Runner's screed

[ursus arctos]

That's without your backpack full of iron ingots, right?

Still highly impressive.

[caja-dglh]

Correct. With the weighted backpack I can move at a fair pace (30lb) to just moving at a fair walking pace (70lb). I have a few running goals and then lugging goals. I have long been strong at simply carrying weight around, not so great at lifting it above my head repeatedly.

[ursus arctos]

I may start adding weights to my walk

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

On Sunday I did probably my last event for some considerable time, the Workington to Keswick, a 32 mile charity walk, which some people choose to run. I was in two minds about doing it but it is a low key event with 100 or so people setting off at different times and walking/running a very rural and often isolated course. It was my fourth time doing it (think I've reported every other time on this thread) and my objectives were 1) set a new personal best (previous was 7 hrs 19 mins) 2) beat seven hours and 3) top ten finish. I cleared the first two by finishing in 6 hours 56 mins (comically I firstly didn't realise until the final mile that they had moved the finishing point since last year, and then when I got there I wasted 2-3 minutes trying to get in to the building) but wasn't sure whether I'd achieved the last because start times are spread over a one hour window. But the following day the results can out, confirming 10th place for me out of 94 finishers, beating two guys in joint 11th by a minute. So I've gone into shutdown on a high.

As I've said elsewhere this is going to be devastating for race organisers and some may not get through this. There is a lot of optimistic re-scheduling going on,with everyone fighting for the same slots in September and October, and even if they do go ahead (which I'm doubting) the competition for business could still sink some races. It's a bit of a blur at the moment but I can think of at least two events I had entered where the organisers have written off 2020 altogether and are re-scheduling to 2021.

[elguapo4]

10.30 kms yesterday in 58.37 minutes yesterday, still not happy but heading in the right direction. Judging by the amount of runners out, Ireland's going to be a lot healthier at the end of this.

[Forest Gump]

The lockdown has given me time to get back to somewhere like the fitness I had when I ran the London marathon last year.

On Tuesday night I thought it a good idea to do a multi-stage fitness test (beep test). I was quite happy with my result, 10.6, but less so with what happened after.

Felt a bit dizzy, fainted and then woke up with a massive chunk taken out of my eyebrow, and blood everywhere.

Have now got 6 stitches and an absolute corker of a black eye, as well as a bruised shoulder, hip and knee, so think that's me done with running for a little while at least.

The paramedics and the hospital staff were fantastic, I just couldn't help but feel guilty about taking up their time with something self-inflicted like this.

[Janik]

I've been talking about the running I've been doing over lockdown on the Weightloss thread, as that was part of the purpose of it. The other was to simply maintain fitness levels as I was already pretty sporty (a typical week would involve playing something likely 6 days out of 7). The weightloss thread is the wrong place to talk about times and distances though. It's for mutual support of people losing weight, not a space to chat about sporting performance, which is a topic that lends itself to comparisons. But here? That seems perfect.

So...

Back on 26th March I went for my first run, despite stated objections to running as a concept. That wasn't even a mile* (0.96) and took me nearly 9 minutes. Since then I've been out daily over increasing distances, initially seeing quite a quick drop in times but now I seem to have maxed out.

One aim was to run a 5k (actually 5.01km, and yes I very much am counting that extra 10m!), which I worked my way up to by Sat 25th April. The first attempt was 24m40, which is decent enough I think. The best time was three Saturday's ago though, when I clocked 23m10 for it. I've also attempted 6k and 8k distances on the recent bank holidays, which I completed in 30m55 and 39m40 respectively. And therein lies the rub at the moment. I appear to be maxing out on pace at ~7m30/mile or a little bit under. There is one run with a limited amount of hill involved, short sections where necessary, more contour hugging, that I've been trying to really buzz. This is 1.67 miles long**. However even pushing myself to my maximum, the best time on this is 12m15, or 7m20/mile pace. Whereas I can cruise along at 8min/mile for quite a long way without even getting particularly out of breath. There doesn't seem that much between a comfortable pace and one that leaves me gasping for air at the end of it.

That all leads to the question of what I can do about it. Clearly ~7m30 is not as quick as a human can go. So why is it as fast as I can do? Technique? Simple fitness? Having a more suitable pair of trainers than AstroTurf boots? All of the above?


* - very much not flat, mind. Pretty well all my runs start with a near 4% hill climb for just under half a kilometre (17.3m up / 450m distance / 3.8% average incline, to be precise). This is a negative consequence of having my flat in what is effectively a dell. Pretty well every direction out is fairly steeply up. The pay off for the staring hill should come with a long, gentle downhill when I can get good pace up (and recover from the hill!). Except it's along a road that is an avenue lined by trees that appears to act as a wind tunnel - literally every day I've been confronted on this bit with a headwind. On windy days it because a very strong headwind.

** - any Cambridge residents on here may recognise this as the length of one leg of the Chariots of Fire race (a 10 mile, six person relay race around central Cambridge for those who don't know). This isn't accidental. Nor is my target pace of 7 minutes flat per mile, which is the average pace the quicker of the teams from my workplace achieved in the 2019, i.e. it's what colleagues are capable of.

[Foot of Astaire's]

Janik they're impressive times for a training run, particularly for someone new to running. I could never get under 7m 15 sec per mile on training runs but in a few races I managed it 'easily' managing 42.00 for my 10k PB. Perhaps a competitive element would help? Alternatively fartleks or the training run I used to enjoy - 2 miles warm up at anything from 8.30 to 9m per mile, followed by 2 miles all out as fast as you can, followed by 2 miles cool down at again 8.30 to 9m mile pace.

Ouch Forest Gump . Get well soon pal.

[San Bernardhinault]

I'm very much not an expert - and 8 minute miles is basically sprinting for me... but isn't the method for speed training to do short intervals on a properly flat track. Go and find somewhere. Do a 100m run - which you should be able to do at better than 7 minute pace - recover and do it again going back and forth, and see how many you can do with, say, one minute recoveries between the full on sprints. Get yourself used to doing shorter distances at the high pace, and then slowly increase the distance or reduce the recovery. Don't only train with longer runs. If you can find a proper track to work out on (sneak into a school?) that's good. I think break it up. Some weeks do 800m/two lap bursts with breaks; some weeks do 400m or even 200m ones, and break them up by walking or jogging round to your next start point as you recover. That's what the local track workout did back when I ran a bit more.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Most of on this thread are envious of you getting to 7 minutes 20 seconds for a mile, believe me. That is almost exactly my fastest ever timed mile, and that was a "magic mile" on the track with the running club, arranged in peer groups. 23:10 would usually put you in the top 12-15 out of 200 at my local parkrun, ahead of some decent club runners.

In terms of what you can do to get faster some of if it will be down to general fitness/weight (and much of the initial gains will be down to that, plus increased confidence) but to shave further noticeable time off you would benefit from more specialist training techniques e.g. hammering the pace for 400m and easing up for 400m and so on (there will be endless examples online). Not something I've really got into but it is effective for others, particularly for getting to the point where you can run 7 / 7;30 per mile breathing the same as you currently do for 8:00 per mile. Better shoes aren't necessarily going to make you any faster (unless the current ones are really bad), but they will make running more comfortable, reduce the occurrence of injuries and allow the sort of training which will facilitate better pace eventually.

My own lockdown story is that in terms of running and walking combined I'm doing approx. twice as much as before (175 miles in May, a new peak) and while I've long ago stopped timing myself in training I know my pace is sliding away. I'm also eating a lot more in lockdown than I did previously (mainly on snacking and desserts) but overall reducing weight due to the calories out. No injuries to speak of despite the heightened mileage. Quite keen to get running "competitively" again so I can start to get the pace back.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

^ or what they said.

[Bored Of Education]

I am envious of your 9 minute mile at the start, Janik. Well done and, indeed, well done to all that have contributed since I last checked this thread.

I am very much semi-retired from running now. At the start of lockdown, I got a donated bike sorted out and that, along with my knees, hips and back feeling buggered constantly from running, means I have switched to cycling which I love as opposed to running which I tolerate and love the feeling having done. The odd thing is that my knees don't exactly come off pain-free from cycling and, oddly, my back starts going at about 12 miles cycling which is sort of the distance that it used to go running when I did my half-marathons. Got no idea what to do about it. It may be that I need to do some weight sessions but can't really fit them in presently so may wait until the summer holidays and see what happens there. I want to get up to 20-30 mile rides so need to do something.

Mrs Bored still has 5 Parkruns to get to her 100 (I have already done mine) so I may join her on those when they start up again.

[Janik]

Thanks guys.

So, in summary, to get better at a sport do training tailored to that sport, right? In this case mostly interval training. And also mix up the pace/variety of terrain/etc. of my regular runs. Don't do the same thing every day or the body just goes 'this again, I know this'.

I've done fartleks in the past in pre-season fitness training with the Hockey club. As that was using an 100m astroturf marked up into quarters it was sprint for 25m, jog for 25m. The overall distance was only 4 lengths of the pitch or 400m. I would be intrigued to know how different that feels now from what it used to. Also the shuttle runs that add up to 1k (25 and back, halfway/back, far 25/back, length of the pitch/back, repeat the sequence in reverse). That used to be rather painful. Now the idea of running 1000m on a flat, bouncy astroturf doesn't sound all that challenging. Maybe it would be in practice due to all the 180 degree turning involved.

[caja-dglh]

Sharp turns suck a lot more as you get older. 10m shuttle runs are a winter staple at my gym and the turn / sharp stop and power kills me.

I have a stress fracture in my tibia right now so have eased significantly on my running for over a month. I am going to try get to the track today for an aerobic chill out run.

[Bored Of Education]

I did a sharp turn into an expected hedge on my bike ride and that definitely hurt. I may prefer cycling to running but have never had to run home with blood running down my leg.

[Janik]

Who knows how bad an unexpected hedge would have been... I hope it doesn't keep you off the bike for more than a day or two!

Given one of my primary sports is Squash, I can't really avoid the turn / sharp stop / power starts thing. That is all explosive movement and lunging. Fingers crossed the explosiveness is still there when I can return to it, as a coach at Uni did warn against jogging as fitness work as that builds endurance but somewhat at the expense of the fast-twitch muscles needed for short sharp accelerations and declerations.

Talking of which [segue] I had a look at my running routes for one I could adapt to an interval run. And the 1.67k one stood out. The first/last 0.5 miles of this are a bit up and down, on somewhat narrow footpaths in places and also cross some roads. Non-ideal for running fast, but perfect for rolling along getting warm when the watch is off. The central bit however, which according to the mapping tool is bang on 0.67 miles, is mostly in and around the town park. Pretty flat, lots of grass to divert on to if I need to go around people. Ideal. So I gave it a shot, and... 4m15s for two-thirds of a mile. ~6m20-6m25 pace. So I can go quicker than 7m20! It's just about sustaining it. Next up is to find a longer route with two flat sections of between half-a-mile to a mile in length with some joggy parts in between.

[Janik]

"Next up is to find a longer route with two flat sections of between half-a-mile to a mile in length with some joggy parts in between."
After thinking over the local layout, the first version of this runs thus - ~0.5 miles slightly downhill to the local park (jog), 0.5 miles around and in and out of park (burn it), 0.2 miles on the road outside the park to get to another gate (get breath back, and some water down), a further 0.5 miles looping round and round inside the park (start quick then try and hang on), ~0.4 miles back home (rolling gently, rehydrating). First fast section time - 3m10s, second - 3m20s. Encouraging start to this, let's see if it works...

[San Bernardhinault]

That's impressively fast. You'll have a 6 minute mile in you before long. Which would make even my track running/coaching friends jealous: they just did a one mile burn-up to see who could get under 6 minutes, and only one of them did. They are, admittedly, all meant to be injured ex-runners...

[Me Old Flower]

Almost 18 months on from injuring my achilles tendon and I still daren't risk going out for a run. Although I don't have pain there, there's a lot of morning stiffness and swelling in the affected area after any moderate exercise, such as cycling. The issue appears to be tendinopathy, so I've embarked upon something called the Hakan Alfredsson protocol, which involves doing a series of 90 stretches a day whilst wearing a weighted vest for 12 weeks. The success rate for this protocol seems to be quite high, so I'm hoping I might be back to running by the end of the year.

[Janik]

My week in running

Monday: new interval run: jog to local park and back, when there two 0.5 mile segments with a 0.2 mile recovery jog in between - 6:31"32 total for the fast bits made up of ~3m10 and ~3m20
Tuesday: 3.57k hilly run, 62.25m of climbing at a max grade of 6%. Not full out but still timed myself for it - 18m21s (nearly 40s slower than the quickest I've done this)
Wednesday: 8k consolidation run, running for distance not time. But I still want to know the time, so... - 40m20s (again 40s slower than previous 'best' effort)
Thursday: interval run again - 6'30"09 total made up of ~3m13 and ~3m16. More consistent times than Monday
Friday: 3.65k run, just one hill on this one early on, 47.75 climb in total. Meant to be not running for time, but being competitive the stopwatch was still running, and disappointment at a mid-point split saw me flog the second half and end up going round this in my fastest ever - 17m03s

Which took me to today and my 5k route. Again some hills on it because they are unavoidable heading away from my flat. Indeed more than the 'hilly' course at 67.4m of gain, but not as steep as the rises are more spread out across the circuit. And the time? 22m32s. Which is a PB by nearly 40 seconds (previous best 23m10) and an average pace of 7m15s per mile. The speed training regime would appear to be working.

It can't all be attributed to the workout plan as I've also changed my warm-up; I'm doing the same stretching as before, which was more than token, but previously I was doing that, heading out the front door and setting off. However a quick read on Runners World about improving 5k times mentioned that the warm-up for such a race needs to be pretty in-depth and include some pre-run running. Which was an "Oh, duh!, yeah..." moment. Though, to be honest I kind of knew that but ignored it as I 'didn't want to waste energy I need for the run'. However I'm now running further than 5k at times so know the distance is not at my energy limits - it's going to be VOmax and so on that is my limiting factor. So I bit the bullet and did a mix of jogging, full pace running and walking up and down my road prior to starting. Only 2 minutes worth or so which the coach would probably say is nowhere near enough, but it probably also helped.


Day off tomorrow. :-)

[Janik]

I appear to be maxing out on pace at ~7m30/mile or a little bit under. There is one run with a limited amount of hill involved, short sections where necessary, more contour hugging, that I've been trying to really buzz. This is 1.67 miles long**. However even pushing myself to my maximum, the best time on this is 12m15, or 7m20/mile pace. Whereas I can cruise along at 8min/mile for quite a long way without even getting particularly out of breath. There doesn't seem that much between a comfortable pace and one that leaves me gasping for air at the end of it.

** - any Cambridge residents on here may recognise this as the length of one leg of the Chariots of Fire race (a 10 mile, six person relay race around central Cambridge for those who don't know). This isn't accidental. Nor is my target pace of 7 minutes flat per mile, which is the average pace the quicker of the teams from my workplace achieved in the 2019, i.e. it's what colleagues are capable of.

I did my first time trial of this in a long while (since 3rd June), having done intervals and endurance runs and the like. I knew I should be able to beat 7m30 per mile having done a full 5k at 7m15. But 7m00 was still the target. And... 11'40 for it. That would be 11 2/3 minutes for 1 2/3 miles or 7 mins/mile, then. That will do.

The split times were coming down as the run progressed. My first checkpoint is at 0.55 miles. That was 4'03 (target 3'52). The second is the mile marker, which I passed at 7'08 (target, obviously, 7'00). Notably the first bit of the run has the steepest up hill gradient (and steepest downhill!) and the second bit the most hard turns. The last leg is mostly gently uphill but straights or wide curves. Enough to make a difference to my pace, it seems.

[Janik]

Runner's whine instead of runner's screed.

I was running what was clearly going to be a PB for 10k this morning (previous best 51m23). The 2 mile and 4 mile points happen to be at convenient locations, so I was using those for splits instead of metric markers. They were 15'30 exactly and 31'00 dead, i.e. I was holding a consistent 7:45min/mile pace for the first ~2/3rds of the run. Irritatingly though somewhere around the 5 mile mark I failed to lift up a foot high enough, caught it on the edge of a paving slab, stumbled and fell. The first time in any of the runs of the last four months that I've done this. I didn't get any injuries from the tumble... but my stopwatch did, going off completely! Gah!! So I only know the time roughly by my wristwatch. It was definitely under 50 minutes at the end, somewhere between 48 and 49 minutes. I'm calling it 48m45, i.e. I had slowed to ~8min/mile over the last 2.21 miles (some of which was spent on my nose!).

[Simon G]

Sorry to hear that Janik - at least little more than your pride was hurt though.

I've been running pretty consistently over the past 4 weeks, having decided to diet as well since working from home has seen me get very round around the waist. This week I managed to run two of my four fastest 5k runs. I managed 26:41 and then Friday I hit 26:02. My fastest is 25:47 set in August last year, and second fastest is 26:01.

I've always maintained that my aim is to crack the 25min mark before increasing the distance I run so things are looking up - I just need t make sure I don't get carried away.

[Simon G]

Following on from Saturday's post, this morning I recorded my personal best 5km - 25:46. 1 second off my previous best. Now to work on getting below 25 mins.

[Janik]

I think I've found what my easy jogging pace is. This is as defined by my breathing, i.e. running but slow enough not to be drawing air in hard/dropping the pace further if it start to do this until I'm back to only needing to breathe shallowly. Basically easy enough breathing that I could hold a conversation whilst running without it making me gasp for breath. I got interested in what this actually was so have taken my stopwatch on a couple of 3 mile jogs recently. And got timings from these two runs that differed by only fractions of a second. It's 8m16 per mile, it would appear.

Yesterday wasn't this though. It was interval training as I look to push the 5k time down, on a (nearly) flat 400m loop I've found around a mile from my flat (it laps round a currently unused rugby pitch and cricket square). And by golly, the weather was awful for it. I waited until evening to avoid the rain, and yes, it was dry and sometimes sunny as I was doing my training. But the sun just meant the previous hours rain was all evaporating so it was really humid. And the same wind that had blown the rainclouds away was now making running a chore. My 400m times were down from the 90-91s average that I had managed on the previous sets of intervals to 95-96s (94", 93", 98", 96", 97", 96", 95" for the seven fast laps). Bah! At least lap 7 wasn't notably slower than lap 1. That is a good sign, I think. But it was a disappointing way to christen the new running shoes I bought at the weekend to replace the Hockey astroturf boots that were taking a battering.

And now the reason for this post - to pick the right type of shoe, I had a go on a treadmill with a camera so my gait could be checked. It's pretty standard as it turns out (the resulting shoes are neutral balance); it was being on a treadmill for the first time in my life that was the memorable thing from exercise. Bloomin' weird feeling. I'm fairly sure my 'running' style on it was rather unnatural. I must have been very close to flying across the room when it was turned on as it really caught me out.