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Current VDOT according to 2mile of 10k PB

10k PB

Hey guys, I just had to share with you my run tonight, as I am so happy. I started out from my house on a usual route, and went out a little faster than my normal warm up pace. I felt good, and the pace was getting a little faster, so I thought what the hell, lets go or a good 10K time. My previous 10k PR was 46:15, this was on a x country course. Today I came away with a road time of "42:32. I was well chuffed, and couldn't have worked any harder towards the end. I cant stop thinking that I should have gone out a little faster, but hey it would only have compromised my pace later on. Here are some stats you guys ma want to look at.

In an actual race I should be a little quicker I would hope, looking a the last 3.1 miles too, it works out at just over 20 minutes by a few seconds for the 5k.20:03, so I know I can break that too hopefully.

Please comments welcome.

Nab to Brinscall

Up Nab, over the top, past waterman's cottage, and over through white Coppice, through Pine Woods, and into Brincall. Through Higher Wheelton, and Home.

Forced to reduce my running time.

I never thought the day would come, but my partner is not happy with all the running that I am currently doing, so I am cutting the running down to 3 times a week. Gonna be hard, and will probably lose my gains, but will have to see how it goes. Family comes first. I will be making sure that the 3 workouts I do are quality, 1 track session, 1 long, and 1 fast 10k or so. See how it goes. I may have to get a couple in during my lunch breaks.

Great Hill to Darwen Tower

Race Speed to Distance

Tempo and Easy progress

Interesting progress since beginning:

First outing with Chorley Harriers

Last night I decided to join Chorley Harriers to go for a run. We met at the Cricket Club, and I was a little apprehensive, regarding pace of the groups etc. I initially went in the ‘plodders’ group, and was collared by a guy who said that I should be in the other group. He said that ‘I would get cold’ in that group.

We went up Brown Street, and headed up the Nab, interesting as it took me across a few new places which I wasn’t aware of. I was pretty much at the front most of the time. I enjoyed it, especially on the way back when we gave it some down the Nab and into Chorley Town.
It was great seeing all Chorley lit up from above too. Really enjoyed it and will be going there regularly.

MAF Test

Following advice from a thread at www.runningahead.com, I am going to make sure that my easy runs are run at MAF, so I have just got back from my first run. 0.5 mile warm uo and down and 4 mile at MAF, which I am taking as 150bpm.
I could not believe how easy it is to push up the heart rate. It became a little difficult to run at around 150bpm as as i went on, my pace had to slow down. This was strange, as after mile 1 I felt warmed up, yet this meant that my HR was elevated more. Anyhow I am going to keep a log of this, love it.
Here are my findings:

mile 1 - 8:39
mile 2 - 8:51
mile3 - 9:11
mile 4 - 9:32

I could not believe how easy it is to push up the heart rate. It became a little difficult to run at around 150bpm as as i went on, my pace had to slow down. This was strange, as after mile 1 I felt warmed up, yet this meant that my HR was elevated more. Anyhow I am going to keep a log of this, love it.

At the Track

Went to the track tonight with a little reluctance, as I was still feeling it from the fell race on Sat. However, I ran well - did 16x300m at 5:05 mile pace - a vast improvement on my previous session of the same. Overall pleased, as my tired legs seem to have gone too. An easy 5/6 tomorrow is what I plan to do then a day off Thurs perhaps. Really beginning to take the training serious now with every session having an objective.

First Fell Race

The last 2 weeks leading up to the race have been really nerve racking for me, today the day arrived. I prepared well: peanut butter on toast, 7:30am. porridge with banana 11am, then a banana and Powerade before the race.

The race in question is an annual one in Chipping, near Preston, England. According to my garmin 305, it worked out at over 8.5 miles, and 2500ft ascent.

The whole concept of fell running to me was new, and I was really nervous, though my brother (who is an avid fell runner talked me into it).

We arrived at Chipping about an hour before the race was due to start. It was a kind of an agricultural show being held there, as well as the race.

At 2:40pm we were all summoned to the start. We were in the middle of a field which was metal gates off from the public, incidentally there were hundreds of people all leaning over with anticipation waiting for us to start. This did not help with the nerves as I have never been in a race with such a high profile. (All my races to now have been on the road or country with only a few watchers).

Anyhow, sorry if I am boring you. I was there, in the pack with my new fell running shoes on, my shorts, vest, and hip bag, with a couple of gels in. When we set off, I just kept it in my head that this was all new to me, and that I would just intend to get around the course, and not worry about time or anyone else. It proved difficult from the start as we hit about 1.5 miles of gradually ascending fields, a little boggy, and which tested my ankle strength.

I was then faced with total intimidation as I saw the first climb. It looked as though it went on forever. I just kept my head down and plodded up it, the sheer incline rendered it impossible to run up. It seemed relentless, and went on for ages. In fact it was 0.4 of a mile in distance to the summit, and it ascended by 565ft-sheer hell.

On the way up the lactic was so intense, it felt like my calves were going to blow up. I found that when on top with some open space to stretch out the legs, I made tracks pretty well. Next there was some wicked descent which I enjoyed, but all the same it was hard, because it is at these stages I thought I need to turn on the speed a little to make up for the hills. There is a serious danger in running down these rocky, slippy, hills, but I thought what the hell, and went all out, I actually overtook 3 people on my descent, and then it was time for a monster climb again:This one was more gradual but a killer all the same, 1.3 mile with an ascent of 825ft.

After this it felt like I was literally on the top of the world. The clouds were below my feet, the wind was biting and the visibility was becoming worse. I still had 2 runners in the distance there to guide me. I managed to keep them in my sights, pushing myself harder and harder over the precarious, perilous terrain.

There were many more hills to contend with but I will spare the detail. Towards the end we had just downhill to go, and this tested my legs to the max - constant breaking really tested my quads, and it was quite difficult trying to get down the steep drop as fast as I wanted without running great risks. It was 0.4 mile descent of 650ft. At the end my legs returned to power as we hit the road, and then the fields for the final mile. I did the final mile in just over 7 mins, and ended with a sprint finish into the crowd of spectators.


I even got a pat on the back from one of the officials, saying "great finish". The results are not in yet, and so my time is a little hazy as I forgot to stop my garmin, but I know I came in 37th out of a field of about 73, so I was really happy with that.

Spoke to my brother and he thinks he was 9th, so well done to him! Now it was time for a well deserved burger.........only joking.....I settled for a bottle of water and a flapjack. Got changed and headed home. I am sat here now typing this very sore, but hell it was worth it.

I will definitely be hitting the fells more often, - hope you liked my report. Comments welcome.

hard Interval

I have stepped up my interval again. On Sun I did 14x400m with 1 minute gap averaging 1:30.5 pace. Happy with that. Glad to have done the session, left me feeling tired, but great. Will try 16 of them next week.

Longest Run to Date

Today, primarily with the guilt of last nights takeaway I decided to do a long run, in fact on completion it came to 16.21 miles - my longest to date, and I think that I am going to do this length of run every 2 weeks, increasing to a maximum of 22 miles or so. I felt surprisingly good after it, kept a nice easy pace of 8:09 m/mile.

Goal?

Tonight I go to get weighed and hopefully I will be at goal weight, fingers crossed. I have been working hard, and seriously cutting back the calories as well as doing a lot more running. If I don't get their this week I should be their by next week.

Update-I got to my goal weight, now I am 13st6. Whoooohay

Speed Work

I have started to incorporate speedwork into my trianing, two sessions a week with 48-60 hours rest between. For one of the sessions I am working on speed and the other on tempo and endurance. One of the sessions is shorter reps of 100,200,300 or 400m with 60 seconds rest, and the other is starting at 1000m intervals. These workouts are run at my current vdot level (47). I have the intention of incresing the amount of intervals/distance over time.

31/07/07 I did the following: 10 min warm up, 6x200m 40 sec, 3 mile fat run hilly, 6x100m 20 sec - finished feeling tired but not all out. Enjoyable but hard.

Long Run Home

There is nothing better than letting all your weekly built up stresses out on a run, especially when I decided to run away from work to home yesterday. I took my stuff with me to work and then headed off home down the long and winding Chorley New Road. It is a bit mind numbing as there is nothing much to look at so it hard to keep concentration levels up. What was supposed to be a long run turned into quite a good 15km run, my PB, and I didn't push half as hard as when I went for it last time.

I am still pushing for the last 3 pounds to reach my Weight Watchers Goal, so foolishly went home and had a bowl of cereal for my tea. I ended my night with my first go at an hour of Yoga and felt it the next day.

Mile PB

I went to the Leisure Centre this morning with the intention of swimming a good few lengths before work. This wasn’t easy as there were too many people in the pool, so I decided to go to the gym for a while. I started with a warm up of 7:35 on the treadmill, then had a minute rest, and then went on it again with the aim of getting a PB for the mile: flat out for 5:30 on 16km/h, and then 30 seconds on 17. This gave me a PB of 5:58. I am happy with this, though I am sure I can add a few more seconds to this time for the road.

Easy not always Easy

I know that in order to get the most out of my running I need to mix up the types of running: easy runs, tempo, fartlek, speed work etc but when it comes to going out easy I just can't do it.
Again tonight, I went out on an apparent easy run which ended just over a minute slower than my PB 5k time. Admittedly I was pushing it and kept consciously thinking, slow down, but I couldn't. It is difficult for me to go at a slower pace, as I feel like it is just too slow. What are your thoughts on easy running?
What has worked for me in the past is going out with a less experienced runner and then I find it easier to go at his desired easy pace.

Stretching

Realising the importance of stretching pre and post exercise, I now ensure I do it fully. I had a bad ITB injury near the beginning of the year, and I was off for quite a while. It didn't do much for my state of mind, left me feeling anxious and angry. I visited the physio a few times and got back on track. I am thinking of taking up Pilates, or Yoga to improve flexibility and core strength. I now also run with Orthotics in and ensure that I regularly change my trainers. I have also started to mix up the surfaces I run on.

Weigh In

I am really trying hard now to lose the last bit of weight that I want to shed. I am weighing in at about 13st10 at the moment, and I want to get down to 12st7 for the moment. I have read up and heard that a loss of 3lbs will improve my VDOT by one notch, which will potentially really zip up my race times.

Difficult all the same because I am maintaing my mileage, and doing more intense workouts, yet cutting back drastically on the calories.

I have started to eat smaller meals more often during the day, trying to get 5-6 meals in a day. Started eating nuts too! Hopefully my cutting back on the calories will not make my training too hard, and zap my energy levels, if this happens I will raise them again. All about trial and error at the moment.

Hard Track Session

I have started reading up on speed work, threshold and vo2 max training, and am keen to incorporate 2 speed sessions in my weekly training.I went to the track as I always do last night, and did the training that the instructor laid out.
Here is what we did:
4 x 600 4 x 400 4 x 300
All where done with a one minute rest between. I did these with maximum effort really (effort which I could sustain over the distance and Intervals). My pace for all these on average was:
600s – 6min/mile400s – 5:40min/mile300s – 5:20min/mile
Hard Work but exhilerating. I am getting faster, as I am catching people now that where well ahead of me when I started. Todays weigh in 194lbs