keep on running...: 2018

This will be the 6^th time I’ve run Berlin and also the 3^rd year on the trot. Both 2016 and 2017 I was agonisingly close to my 2:16:49 pb set here in 2011, with 2:16:58 in 2016 and 2:17:10 in 2017. It’s been my goal to run under 2:15 ever since running my pb in 2011 but as of yet the result has failed to materialise. Despite my pb approaching its 7^th birthday, I’m still confident I can smash it out of the park this year.

For once I’ve managed to settle into some kind of routine with my training which has been helped immensely by doing the majority of my sessions with Malcolm who is also running Berlin (a rather quick Kiwi with 13:37/28:58/64:29 pbs for 5000/10000/HM). We’ve been knocking out a decent marathon session on a Wednesday, some kind of speed session on a Friday, and a pacier than usual long run on a Sunday.

The Wednesday marathon sessions (#workoutWednesday) are loosely based on some Canova style workouts that I’ve done over the years at Battersea Park. An example is 6x3km off 1km float. The idea is to run the effort at approx. marathon pace and then float the 1km recovery at about 20-30s per mile slower than marathon pace. It can be quite technical if you get into the detail of the pace as it is more like 3km@103%MP off 1km@93%MP but once mapped out over a number of weeks you can see that the efforts are getting longer (or more reps so an increase in volume) and the pace is converging on your MP. Canova also has his own special way of doing the maths for these percentages and in the example above 93% means 7% slower than MP as opposed to 93% of MP (small difference). To be fair, we’ve been struggling to hit the pace on these sessions which could be attributed to a number of factors but more than anything it is probably the heat (I’m ignoring the possibility that we’re just a bit shit for now!). The 7:30am start time helps slightly with the heat (still often starting around 20 degrees) but an early start also makes it harder as your body just isn’t ready to run hard, plus, Victoria Park is nowhere near as rapid as Battersea Park. Along with these reps style sessions we’ve also mixed in some continuous MP (so no floats) and I find this really beneficial for getting used to MP and the feeling of it as the on/off nature of the effort/float session isn’t how you would feel in a race. Funnily enough, when I set my pb in 2011 I had a reasonably staple Wednesday session of anywhere from 6-13 miles at MP so that type of effort definitely works for me and now we’re just mixing in some longer based MP intervals.

The Friday speed session is just there to get some leg turnover going and running quicker than MP. It’s been time based (eg 1 minute on/off) rather than distance based so we aren’t flogging ourselves to hit certain times for a known distance (eg for the 3 minute on/off we aren’t worried about hitting 1km even though we ended up covering 1km or just over). Also, the “off” time is still a pretty solid float so over the 6-8 miles of effort we are still averaging a decent pace close to MP.

The last workout of the week comes with the Sunday long run. In the past I’ve been a bit lazy with these and just been happy to plod around to get them done. Sometimes this can be because I’ve raced on Saturday or simply because I’m tired. I’ve also missed them sometimes due to racing on a Sunday. The past few Sundays, however, we’ve made the pace more honest so the long run becomes like a mini session as it’s a bit more taxing than just time on feet. It certainly helps with spare time as one run was a good half an hour quicker than I would have done otherwise! The Sunday just gone we headed down to Richmond Park for a “40km at a decent clip” run and with a bit of a warmup/warm down jog we ended up running 27 miles at just over 6 min average pace (approx. 2:41 marathon).

Happy to have finished 3 wet and windy laps of Richmond Park (me, Malcolm, Chris)

I’m finding this setup of Wednesday MP/Friday speed/Sunday long works well as it means there are nearly 72 hours recovery between Sunday’s long run and Wednesday’s hard marathon session and then another 48 hours recovery to Friday’s session. I’m keeping things pretty flexible with the actual makeup of the sessions and often Malcolm and I decide exactly what we are doing a day or two before. I learnt long ago that you can’t be too rigid with your training as something is bound to come up (life, niggles, crap weather, feeling rubbish) so being flexible and rolling with the punches saves a lot of stress and prepares you to deal with the unexpected should it happen on race day.

There are now less than 7 weeks to go and training has been going really well. I’ve just finished a decent 4 week block averaging 115 miles (about 510 miles for July) and the 5 weeks before that averaged just over 100 (last 9 weeks mileage: 103, 98, 102, 103, 101, 106, 117, 117, 120). With over 510 miles run in July it is quite timely that a box from Mizuno has just arrived so I've got some nice shiny new shoes to see me through the next few months. This week will be a bit of a down week to make sure I don’t overdo things and then I’ll ramp up again for 4 more weeks before a 2 week taper.