In order to build up my confidence in my estimated London Marathon time, I wanted to run a big PB in this race. Nothing else mattered, focus on what motivates me, race to pace and remember what Carl Ryde told me to do and #WNHTFA
I have put in a couple of weeks of decent training and this was basically my 4th race of 2017 (in 2 weeks). I have an overuse problem at the moment, under my left foot. I decided to seek specialist advice and I had a treatment session with Eddie Fletcher on 9 January. Its rare I see specialists but I recommend Eddie, top advice and top bloke.
Some of the DAC runners today
I was hoping for a 6 minute mile half marathon, of if things went really well to break 78 minutes. I ended up running 76:30 which was 5:49 minute miles. From memory I went through:
| Today in the race | Current PB | |
| 5 Miles | 29:02 | 29:46 |
| 10km | 36:00 | 35:26 |
| 10 Miles | 57:40 | 60:14 |
| Half Marathon | 76:30 | 81:14 |
So todays PB was 4:44 – which is 21 seconds per mile.
Kit list: Mizuno Wave Catalyst shoes £50. Karrimor Shorts £5. DAC Vest £20. Garmin Fenix 3 (very expensive lol but will last several years).
Shout out to Richard Spooner, Paul Johnson, Simon Newton and Kevin Doyle, nice group to run with!
Thanks to all the DAC training squad, the two hard runs we do a week are what have brought me on more than anything else. Going to keep my recovery runs around 8 minute miles, working well. Thanks to Darren Wood, Rose James Janet Kerry for keeping me sensible. I get lots of support on social media (as well as parkrun) as well, it all helps so thanks all.
Warming down like pros at the Yorkshire XC Championships!
Week 4 of my London training plan finished.
| 1 January | 2 Parkruns (18:18 and then 18:14) | |
| 2 January | 15 miles (see previous blog post) | 7:09 minute miles |
| 3 January | DAC Club Run 10km on track (easy) | 6:47 minute miles |
| 4 January | Rest | |
| 5 January | DAC Club Run 6.86 easy miles | 7:04 minute miles |
| 6 January | 3.5 mile recovery | 8:16 minute miles |
| 7 January | 6.3 miles (Yorkshire XC Champs) | 6:17 minute miles |
| 8 January | 14 easy miles Z2 / Z3 | 7:37 minute miles |
| 9 January | 4.25 miles recovery run | 7:30 minute miles |
| 10 January | DAC Club Run 12 x 600m, off 200m intervals | 5:40 minute miles |
| 11 January | 6.2 miles recovery run | 8:03 minute miles |
| 12 January | DAC Club Run 5.5 miles easy run | 7:23 minute miles |
| 13 January | Rest | |
| 14 January | Helped at Doncaster Parkrun – Rest | |
| 15 January | Brass Monkey Half Marathon | 5:50 minute miles |
So you can see I am running at a wide variety of paces, from 5:40 minute miles to 8:16 minute miles. Its all good. Based on Pfitzinger / Douglas LT runs should be done at your half marathon race pace. Because I ran hard at the Brass Monkey half, I have my lactate-threshold value both as a pace and a HR for threshold runs, its quite simple to work this out – race to your best ability for a half marathon after a warm up and at the end, check your average pace and heart rate for the race. I don’t do many runs at this pace because they would kill me and I want to get the start of races fresh and not (too) injured.
For me race often works very well, I enjoy testing myself.
Loving these beats *Drum and bass fans only lol