Ironman Mark

Work has been interesting and so training has suffered a bit, but not too much.

Swimming on Tuesday was good in that I swam with others and just followed on behind two people who were going quite quick.  I worked hard but it was easy, if that makes sense.  I need to do more of that.

I went outside on the bike!  Woohoo!  Riding back from work yesterday was quite hard.  I left just after 7pm, tired, in the dark, in the rain, with a moderate head wind.  For some reason my front headlight was on the powersave setting and so I couldn’t see too far ahead, which meant I had to go slower on the fast bits.  I soon spotted it and fixed it but it is still quite demoralising.  It took me 9s less than 100 minutes to get home – ridiculously slow!  On the way to work though, I did get to 69.8kph (around 43 mph).

Running is going well.  I missed one run because of my legs ached a bit too much after the Bramley run.  Actually, the front of the bottom of my heel hurt – which it did after the Stonehenge Stomp.  I think it is the shoes I wore and so I am not going to be using the same ones again for long runs.   I did a 50 minute run in the rain on Wednesday and this morning I did 2:57.  I went with Ed and really enjoyed it.  With climbing over stiles, slippery shoes (should have worn my x-talons), waterlogged fields and paths and quite a few hills.  Some of the route on the way back was along the South Downs Way.  It’s apparently 103 miles from Winchester to Eastbourne.  Would be interesting to run it one day (well, probably a day and a half!).

Run – Ed 26 Feb 2011

I started near the front and ran the first mile quite quickly as it was mostly downhill.  I had set a “virtual partner” on my Garmin and was 75m ahead at the mile marker.  By the second mile marker I was 95m ahead, at the third 115m ahead.  I was doing well.  At one stage it got to 135m ahead and then the wheels fell off.  Not literally – it is a running races.  And they didn’t really fall off, I just started seeing my advantage disappearing.  At one stage I think I “lost” 50m going up a hill around mile 5.   Just before this, I noticed the start of a stitch but it soon disappeared.  Just after this, I thought I was going to see my breakfast disappear too – or more accurately re-appear.

The second half saw my virtual partner catch me and then overtake me.  And it wasn’t just virtual people, there was a slow but steady stream of people overtaking me too.  I hadn’t overtaken anyone since about mile 2.  After a while, it was about 80m ahead of me which translates to about 20 seconds or so.  Or at least that is what my mental maths told me.  I didn’t look at the pace on the gps, just the metres.

I knew I had done 1:12 in 2007 and that I had got quicker since so I thought I would get there with about 1:10:30 or so.  Still quicker, but I was disappointed.  I’d obviously lost fitness over the last two years but I didn’t think that I’d be only 2 mins quicker though.

I went past the half mile to go marker and was going well but at around 600m to go I went for it.  I overtook lots of people, perhaps 10 or so, in the next 450m or so.  Then I saw the clock at the finish line say “1:07″.  I went harder and even overtook someone in the finishing chute to come in at around 1:07:20-something.

So what went wrong with my maths?  Why was I three minutes quicker than I thought?   When I set my “virtual partner” I had planned to enter “1:10″ but thinking about 7 min per mile I put in 1:07 instead.

So, how does that compare with a 1:30-something half-marathon two years ago (or in other words, what does it mean for the Reading half-marathon in four weeks time)?  Well, 1:07:27 gives a VDOT of 51.  That equates to a half-marathon time of 1:30:02 – around 20 seconds quicker than what I did two years ago.  Obviously, the course is different in that Reading’s hills are a bit longer but it’s not a huge difference though.  With more practice over the next month, I reckon I have a good chance of getting below 1:30.  Now that would be nice!

Edited: race results are now available.  I did it in 1:07:29 and came 46th out of 473 finishers – inside the top 10% – I am chuffed

I have entered the Bramley 10 mile run again.  It’s been a while since I did it but I thought it would give me an idea of what pace to run at for the Reading Half-Marathon.  It’s 10 miles, on road, on a quiet course that’s not particularly hilly.

In 2007, it looks like I did it in 1:12:34.  If I was as fit as I was two years ago, I should be aiming to do it in around 1:08 or so.  I think 1:10 would be a good target this year though.

I admitted to myself a month or so ago that I am not doing very well at training for Lanza.  There’s been a lot of snow, a lot of freezing mornings and work has been busy too.  Volume is down a lot.  Intensity is down even more.

A lot of it is the mental game though.  I had been doing quite well getting on the wattbike but very few of the sessions have been intense.  So I was going to have a go at doing a hard session to see how much power I could put out.  I didn’t do it.  And I didn’t get on the bike at all this week.  Not good.  Not good at all.

Swimming is also going wrong.  I’ve probably done only four  short swims so far in February.  This is because I am finding it difficult to get out of bed in the mornings!

Running is going ok though.  I am not sure yet how I am doing compared with a couple of years ago.  I don’t think I am as good but I am probably not a million miles away.