Be still my beating heart

Off day nothing more, nothing got to do with HTFU, you could sell stuff for christ sake!! We have all bailed in sessions, even the best on here has bailed on sessions, its nothing to be ashamed about. How your still functioning with your sleep situation is beyond me to.

Your coming on massively and in fairness sessions aint suppose to be easy. Bit less self critical and more self confidence in yourself.

You need to race. Ditch the watch, run a parkrun and revel in your guaranteed pb. Honestly Ososlo ur in super shape explain to me why you aren't racing? Doing reps w/ no purpose is soul destroying.

drquirky wrote: »

You need to race. Ditch the watch, run a parkrun and revel in your guaranteed pb. Honestly Ososlo ur in super shape explain to me why you aren't racing? Doing reps w/ no purpose is soul destroying.

Have to agree. Surely at this stage a Park run would be the perfect replacement for a 4 x 1 mile session. Would set a good marker to beat in Kilcock.

AuldManKing wrote: »

Regarding the session, your post reminds me of my old log.

Just get a new log and change your name??

No seriously, we've all bailed on sessions. I'd be interested in your coaches perspective on pace vrs effort. I believe he uses effort??

Mile reps are horrible, horrendous inventions and should be banned from the runners lexicon.

Get back on the horse again.

Ok, I’ll step in here and explain a few things:

There’s a time and a place for both effort and pace. The first 12 weeks or so of Ososlo’s training was all about effort and running by feel. She was learning to run and getting away from all the heart rate plodding. Prior to those twelve weeks, she was plodding around at 10-12 min pace. After 12 weeks of ‘base’ type training (base which touched on all the relevant and necessary elements that she needed to focus on and could cope with) she suddenly noticed that she could run at sub 8 min pace and in fact, even did a 1 mile TT tickling sub 7 pace. The idea of the TT was to show her how far she’d come in a short amount of time, give her some confidence, and indicate the paces she should run for the 4 week block of multi pace training. So that’s two blocks of training – one base and one short block of multi pace training, where pace takes over from effort.

From the outset, Ososlo was made aware of how tough the 4 weeks of multi pace would be. She knew there would be blood, sweat, and tears. She knew that there would be good days, like last week when smashed her 800 times and improved her average by 2 secs for each 800m. Right now, she’s in the middle of that and doing just fine – she had a hiccup yesterday, which could have been caused by any number of things. There’s no big drama. The rock will keep spinning and she’ll be fine. She bailed on a session – probably due to her body fighting off some sort of lurgy. Hopefully she’ll live. Yeah, she’s a bit down and all that but that happens when everything isn’t rosy all of the time, especially if you have a penchant for perfection. And it is her penchant for perfection that will bring the deserved rewards – not her desire for a quicky, a knee-shaker up an ally. This is all about the long ride. It’s all about teasing out the ultimate climax. Building towards perfection. Oops, wrong forum.

Her first race was scheduled for two weeks time but she has a wedding and she has now scheduled her first race for three weeks time, which is perfect.

Contrary to what everybody else thinks, the worst thing she could do is race right now. Sure, she’d get a pb. Then if she were to race again in a few weeks she’d get another pb. But that would be it. After that she’d go flat and stale. Endgame. She needs another 2-3 weeks of multi-pace training. Then, after the block is finished, she’ll be ready to spend 6-8 weeks of racing, sharpening, and maintaining. After the 6-8 weeks of racing, she’ll need to take 10-14 days off from running. Then, with her new found speed etc she can set about building a ‘real’ base over the winter which will set her up for a spring and summer of racing.

I understand why everybody thinks she should be racing, but that is short term thinking and isn’t in Ososlo’s long term interest. Quick wins are easy. But quick wins lead to long term disappointment.

If she were to adopt a race a month attitude she wouldn’t get anywhere. Yeah, she might take a few seconds off her times here and there but she’d just be plodding along for the rest of her years. And this is the crucial point, she doesn’t want to race every month and plod along, she wants to make substantial improvements. Racing every month suits fast twitch fibre types and slow twitch guys who operate off big mileage. Ososlo is a slow twitch beginner. Racing once a month off a weak base would prove futile.

Ultimately, time will tell. But I’m pretty confident that Ososlo will make similar gains to Paddy the Kenyan. He’s improved his 10k pb by nearly 2 mins after 4 months of training - 36:XX - 34:XX. He’ll go on to take another 2mins off his 10k time - 32:XX - this year. Without any stress or pressure, Ososlo will run many pb’s through July and August. Her first race might not be a 2 min pb. But she’ll run a pb and her confidence will grow and by the end of August she’ll be sitting there thinking, Wow!