Monday, September 25, 2006

PB record

Though I doubt anyone will be interested, these are my current PB's that I can remember. Since I don't do that much road or track they are not neccessarily the best I'm capable of, and I have intentions of smashing some of them up pretty soon!

100m - 11.8 (EUAC freshers comp, meadowbank, Oct 2004)
800m - 2:15 (EUAC freshers comp, meadowbank, Oct 2004)
1609m - 4:30 (Sri Chinmoy 3x1 relay, meadows, July 2006)
3000m - 9:11* (Freshers Match, Kelvin Hall, Nov 2003)
- 9:03 in first 3000m of 5000PB
5000m track - 15:16 (Scottish Uni Champs, grangemouth, Apr 2006)
5km road/trail - 15:30 short? (Round the grounds, heriot watt, May 2006)
10km road - 33:04 hilly (Great Edinburgh Run, edinburgh, may 2006)
10mile road - 56:10 hilly and skiing previous day (KB10, Blackford, Feb2005) .
1/2 marathon - 75:43 (stranraer, mar 2005)

Week 3 - easy stuff

A significantly easier week this week, probably the last for a while, but still had all the main ingredients.

18th - Tour de tranent, evening run, short and hard. 26 mins/7km
19th - Intervals, 5x 2.5 on, 1.5 off. Some pain in my foot in the third rep so i switched from hard path to soft grass and it was fine.
20th - rest day
21st - Trotter training, hill reps 4x60s, 2 min rest, 2x90s, 4x60s. Quite an easy session, pushing hard to stay ahead of Ray Ward.
22nd - Hungover, managed to drag myself around 8km of east lothian countryside. But I didn't enjoy it. WHB is to blame.
23rd - Junior Home International. Ran the M18 course after it was all over. Some of the controls were still out. Rhodri posted a very good time of 47 mins for the 7.4 km course so I couldn't cruise round. In the end I had a good clean run, not sure about 1 route and I banana'ed the second long leg, but I'm happy with my 44 minutes. Map to follow later.
24th - 2xshort and fast. WC will be the first time I've raced twice in the same day for a while so today was a simulation of that. Run 1 was straight out of bed, into the pouring rain and puddles to do one of my old school XC routes, a rolling 3.4km of road, dirt tracks and grass. I think my 10:50 was slightly down on my PB, but only by 10s at most and not bad given the conditions. Run 2 ended up late in the evening, so rather than repeating the mornings (unlit) route, i just ran two laps of the block, which is a hilly 1.1km and took me 3:33, 3:35. Felt good for secodn time out, which is reassuring.

So all in all only around 4 hrs /45km this week, nothing to shout about and I'm sure it'll be my least of the season.

Week 2 - Now with maps

So Derek phoned me up and asked me to take Jamie's place at the World Cup finals. after taking the weekend to think about it I said yes. The World Cup Finals are going to be an immense week of tricky orienteering. See http://www.tero.fr for Thierry's training in the area and to see what we're up against!

Having been picked my training has carried on as usual. Three weeks notice is too short to make drastic changes to my training programme especially when coming back from a short break. So this is what I did in Week 2 of my Autumn Training:

11th Sept - 46 mins, 11kms. A nice run on the beach



12th - Killer intervals

Here I did a very tough, sharp session. I started by running hard on the flat for 1:15ish, then hit "the pyramid", an old coal bing which was 30s of very tough steep uphill. I've not felt as short of breath as i did at the top for a very long time!
13th - 61 mins, 14.6km. Exploring new paths, this was a nice route (apart from running through tranent at the end)



14 th - Trotter training - Km's North Of Bog. Absolutely tipping it down with rain which made the training a bit of a washout, as it was more about staying on your feet than running fast. Still good though - changed to paarlauf so no one was standing around.

15 th Gullane to Tranent road run. Another point to point run, this time 64mins/15km (ish - not measured). Didn't feel great due to not drinking much all day, then running straight into the sun with no sunglasses! Still quicker than i expected (sure its taken 80 in the past)

16th - 30 min easy jog with Louise. A rest day for me.


17th - The Sunday Long Run - one of the most important runs of my training week, this was my first SLR for a couple of months. *Only* 26km in 109 mins, this will be built up to 32km+ and 150+

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Autumn training week #1

After a couple of weeks "down time" after World unis, where I just ran where and when I wanted rather than adhereing to a plan, the autumn training campaign started on 3rd sept with a hungover run round Richmond Park in London. The target was to get in shape for the start of the XC season in mid-October, and possibly try to put in a fast 1/2 marathon as well - Jedburgh on 28th October the ideal candidate. Something was about to change that plan...

4th - 68mins easy along banks of Thames with WHB
5th - 60 in total, intervals 3x3mins round grounds of Chiswick house
6th - 35 mins, 8km from home
7th - 6th stage of trotter relay, Cramond Brig to Dalmeny Station, 6km, 22mins.
8th - 9th stage of trotter relay, Crossgates to Lochore, 10km?, 40 mins. Really nice running through Lochore meadows.
9th - Orienteering 11-person relay, 4.8km, 28mins. Orienteering badly. Well done EUOC!
- Long run, from Achlean to Aviemore YH. 85 in total, prob 78 running, 18km. Awesome
10th- Orienteering, SOL Loch Vaa. Very slow, orienteering fluently.

The trotter relay is an annual event which involves carrying a real pigs trotter between two point of interest. This year it was between the birthplaces of Auld Al and Daft Bob in Newtongrange and Ballater, in honour of their 60th birthdays. A great little road trip and much beer was drunk on the way.

The long run after the 11-man was great fun. I love doing straight line, point-to-point runs where there can be no cutting short! And this was a real treat, running through Inshriach and Rothiemurchus on a beautiful afternoon. Undoubtedly it had an effect on my shape the next day but thats OK, its all steps on the ladder to greater things!

Monday, September 18, 2006

Post #1



Training and racing, in forests and towns, fields, hills, roads and occasionally tracks, that's what I do. Feel free to visit this blog and see what I've been up to, I'll be posting weekly updates on my training diary as well as reports on races I've run and plans as well as anything else I fancy!