The Annual Running thread – beginners/ultras/whatever

Anyone else doing the 3 Peaks Fell Race next Saturday?

An old training buddy of mine had 10 yrs off then won his age group in his parkrun yesterday with 20:38. He is 65!

Might be watching the 3P.  Did it last year, I’ll probably wait until I’ve forgotten that before doing it again 🙂

Looks like a tough day for the london marathoners…hope the thread’s participants survived the heat ok. Can’t say I’m very tempted though maybe it’s worth doing once.

I’ve been reading Vassos Alexander’s running (marathon to ultra marathon stuff) and they’re quite realistic and very humbling..

(yea, it’s him off R2 sports news)

I am delighted to report that I achieved my sub 2:30 goal yesterday 🙂

It would appear that a lot of runners suffered in the slightly warmer than expected conditions, but clearly my 5 years of heat acclimatisation in India was of benefit, as I thought it was lovely!  I was a bit faster than planned, having felt good and continuing to push the pace beyond the half-way point where I had anticipated slowing a little, with an official finish time of 2:27:56.

Pre-race expectation was to finish around 50th of the non-elites, but a combination of being a bit quicker, and a lot of other folk being considerably slower, I was actually 15th!  31st if you include the elites, and 11th Brit.  Best scalp was probably Guye Adola, race number 4 and one of the favourites, he was going backwards at a rate of knots when I passed him around the Tower of London.

Feeling remarkably fresh today, just a couple of nasty toenails to show for my endeavours.  Not sure how much effect the magic shoes were, but they seemed to do the job!

Cheers, Rich

Fantastic work TF (Rich) – that is a cracking time and even better given how warm it was – I know you said you enjoyed the conditions but still, it’s not the norm for this country so well done. It must have been pretty lonely running around on your own!

👍👍👍👍👍🤯

Well done all in the Ldn Marathon

Well done Rich, excellent run !

I’m running Y3P on Sat, what time you aiming for Spin.  I have done 3:30 before so hoping to go under this time.

Wow, TF……impressive!  When you say ‘official time’, do they know exactly when you cross the start line?

You iz a proper runner! 🙂

Official, ie not just off my watch, and that’s chip time, there is a timing mat registering when you cross the start and finish lines, plus all the intermediate splits.

I’m running Y3P on Sat, what time you aiming for Spin.

I was 3:55 ish last year but I had a real howler so hoping for something closer to 3:45.  It’s a bit too ‘runny’ for my skill set!

Yeah, saw a good interview with Vic Wilkinson on youtube and she re-enforced how much road training you need to do.  TBH I have done quite a lot of fast road work in prep as long as big days in the lakes/long runs on local moors

Apart from two sections (the climb up Whernside and the last bit of the climb up Ingleborough) the Y3P is much more like a cross country race than a fell race. In dry years some have been known to run it in road shoes.

My fastest time was 4:25 but it was never something I trained for as a target, just ran it a couple of times.

I ran around QECP this lunchtime if that compares 🤣🤣🤣🤯

So, having kind of hit a wall and not wanting to sicken myself off with ‘just running’ running hill sprints/intervals has piqued my interest. Got a nice piece of local trail that’s pretty steep and around 100m long, just sprint that x however many times and recover down it?…

Yeah pretty much, that’s how I do it.

Hill reps? Where’s the evil cackling emoji when you need it?

Go for a steady warm up for 15mins or so. Then blast up the incline as best you can. Repeat for a total of four times gently jogging back down as your recovery then just go for a five min jog on the flat and repeat the efforts. Do as many sets as you can then a warm down jog.

Don’t do more than one session of these a week, if you do them properly, i.e. you are at the limit on each one, then you need to let your body recover fully before the next session. I found it took about six weeks for things to kick in then all of a sudden I was able to run up climbs I’d had to walk before and the times on the run to the top of our local hill (about 6 miles) and back dropped from 64mins when I started to under 50 (just – something like 49:35 from memory).

Well worth doing IMO.

Sounds great, thankinya. 😃

You lot (and friends on Strava) have inspired me.. just signed up for my first ever trail race in 4 weeks time.

Cool, what event ? And have you done any training 😉

I was quite surprised to read this piece about Sophie Raworth, yes the news presenter, doing the Marathon des Sables.

Managed my first 10k this morning.

Still not a huge amount compared to many here but I’m getting there slowly and really starting to enjoy the running. I think I might have a look about and see if there’s any 10k trail races coming up nearby in the next couple of months to have a go at.

Fortunately I have already been training!

Signed up to the 18km of this : https://www.festatrail.com/ over 800m of ascent, and a bit of Strava stalking suggests that people with my kind of capacities take around 2h30, which seems a long time.

That looks ace !

Don’t think I’d be able to climb that high for that long, but it must be pretty awesome when you get a set of views..

<div class=”bbp-reply-author”>notmyrealname</div>
<div class=”bbp-reply-author”>Managed my first 10k this morning.</div>

Nice one!

I am still not doing that – every time I do a 7-8km or so, I seem to get a niggle in leg or foot and then not run for three or more days

It feels that more regular, shorter runs seem to work for me. Maybe I need to slow down on the longer runs more…

Official, ie not just off my watch, and that’s chip time, there is a timing mat registering when you cross the start and finish lines, plus all the intermediate splits.

I thought official time is from the pistol going off to you crossing the line – anything else is just informative (and to make sure you haven’t been cutting corners…)

Anyway I did 40k up in the local mountains, lots of walking as well as running, all good training for the upcoming events. And it wasn’t raining which makes a change 🙂

That’s a fantastic effort turbo, many congratulations. A lot of runners of all standards came badly unstuck in the conditions on sunday. I was following a bunch of people from a running forum and I don’t think a single one came in within 3 mins of their target time, most were 10-30 mins down.

I’ll be ordering the magic shoes immediately – don’t think I’ll be running any 2:30 marathons in them though 🙂

Just looking on run Britain and Turboferret has the 23rd best Marathon time in the UK this year! Fabulous effort….

We are not worthy 🙂

Gun time is really for the race, so when the gun goes off the race begins.

However, when you have 40000 people in the race the time to cover the race distance is done by the chips when you cross the start and finish line.  This is usually the time that PBs etc are based on. the race result however would go on the gun time.

You could feasibly run the race distance in a time less than someone who ‘finishes’ in front of you in the ‘race’.

Nice one Turbo and all the others that ran. Can’t have been easy conditions.

Bikebuoy – Has Vassos’ book got any mention of his attempt at The Dragons Back last year ?

That really is an impressive effort, turbo indeed!

I’ve not done the London Marathon but have done the GNR a few times – the elite women start a little before the main race and the elite men are on the front line with a small gap back to the rest of us. As @alanf says the elite men’s time starts from the gun/off/go! The rest of the field have their times logged by the timing chips.

I’m reading “Don’t stop me now” and on page 72.. no mention yet, he’s chatting on about his firs triathlon in Nottingham..

I know there are plenty of Inov8 fans here. Sportspursuit have a good few models in their clearance sale at the moment. No idea what vfm they are as I’m unfamiliar with prices normally. But there might be something there for someone who needs a new pair.

You’ll have to let me know if he writes about it later in the book. I would be interested to read his thoughts on it.

@marcus – don’t know if you’ve seen it but the 2012 film is online now – http://www.berghausdragonsbackrace.com/media/films/2012-film-released/

@turboferret – brilliant run, well done

My weekend was a triumph of ‘winging it’ – local Clwydian 20 race – on hills I know fairly well above Ruthin. Only decided to enter the day before and haven’t done any longer runs this year. Paced it ok kept forcing the food in and snuck a Top 10 – well pleased with that. Most people did the 10 miler so top 10 isn’t as great as it sounds but heck, I’m taking it. Free beer in the pub afterwards. Winner!

Well, that was a very odd lunch run. 5k, reasonable pace (7:30min/mile), warm weather, run felt hard without being really hard…and when I uploaded the data by HR didn’t go above 126bpm and averaged 117bpm. In context, Manchester marathon was a 166bpm average, a fast 5k is normally well into the 170’s. So, am I about to be ill? Am I tired? Or was I just not working hard enough?

Temps similar?

Anxiety or excitement stress?

Too much caffeine?

Plenty of reasons for/against.. that’s one reason I don’t log all my runs.

Temps similar? Yes, very. Manchester was a touch warmer but we’re talking 1 degree.

Anxiety or excitement stress? Normal. Normal day at work and I wasn’t overly worried about the marathon. I guess that could be a factor as even if I didn’t feel it, I should have been nervous for the marathon.

Too much caffeine? Nope, 1 coffee before each

Plenty of reasons for/against.. that’s one reason I don’t log all my runs. Fair, but I guess the comparison is why I do log everything.

Dunno how good your HRM is but when mine looks odd I usually just blame the technology. Sometimes it doesn’t pick up my pulse correctly.