD|10:20

adrian522

Friday:

5.6 @ 9:36 m/m

The plan called for an easy run and in all honesty (from a view from Saturday afternoon) I'd have been better off skipping this run or keeping it to 3 miles at recovery pace.

The run itself was fine, the pace was good, didn't feel too hard initially but by mile 4 it began to feel more like a steady run than an easy run so slowed it right down. Happy enough to get the miles in but I feel it may have taken more out of me than I thought at the time.

Saturday

12 Miles @ 10:28 m/m

Well I can honestly say this was one of the worst runs I've ever experienced, it was very tough from start to finish.

It may be a bit of a knee jerk reaction but this was not pleasant. I knew from early on it was going to be difficult. Less than half a mile in and I was feeling the heat a bit too much. By about 3 miles my HR was up about what I would expect marathon pace to be, I tried slowing down but in the end I had to stop for a complete rest.

I got going again, but was still struggling, knocking out 11 min miles, but stopping frequently.I had a bottle of water with me and a gel, but I regretted not having some cash to purchase another drink along the way.

By mile 8 or 9 my HR was up above what would be threshold pace despite crawling along and I was losing a lot of fluids through sweat. In the end I struggled through, but it was not enjoyable at any time.

By the time I reached 12 miles I was pretty spent. I know it was quite warm today but I don't feel that can explain this run. I ran 13.1 miles last Saturday in similar conditions with no problems.

Perhaps I've been doing too much and need to scale things back a bit. I'll take tomorrow as a rest day and re-evaluate then. Monday calls for a 5K speed session but I'm certainly not feeling that at the moment.

I weighed myself when I got back. This morning 78.7kg. After the run 76.2kg. I'm no expert but this seems like a lot.

I feel I may need to build in an additional rest day into this plan for the next few weeks at least.

Maybe I'm being a bit hard on myself but this was tough going.

Question: Does anyone know why on strava the splits on the overview page differ(significantly) from the lap times on the laps page? Seems a strange one, maybe the lap time doesn't stop when I pause the watch or something.

JohnDozer

There be days like this...

I think we all have days where what happens makes us question everything we are doing. Even just looking at the weight loss aspect of it would suggest the humidity and fluid loss was a factor. You're taking the right approach anyway, take the recovery you need, get back on the horse and take it from there. Probably just a blip and maybe nothing to worry about. A major plus is toughing it out mentally when up against it, miles 20 - 26.2 will need that kind of resolve.

SamforMayo

The heat is definitely a factor Id say. Also everyone has bad days, I remember doing a 15 mile LSR last August and I nearly cried it was that bad, the following week I had no problem doing 16. Just make sure you are eating and drinking well and recovering properly.

adrian522

Thanks John and Sam.

Sunday:

Rest Day.

Little to nothing done yesterday. I felt OK yesterday no after affects of Saturday's exertions but I thought a rest was certainly needed.

This weeks plan calls for 2 easy days prior to the long run on Saturday, I may actually take one of those days off or a recovery paced run, just to ease up a little bit.

Today has 5K intervals planned, not sure about this but I guess I'll give it a go and figure out pretty quickly if it's a bit much and revert to an easy run if so.

adrian522

Monday

5K Pace Session

1 Mile Warmup, 3 x (800m/600m/600m) 90 secs recovery and 4 mins between sets + Cooldown

Well after Saturday's disappointing run I was a little apprehensive about this. I got home from work, got changed and the proceeded to fall asleep on the coach coch sofa. Was a really good sleep but it was pissing rain when I woke and it didn't do much for my mood.

I decided to head out and see how the warm up went before deciding on the 5K paces.

Anyway, the rain was a downer but the warmup went ok so I decided to push on. In fact the 5K work was very good, it was very enjoyable and I hit pretty much all my splits except where I was on steep uphill sections, so it was a very successful session.

It actually seemed pretty easy by the end. It's amazing how much confidence can be gained from 1 session as before this i wasn't sure at all about this marathon training, now I can't wait for the next run.

5K Paces

Distance|Pace
800|7:38
600|7:37
600|7:34
800|7:42
600|7:40
600|7:37
800|7:28
600|7:26
600|7:40

adrian522

Tuesday

7 Miles @ 9:49 m/m

As I posted over on the novices thread this was a very enjoyable run, with the pace about what I would expect for an easy run and happily my HR averaged around 77% of Max.

Hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

adrian522

Wednesday

Tempo with 2 x 15 min @ MP

I fell asleep after work and had a nice little snooze which left me heading out quite late but feeling full of energy. I started off with some easy miles, then 2 x 15 mins @ MP with 5 mins recovery in between.

The MP stuff still feels quite difficult but at least I am no longer running it faster than I had intended. It is actually more difficult than it sounds.

Anyway good session, 9 miles in total.

1|WU|10:05
2|MP|8:44
3|MP|8:49
4|CD|10:09

statss

jaysus I wouldn't be doing those sort of sessions flying through Rathmines & Ranelagh, I'd be a bull barging through idiot pedestrians!

Fair play - what is your goal MP for DCM?

adrian522

Well it was late enough, after 8:30, the only dodgy bit was coming up by all the restaurants in Ranelagh, the rest of it was grand.

On the PMP, I'm not sure, I'd like it to be around 8:30ish but it will depend on how training goes.. Tonight I was targeting 8:35-8:45 for those segments. I came in at the lower end of that so happy enough with where I a at the moment as I feel there is a fair bit of improvement still to come.

I've a 10K on the august bank holiday which will tell a lot about where I am in terms of fitness.

statss

adrian522 wrote: »

Well it was late enough, after 8:30, the only dodgy bit was coming up by all the restaurants in Ranelagh, the rest of it was grand.

On the PMP, I'm not sure, I'd like it to be around 8:30ish but it will depend on how training goes.. Tonight I was targeting 8:35-8:45 for those segments. I came in at the lower end of that so happy enough with where I a at the moment as I feel there is a fair bit of improvement still to come.

I've a 10K on the august bank holiday which will tell a lot about where I am in terms of fitness.

Good stuff,

Just thinking there, I can't recall if you've mentioned using a HR monitor before but I find they help pace MP sessions - if you know your max HR, a typical marathon HR to train at would be about 82-85% of your HR max, so these sessions then involve keeping the HR around that zone so the pace then looks after itself. Makes them simpler to execute for me anyway. You are well positioned location wise to do some of the MP sessions along the DCM route aswell, I found that really helped me last year too.

adrian522

statss wrote: »

Good stuff,

Just thinking there, I can't recall if you've mentioned using a HR monitor before but I find they help pace MP sessions - if you know your max HR, a typical marathon HR to train at would be about 82-85% of your HR max, so these sessions then involve keeping the HR around that zone so the pace then looks after itself. Makes them simpler to execute for me anyway. You are well positioned location wise to do some of the MP sessions along the DCM route aswell, I found that really helped me last year too.

Thanks, yeah I use a HR monitor on pretty much every run. Must check what it was for the recent MP sessions.