The Annual Running thread – beginners/ultras/whatever

After managing to spanner myself on the bike at the weekend I didn’t much fancy riding today so went out for a run instead.

Managed 3.3 miles which is the farthest I’ve ran and with my slight detour after getting lost on the way I ended up going up and down a local hill, which is only a small one as hills go, and looking at Strava I managed a top 60 place out of 300+ runners 🙂

Best of all was that I really enjoyed it. I know that it’s early days but I reckon that if I keep going with the baby steps and not overdoing it I’ll be ready for my first Parkrun soon.

QECP sprint sessions on Sat lunchtime, then QECP Portsmouth Joggers “Chilly Hilly” on Sun, it’s only 10k so me and a couple of others did two laps.

Feeling a bit knackered today 🙂

Didn’t do my parkrun on Saturday so went out for a hilly (ish) 5.3km last night. Been climbing railway cuttings all day and my legs feel like lead :(. Hopeful yoga class tonight will loosen me up for a decent run tomorrow. Think I need to stretch out and push up to 6/7 km once a week now.

Woke up at 4 this morning with a sore throat, tossed and turned til 5, bugger it, only 11.5km to do to complete my January 100 miler, so went out and did it. I’m not a morning runner, even less so with a cold, but it’s done now, way way more than ive ever contemplated running in a month, Mrs Nobeer did 75 miles, ditto her, really proud of her!.

February 100 starts in 2 days mind….. 😊

Did a rub from Yeadon up to Otley Chevin yesterday. Might as well make the most of being somewhere not flat for a change!

Rachel

That’s a long rub!

So I’ve signed up for a half marathon in the middle of march which will be my first and gives me 6 weeks to get sorted.  I’m currently running 3/4 times a week; 5k’s and a 10k which last week I snuck upto 12 and this week will aim for 14 for the bigger run and increase one of the smaller ones by 1.5.

Plan is next week do 2 x 6.5, 1 x 5 and 1 x 14

Week 3 3 x 6.5, 1 x 16

Week 4 3 x 6.5, 1 x 16

Week 5 3 x 6.5, 1 x 18

Week 6 3 x 5 and then race day.

How does that look to people?

A lot, I’d cut out one of the 6.5’s and only do 2 a week.

Try and stay injury free and you should be fine.

Is this road running?

Yes, its a road run.

So if I go with 2 x 6.5’s and then a bigger one increasing in distance every two weeks should be ok.

Plan is to have two yoga sessions each week too.

I can get separate apps, but is there an app that can do a 0-100 sit ups and press ups and…?

@stayhigh – did my second PiYo session last night, I’m sooooo inflexible, and I can feel it works bits of me that haven’t worked out that way in years…

The one odd moment was doing raised hip thrusts and holds. I just wanted to shout ‘schwiiiing’

@matt I know what you mean, mine was done with all the grace of a baby tank lol

For sit ups ave a look HERE.  A few years ago I combined most of them into the basis of a home workout routine.

So can’t seem to edit post for whatever reason?

FWIW I added side bends and planks into the mix after every two different exercises.

I never made it to 100 press ups but it evolved into a solid 30-45 minute routine.  Should have kept it up really lol

I reckon thats fine, I’m more concerned you’ll over do it on the run upto it.. (but i don’t know you’re ability nor age/motivation, you may be fine on that schedule because you put it together so you’ll know how your body reacts and such)

Watch for the hips and lower back, if they start hurting lay off a bit more and keep a bit in reserve then just run through the race on the day.. then recover well..

Enjoy it, let us know how you get on.

Need to run again, can’t get motivated…

So far this year I have run 0km

By 31st Jan i’d clocked 60km in 2017….

Bah! Just can’t get my head into it..

@stayhigh – what are you doing with your 6.5K runs? The distance is fine, but just heading out for a 6.5K run 3 times a week is not the best way to spend your time… I’d be looking at, say, a gentle 5K run on Monday to loosen up after the weekend, then do a decent interval session on Wednesday (eg 2K warm up / 3x2000m race pace / 2K cool down), then a 5K tempo run on Friday. Same overall distance, but mix it up a bit with a bit of speedwork.

After flu a couple of weeks ago resulting in a complete week off, last weeks running was terrible, frequent horrific coughing fits and generally going slowly despite decent effort levels.

Last night I did a 1 minute hard, 2 minute easy session on the way home from work and felt like form was returning 🙂

Need some decent fitness to justify the Vaporfly 4% shoes I’ve just spent silly amounts of money on 😀

Cheers, Rich

This time last year I started running again.
Slowly but surely I managed 2,3k then in mid February started going to parkrun most weeks.
Yesterday I passed the 209k mark for January and so far have run 27 days in the month including 2 run of 18k.
Quite happy with that.

Said I wouldn’t run last night but ended up going for a 4km loop up over my local hill. Croham Hurst for the south Londoners. So much more fun running on trails but the climb up was painful. Long long way to go I think! Think to tonight’s going to involve yoga and a foam roller which I’m dreading.

stayhigh, I wouldn’t suggest cutting down on that, it looks pretty reasonable to me. I agree with mogrim about mixing up the speeds in the 3 shorter runs (and/or maybe do a 5km threshold piece in the middle of the long run – if you have local parkrun you can jog to/from this is a popular option). Don’t overdo the speed work though, most of the total distance should be steady running for sure.

Late joiner to this thread. Picking running mileage back up after a poor year last year (badly sleeping baby kills motivation). I’m signed up the the Southampton half in April. Really, really want to get under 1.30 this year (managed 1.32.40 last year) however suspect that will more realistically be a target for the New Forest half after the summer.

Currently trying to get three runs a week in;

1 long run (9 miles Sunday just gone) @ 9mm pace. Will increase the distance on this one till moving for 1.30 – 2 hours

Park run + short warmup/down there and back. Using this as a tempo run.

One lunch run, the one I’m just back from managed 6.7m in the available time. Going to try an sneak this out to 7m and then do warmup @ 8mm, fast middle <7mm, and then warm down.

58.7 miles this month which I’m quite happy with.

After borking my knee at the county cx champs, I struggled to walk up stairs. A load of people at my running club recommended a local sports therapist (the wife of a club member) – she had a good look at my knee/stance/movement – did some kind of mad painful massage and got me walking pain free straight away. I tried some gentle running a couple of days later but could still feel the pain in my knee (although much, much less severe). I gave her a call to ask her advice, saw her again – more knee massage (something technical was stuck to something else medical sounding!), she freed my IT band (I’m glad I didn’t know in advance how much THAT was going to hurt) – and a couple of days later I’m running again – there’s some slight discomfort – but it;s not getting worse – and she’s banned me from running faster than 8:30s until there is no discomfort. So it’s not pretty, it’s not very fast; but it IS running – finally…

It’s really great to hear folks getting back into it or starting out, great thread 💥

Well, made it to 70k for January. I’m having a bit of a bromance with a guy down the road so we’ve got a regular thing of Tuesdays and Thursdays up and out at 0515 for 45ish minute interval sessions which this week have become bit more intense – not so much recovery time walking. Then we do our own thing at weekends. Normally Parkrun for me – he does longer distances. The interval runs have been awesome though – absolutely love them and it’s great to be able to go out and do them early in the morning with somebody else. Funny how we’re full of chat at the beginning and have nothing to say for the last ten minutes or so. 😀

Swore I wasn’t going to do anything “long” this year but definitely feeling the call of 10ks and once you start doing those…

Am managing to stay under 25 mins for Ashton Court Parkrun which is pretty much run up 35ish flights of stairs over 2.5k then turn around and run back down. Am managing Km1 but Km2 bollixes up my time – it’s taking 6 flipping minutes. Guess I need to do some more hill-work. My AC pb was roundabout 23 mins so I have a way to go.

Running is awesome.

No place in the Jura fell race for me. Built a winter training and seasons worth of racing round it and no place. Gutted.

I ran for 2 months in the park but the results did not improve much

How do I add my runs to the Strava group?

managed 100k for the month, need to do at least 50% more this month, and 100% more in March…

204k for the month for me. I’m going to try to maintain that for February. Can anyone recommend any decent trail/fell events up to half mara distance? I’m in Manchester, so anything a couple of hours from here.

@Andyhilton – Our club listing of good/recommended races within about a 50 mile radius of Helsby, West of you: https://helsbyrunningclub.wordpress.com/2018-event-listing/google-calendars/
fells in brown(!)

FRA is the list for fell: http://fellrunner.org.uk/races.php

Try also http://www.race-calendar.com/ and http://ukresults.net/2018cal.html

“duckman

Member
How do I add my runs to the Strava group?”
Just join the group – then your public runs are added. Not runs that are private.

I went out for a test run last night to see if the interval sessions I have been doing and other longer runs are helping  my sub 20min 5k target.

Put in a nice warm up and pressed lap on the Garmin to start the laps as I got to the start of a long flat stretch of pavement along the local seafront. I was over the moon when the first mile came in at 6.35min mile and didn’t feel that tough, 2nd mile much of the same for the first half, in my mind I was thinking if I can do another 6.35 I know I could empty the tank for the last 1.1 and sneak under 20mins here. Then bang, turned around at the end of the seafront and a 20MPH (weather app given speed) headwind slowed me down to 7min miles. Dug in managing to save the average as 6.50min mile and  then hit the abort button and trundled home battling the wind.

For some reason the joy of thinking I could do it, to then be so cruelly stolen from me really bummed me out for an hour or so afterwards! Now I’ve slept on it I feel fine and manged to chuck in some strong intervals in my lunch break today on the treadmill.

But running, what a cruel mistress!

Brilliant oikeith, good pace that! That’s now my target for this year, a sub 20 too, I’d love to do a sub 40 10k but that’ll be tough for me. I’m at 22.56 now, so a fair way to go…

On another point, anyone noticed if the running fitness is noticeable on the bike? I’ve hardly ridden at all for the last 3 months, only a couple of local socials with my wife, but I’m hoping that when I get the mojo back (to be fair, it’s the first time I’ve ever lost it in 15 years of MTBing) between the amount of running I’ve done, and the weight loss too, I should be lots quicker on the bike. Not just climbing, but I reckon losing a couple of stone should help with the steep slippy stuff too.

No question that running can keep you pretty fit for cycling. Similarly cycling works as a useful alternative to running if that’s the way round you want to think about it. I tend to run more over the winter and cycle more over the summer and find the switch-over to be pretty straightforward. But you won’t be a good cyclist on running alone, and you won’t be a good runner from just cycling.

Running has definitely helped my cycling, no question at all. I can go harder for longer, feel fitter and my climbing particularly has really improved.

I’m not sure it translates so well the other way given i was cycling fit before I started running and it took my a good amount of time to get any kind of running form.

Brilliant oikeith, good pace that! That’s now my target for this year, a sub 20 too, I’d love to do a sub 40 10k but that’ll be tough for me. I’m at 22.56 now, so a fair way to go

Thanks! I think the intervals have really helped run faster for longer with less effort, give em a go if you’re not and see if it helps you.

@stever – Thankyou

Today’s journey into running was titled ‘The Sloan Regime’, in honour of a much missed colleague who is GB Masters Triathlete, who left us all a note on the wall with some interval training on when she left…

Oh. My. Word. that is hard work.

Jog 1km to warm up, 150m sprints flat out, followed by walking at pace back to start and go again…eight times. EIGHT people. Jog 1km back to warm down.

I have already messaged Ms Sloan to say what I think of her ‘workout’….

When you’re really pushed for time, try the tabata protocol – 20 sec sprint and 10 sec rest (turnaround), 8 times. 4 mins and you’re done. In more ways than one!

“The Sloan Regime” calls for that in a few weeks…

R4 More or Less, on now…….. which is the hardest parkrun in the UK