Train in vain

Many of my posts mention the weather. In Britain, talking about the weather is pretty much a given, so we shouldn’t be too surprised with this.

I talk about the weather because it’s the main thing I can’t control when planning what workouts I’ll do in the week. Since setting up my site I’ve written about a scorching summer, a mild autumn, and some strong, bitter winds in the past few weeks.

But there’s many other factors that affect what I do and when. The big one is work. For some reason I’m compelled to go to work all day rather than carve a massive section out of it to run ten miles away. There’s also family, but I can be a bit more flexible with them. As long as I can get up early enough and tiptoe downstairs quietly enough and get out the door without waking anyone then I’m ok!

Even just the drive to do something can be a barrier and while I sing the praises of exercise and the positive impact it has on our wellbeing, sometimes life can be overwhelming. On bad days, just getting out of bed can be hard enough, how can we expect ourselves to jump out of the front door in a brightly coloured top and run around the park smiling at anyone you see. 

A lot has been written about young people unable to find jobs, unable to buy their first house, being told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Things are different now, and the toll of our digital lives on our mental health emerges. The digital world can be a wonderful place, but our 24/7 reliance on screens perhaps isn’t.

I’ve been wondering how we can accept our good days and bad, embrace them as part of our journey through life, and try to step back and see the bigger picture. I’ve written about how I need a goal to get motivated – a half marathon or 10k race with a pb to beat.

At the start of this year, I weighed more than I wanted to and decided, as a new year resolution, I would downsize my body. I weighed myself every day and recorded it in Garmin (I also kept the data in my own spreadsheet because I’m a bit of a nerd), and focussed on my seven day average, rather than the daily numbers. My weight went up and down all the time, but the overall trend was downwards, which boosted my confidence no end.

Can we learn from this? Is there a way to track our trends over time – specifically our fitness, or our progress towards a goal, simply by taking the data we have and using it in a less granular way, a step back to see the bigger picture. 

Does anyone have any thoughts on how we can do this and ensure positivity prevails, even in the face of some miserable days in our path?

Bit of a stretch

I’ve been thinking more about how I can add some more variety into my training. I’ve said it before, we’ve all said it before, this means cross-training. 

I’m reasonably fit, but I’m geared entirely for running. The bits of me that need to move for running can move pretty well, forwards and backwards, causing the relentless gasping for air as I go. The rest of me isn’t quite so in tune. The classic groan-as-you-sit-down/moan-as-you-get-up routine. 

I’ve written about swimming and cycling as cross-training, but this week I’ve been thinking a bit broader and have targeted some stretching exercises. Apart from some stretches before and after a run, I’ve never taken on a specific stretching workout. As an intro I turned to my watch for guidance. 

I found a couple of useful options under workouts on my watch: Yoga and Pilates. I wasn’t entirely sure what the difference is, or which is the right one to choose, so will have a go at a workout of each. 

I decided to start off with Yoga. There’s a workout on Garmin Connect called Yoga for Runners, the perfect thing for me. Two things from this in hindsight: firstly, this is an intermediate level workout. I am not an intermediate level yoga-ist, I’m barely a beginner. Secondly, the workout lasted half an hour, a duration that can be referred to as “a long time for a beginner to do yoga”.

Looking down the list of stretches before I started, I counted 91 individual poses. There were ones I’d heard of (Child’s pose, Cat Pose, Thread the Needle Pose), one’s I hadn’t (Peaceful Warrior Pose) and technical ones I liked the sound of (Standing Single Leg Forward Bend with IT Band Opener). There was no sense of irony lost on me that the final one was called Corpse Pose lasting a minute (or possibly eternity). 

The workout went as well as could be expected. I didn’t know most of the poses and struggled to meet the demanding timeframes set by my watch. It displayed very helpful graphics of the movements as we went along but with sometimes only ten seconds to do them, we’d already moved on to the next one. 

It’s all a learning thing though, and I can’t expect to be good at it immediately. It clearly needs time to get familiar with the routine. But it felt ok – the range of muscles and bits of body worked out was excellent and it felt good that this was designed for runners. It’s something I’ll return to in the off days, and hopefully will see benefits in my running from it in the future.

With stretching now ticked off I can move on to… no, wait. There’s another: Pilates for Runners; a 30 minute intermediate workout. Oh well, next up then, some pilates!

The thrill of the pace

It’s the post that nobody has been asking for, but a post I feel compelled to write. A detailed account of my pacing strategy for my recent 10k race. Apologies in advance, this may get a little nerdy (ie extremely nerdy), but it will help me in future by capturing this here, so hopefully it can help others too.

If you’ve read my race post from the weekend then you’ll know this strategy was successful for me. I encourage others to try this out for yourselves and let me know if you have similar success, or if there’s better (or simpler) ways to do the same thing that I did. Either way, please do what works for you, this is a method to control overall pace within your own tolerances and to help prevent going out too quickly at the start. This method shouldn’t be used to go faster than you are able to manage, please be careful in your training.

Disclaimers out of the way then, here’s what I did:

Last year I ran the same course and set a time that I was pleased with, although felt that with some extra training I could push harder on it. 

I’ve said before the course is a hilly one, and the km splits are not even. I took the data from last years race and took some time off each km to get to the target for each split. With a tiny bit of weighting, I had 10 kilometre times I felt was achievable, and that added up to my overall target time (in fact, I did this for a range of target times so I could adapt based on my training progress). 

I found a feature on the Garmin app that lets you plot a course and then shows your target splits based on how fast you want to run up the hills (you can find it in Training > PacePro Pacing Strategies). I plotted the route of my race and in a brilliantly reaffirming way, the split times were pretty much what I’d calculated myself. 

The pace was set, the race was on. The final thing to do was to set my target. I chose a time of 46 minutes as I felt that was most achievable based on recent form. 

Garmin pace during a run is always rounded up to the nearest five seconds; it’s only when you complete a lap you see the accurate time. I decided (very late on, the night before the race), that I’d round my target splits to the nearest five seconds too. That way I had a worst case time for the km I was on, my acrtual time for each split would be lower. 

And then finally, finally, as I said in my race post, I sat in the car on race day for far longer than I’d imagined, transcribing the split times onto the back of my hand with the worst biro in the world!

Over the course, the ink remained where I wanted it to; I ran each lap under my target times and ended up over half a minute under my expected time. 

A tried and tested technique for race pacing, can someone let Eliud Kipchoge know please!

And the results are in…

The race is run, the results are in. The months of training, improvement, learning, bodily abuse (forcing myself to eat healthily and cut down on alcohol are bodily abuse, right?) are at an end. The goal was to beat a personal best time for an organised 10km race I run every year, a pb that has stood since the first time I ran it twelve years ago. And today was the day of the race.

So what happened? Did I manage it? Well, yes, yes I did. And not only by a second or two, I managed to chop off a full minute and fifteen seconds! My finish time was a shade under 45:30, far beyond my expectations at the outset. The ghost of twelve years is no more, here’s to the future ghost of 2022!

Obviously I was pleased with my performance, and lucky that everything came right on the day. Indulge me as I take us through some of the highlights.

The journey there was uneventful, parking no problem, registration took seconds. The weather was perfect: cool but sunny, breezy but not windy. No immediate concerns from the off.

All my thinking leading up to this had been around ensuring my pacing was correct. A few weeks ago I ran a 10km race but I went off too quickly and suffered in the second half, so didn’t want to repeat that. I’d already worked out my target splits based on last years race – it’s a hilly course so some kilometres are naturally slower than others. 

Before I headed out to the start, I sat in my car and jotted the target times on the back of my hand. This is something I hadn’t practised in my training, how hard could it be? Very hard, apparently. My pen was a bit rubbish and it ended up taking me ages. Next time, get a decent pen and maybe write the times on my hand before leaving the house!

At the start of the race I lined up somewhere between the 40 and 50 minute markers; these were a bit close together for my liking and I felt a bit contained with the other runners. When we set off I ran within the pack but found some space for my stride, it wasn’t long before we naturally stretched out and I had a good amount of personal space for the majority of the race. I managed to keep the right pace I’d planned and as the pack thinned I could focus on the times I wanted to run. The third km was a slower target pace, and I felt good dropping down and letting people overtake me, maybe I’d get them at the end!

Through all ten kilometres I kept to my pacing strategy, feeling relaxed and comfortable as I went. Sticking to a target pace isn’t that straightforward and I came in a few seconds under target each kilometre. By the time I came to the 8km marker I knew I was well under my target time, I just needed to keep the consistency to the end. The ninth kilometre was hilly, but I dug deep and hit that target too, and as I came through the final half kilometre the course levelled and dropped down the other side, leading to a fast finish in front of a reasonable sized and kindly vocal crowd. 

It was exhausting but felt extremely good. Once I caught my breath I saw and spoke to a few of the runners I’d been running alongside throughout the race. One of them told me he was running twenty miles today, the 10k run we’d just completed was just a short part of that. And he beat me. I decided not to talk to him any more!

This was a massive personal achievement that has been in the making since I finished the same race twelve months ago. I knew it was possible with the right levels of training, and have come out with (let’s face it) a new target to beat next year. And how do I feel about that?

Bring it on! 

Notes to myself (part 4)

The final part of a four-part series of my top ten training tips I’ve picked up this year. 

Part one can be found here. Part two here. Part three here.

Lesson 9: Workout/life balance

The balance of training and everything else in life is more important than anything. And the key word there is balance. Running is great for having a positive effect on mental health, but that can’t be at the expense of neglecting other areas of life. 

This year one of my friends got married after a two year covid induced delay to the proceedings. I went on his stag do and the wedding was a wonderful few days stay away. Both of these events created rich memories for me, but the training plan was completely shot for a while after both.

So the training plan has to reflect that. I’ve said my training focus is always around a specific race. The learning here is not to programme hard up to it, but put flexibility for things like this to happen. Accept that an overall two week period could be lost, so build that in. What does recovery look like? How do I rebuild after a break? Adaptability is the key.

Lesson 10: Write about it!

The worst part of running outside of running is washing your training gear. Running kit stinks! The best part of running outside of running has been writing about it. 

Community is so important and I count myself lucky to have a wonderful local community. Running communities, particularly free ones like Parkrun, are great institutions that couldn’t operate without the network of dedicated volunteers to help organise and mange them. This year I’ve also now taken  the opportunity to be part of an online community and I’ve enjoyed every minute of that engagement.

The process of writing is mentally stimulating and cathartic; the process of publishing is exciting: I generally schedule my posts and forget about them when the scheduled time passes and then scramble to do a last second final final final proof before it’s committed to the vast internet vault. I find that this approach injects a delightful adrenaline boost into the publishing cycle.

I’ve enjoyed reading other people’s experiences and some amazing efforts far beyond what I could ever do. I’ve offered my personal advice to the community and taken advice back, everything is about learning and sharing, and there’s something wonderful about that. 

To everyone who has given this blog their time and thought, I thank you. In the grand scheme of the world these musings are of minor importance, but your interaction with me has kept me going and given me positivity where I might previously have given up some time ago.  

Thanks again for reading. My next post will be Sunday and the day of the big race where we’ll find out how far I’ve really come on my training journey. Wish me luck!

Notes to myself (part 3)

Part three of a four-part series of my top ten training tips I’ve picked up this year. 

Part one can be found here. Part two here.

Lesson 6: Active recovery 

The least said about this the better. I’ve never done a recovery run – I’ve written about doing a recovery run, but if you’ve read the post we can all agree I still haven’t done one. 

This is a gap in my training. Perhaps it’s not a big gap, I don’t know. Maybe it’s an important part of training. At the moment I am not confident in running more than three times a week. This is all about avoiding injury through over-training. I should explore how active recovery can help me with this, both through increasing my training levels and building that confidence back up.

Lesson 7: Focus on the basics

Running form is vital for efficiency and the avoidance of injures. Running form is the first thing out of the window when the going gets tough. 

Mentally focussing on form isn’t easy, but is part of the basics to get right. Similar to breathing (lesson 2), we all need to breath, but do we breath correctly?

This year I’ve looked at foot strike pattern and ground reaction force, vertical oscillation, stride patterns, posture, and my overall running cycle and it has all helped me to focus on what I want to do. Every detail is part of the goal to beat my previous best time around a specific 10km course. Every detail is making me a better runner.

It’s also over-thinking things, and I’ve said I want to get back to the free-spirited running with music playing, tuning out to the world once the race is done. But let’s focus on that race first…! Details, details, details!

Lesson 8: Go long or go home

Long runs are a staple of training plans. They build up time on your feet and are a great marker of progress as watch the additional miles build up over the weeks. 

I have a psychological barrier around the maximum distance I’ll go. I mainly run 10km and half marathon races, so my training plans are in accordance. I’ve run long distances running up to a half marathon, but leading up to the 10km this month, I’ve only managed to run for an hour – getting up to around 12.5km.

It would be good to focus on longer incremental distances at a slower consistent pace, whilst using other runs to build up different parts of my training programme. I think my problem is that I get impatient with slower speeds, so this combines well with lesson 3 – be consistent before being fast. 

Not something I’ve managed this year, but something to consider as part of my training arsenal in the future.

Notes to myself (part 2)

Part two of a four-part series of my top ten training tips I’ve picked up this year. Part one can be found here.

Lesson 3: Be consistent before being fast

I’ve found pacing has played a big part in my training. This came about through trialing the Garmin coach on my watch and while the training plan didn’t work out for me for a number of reasons, the way effort was controlled through pace stuck with me.

The learning around pace is to set a target for a run and stick to that. Increment up slowly over the weeks, don’t try to go quickly quickly. I have a tendency to set out at a chosen pace, but then feel good on the day and go a lot faster, quickly wearing myself out. My advice to future me is if this happens, recognise how I feel, complete the run as planned, register how I feel at the end and amend the training plan accordingly. 

Stick to the plan and adjust based on reflection, not on a whim halfway round the park!  

Lesson 4: Cross training

Cross training is great to include in the training plan, but I found I was struggling to see how it was improving my running. My focus was on form and the different running patterns I was eager to progress. 

My bike was always promised a service but never got one when we had the perfect summer for regular bike rides. Fixing this up to a roadworthy condition should’ve been a no-brainer.

I started strength exercises early on in my training and would have liked to keep this up. I focussed on specific muscle areas, particularly in my legs and core. This is certainly beneficial to the overall training, but only through perseverance. 

Lesson 5: Combination runs

This is summarised in my connection perfection post; something completely new to me and ultimately something I wasn’t able to explore fully. If there’s one thing to take away from this year, it’s to be more liberal when designing a training plan. 

Never again should I mark off the runs in a week with such definite labels as ‘long run’, ‘tempo run’, ‘hills’, ‘strides’; from now on it’s all about the combo. A tempo will not be a tempo unless it is preceded by a hill repeat. A long run is no longer a long run without a fartlek section.  

Whatever the combinations, the goal is variety. Variety for better fitness. Variety for more enjoyment. 

Notes to myself (part 1)

As I come into the last week or so of training for my 10k race, it’s a good time to reflect on what I’ve learnt so far and how I’ve approached my training schedule.

It was pointed out to me recently (right here on this blog), that if I succeed in beating a twelve year old personal best time this year, I will also succeed in setting a new target to challenge a future version of me. So this post, and continued over the next few, is intended to document some lessons I’ve picked up so I can review again in the future. 

In short, these are notes to my future self, open to all. We can laugh at that future self right now, reading this with ambition of setting new records. You’re too old, find something else to do, you’re not beating this years’ time, ha ha ha!

A brief disclaimer here – I write this to document some things I’ve picked up this year in my training that may be of use to others too. I have only tested my approaches out on me, it might not be appropriate for you or fit with your personal training needs. However, I’m always happy to talk through my experience if it’s of any help to anyone.

In no particular order (except perhaps for number 10), my top ten training tips from 2022!

Lesson 1: The befores and afters 

I wrote about dynamic stretching a few weeks ago. Along with the steady build up of runs and drills before setting out on the actual run, I feel I’ve had a lot of success with my warm up routine this year.

At the end of every run I’ve done some static stretching and drunk a protein shake which I feel has helped my recovery. While I can’t quantify improvement these changes have made over previous years, I have felt confident in my ability to run and recover in good time, so recommend this approach for future years.

Lesson 2: The breath of life

I wrote about my struggle with breathing form and reasoned that a large percentage of what was stopping me going further, faster, harder, was a combination of willpower and bringing oxygen into my body. 

Both these things can be worked on. For breathing, I’ve been doing regular breathing exercises. Perhaps this could come under cross-training (spoiler alert: number 4 on the list!)? Not sure about that, but ensuring correct diaphragmatic breathing whilst cross-training would be the important thing to note. 

I have underestimated how to get more oxygen into myself throughout years of training and something I’ll need to consistently work on. The lack of oxygen seems to hit me a lot earlier on a run than the point my muscles give up on me. This is an area in need of further research, future me take note!

Connection perfection

I’ve written about the speed work I’ve been running as part of my recent training – this has been repetitions of around twenty seconds of strides/sprints, either on the flat or up the single local steep hill.

I’ve enjoyed this aspect of training and the incremental nature of it, slowly improving over time. I’ve tried not to push myself, both at the outset of the session (gradually building up to the right pace over a few initial reps), and through not overdoing the number of reps; my concern is the fear of injury through short burst intensive, explosive effort.

This week I ran a series of strides on the flat straight section of path by the river. As I neared my goal I had an idea: instead of pushing myself a few reps further, why not move on to the hilly bit and sprint a few times up there too?

A ten minute jog later I was at the foot of the hill and I raced up it a handful of times before heading home. It was a brilliant workout, I felt stretched further than I had before, testing my leg muscles in slightly different ways.

As I trotted back home, I felt incredibly clever to have put these two sessions together in such an effective way. Congratulations to my big brain! But really, was it all that clever? Surely it was staring me in the face all this time anyway, if anything I was slow to realise it. 

It wasn’t clever, it was just creative. 

There’s a famous Steve Jobs quote about creativity, he said:

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesise new things.

My training plan from the off was always to mix up the runs – long runs, speed work, hill climbs, tempo and goal pace runs. But always on different days, there was no room for cross-breeding any of these together. But training needs learning, it needs reflection, it needs to iterate towards a goal safely (to prevent injury) and reflectively (to avoid aggravating any oncoming injury).

And now I realise my plan lacks the creativity, adaptability, and learning that life needs. We are all creative people, and the connection between things is what we use to create. So let’s go, let’s explore these connections, put the prescriptive training plan in the blender and see what comes out. Big brains unite!