Often becomes easy when the easy is often..

Have had a couple of celebratory strong fancy pants beers so forgive me if I ramble.

Jingle Bells brought the 5k journey to a close. Such a satisfying year, set off on the 8th of Jan base building for Bob Heffernan in May with the goal of cracking 20 mins. Loved every minute of the training, the base and the stuff. Loved seeing the results. Loved having a focus, a target. Loved the distance. The fact that you can go, recover and go again was such a draw.

Got the magical sub 20 at BH, probably the highlight of my running so far, but struggled to come close afterwards. A flop at Kilcock and a tough day at DOIPBS.

Thought my summer would be strings of pbs, inching closer and closer to 19. Wasn't to be. Made me appreciate what I achieved at Bob H.

Had a couple of illness and injury set backs in Autumn which threw (is that a word) a lot of doubt into whether I could finish the year strong. Jingle Bells was always gonna be a target. Got over the troubles with about 8 weeks or so to go and got back on the horse. Jumped into week 4 I think of the same training plan as BH.

Early on after comparing sessions I felt I was in good shape for a big pb, 19:4x ish. Later on though I felt the sessions came closer to par with April and the confidence slipped a little. Winter mornings are definitely tougher than spring mornings, takes a lot more of me to get up and out.

Getting sick the week before last then killed the confidence.

Decided last Sat after 6 or so days off to just run easy as often as I can. No real point of a taper as such, just get the body used to turning over. So I ran my last session last Saturday then ran every day bar Thurs, nice and easy. 5 miles or so average.



Jingle Bells Oh what fun it is..


Good solid extra curricular week, ate well, slept well, no booze.

Arrived at about 10am, parked at Islandbridge gate and jogged the 2k or so up to the start area, met a few friendly faces there and jogged for a bit up and down, finishing with a couple of strides.

Got into a good position, was nervous about this, weaving and dodging can make all the difference. Thankfully I set off pretty much in a similar paced bunch.

First km wasn't noteworthy, ticked off at 3:59 though which gave me a boost.

Pain started soon afterwards which was, eh, great.

Thing is, it's took me until my last hurrah at 5k to fully understand 5k racing. On my first tune up at Corkagh parkrun a few weeks ago I realised at about halfway that I wasn't hurting yet and I knew something was wrong. Ran 20:41 or something and was disappointed. I wasn't hurting at 2.5k because I wasn't giving it everything.

So the hurt coming on at a mile or so made me feel good, in my head.

I felt I turned a corner today with how I dealt with the pain. The 5k is all about pain. The pain is gonna come. The earlier the better. It's how you process it that matters. It's not the physical pain that kills your race, it's the anxiety around it that does. If you think you're about to die, your race will die. If you relax your mind, isolate the pain and convince your mind that it's grand you'll fly.
Today I managed to relax my mind and isolate it.

Noticed Kev English pacing one of his coachees to a sub 20 half way through km 2 so decided to latch on. We chatted briefly and he added me to his stable.

Just focussed on him, my breathing and the race line then. Overtook him and his coachee just before Furze hill.

Loved the hill. Loved it. Bit into it and overtook a few. Winded by the top of it but knew it was downhill from there. Got a high 5 and encouragement from Sean here. Dug deep, kept the pace, kept an eye on the watch waiting for 400 to go for the kick. Kicked on then. Gantry came into view, made that little turn then found another kick.

Ecstatic when I looked down at the time. So so happy to realise BH wasn't the peak, wasn't a fluke, wasn't a one off. So happy. Chip 19:52.

Km splits were:
3:59
4:03
4:01
3:58
3:52

Feeling really good tonight.

Cheers guys

coogy wrote: »

Well done C, perfectly executed race!!!

Cheers K, you too. Great chatting to you.

Wubble Wubble wrote: »

Enjoyed that journey recap and report C.

Great to see you beforehand.

Looking forward to reading about the next journey!

Cheers J, always great to see you at races. Hope the head is OK today

Baby75 wrote: »

Great running C, well done again and great chatting to you on Saturday oh and well done on that hill LOL maybe you might try some more hills now LOL

Haha, thanks N. Great catching up with you too.

Try to get as much hilly stuff into my training as possible, really felt the benefit of it on Sat.

Baby75 wrote: »

Yea, they do make a difference and you do not have to go to far to go, head up Athgoe and do the loop around the hill I head the right hand side first though LOL

Oh I only ever venture near those mad roads on a quiet Sunday. Have never actually ran that loop, I'd love to but have too much experience of crazy drivers on it to attempt.

Newcastle is generally quite hilly, my local 2 mile loop through Greenogue is great. Needs to be ran clockwise though to take full advantage. That big drag up through Greenogue ind est is great.

Other than the shining light of Jingle Bells I had an absolutely terrible December.

Plan after JB was to have a couple of cracks at parkrun before the year ended, I still had a secondary goal of sub 20 there.

The Sat after JB I needed to take the kids to give my wife some space, she was restoring an old dolls house for Santa. Went on the lash that night with some work buddies and was too upside down to run on the Sunday.

That night ran me down so much that I got sick again on the Wed. Sick for a couple of days then half good again, light run or two. Felt ok, not 100% but ok coming into xmas. Then Bam, Stephen's day until Dec 30th a shivering wreck in bed, xmas ruined, zero running.

But that's the past.

I'm taking some positives from it. A couple of months ago when I decided on the half being the next focus I had notions of setting off straight into it.

This past couple of weeks, with my fitness on the floor has forced me into the correct decision of beginning a base phase.

It's always been what I should have been doing and planning.

So, the future.

Plan now for me, which I'm really excited about is 8 weeks, now until March, of base building. Easy running, mileage building. Then begin a 12 week half plan. Hopefully running 40 - 50 mpw by that stage.


Secret Santa, with a little bit of a hint hint, brought me a Garmin HR chest strap. I've used it for the first time today. I just don't yet have the knowledge or the stats to use it fully. I'm going to run with it anyway so that when I have I can look back and use the info.

Plan is to book in to the Beacon for a range of tests and consultation to do with HR training. Gonna do that by mid Feb to have everything in place for the block.

Excited about the year ahead.

Swashbuckler wrote: »

Good to see you're not being too hard on yourself and refocusing. Have you considered getting a coach?

Briefly, but I've always dismissed it. Just don't think I'd enjoy the pressure of it. I'm always feeling I need to shoehorn my running into my life what with young kids in the house and that. I even struggle at the weekends to leave my wife look after them.

Just feel trying to satisfy and live up to the demands a coach may lay on will clash too much with all those other demands.

Don't think it's for me at this stage, for similar reasons as to why joining a club isn't. Might be right in a few years though, hopefully.

Cheers man.