learning from the past

one of the mistakes i think i made last year was trying to tackle 1500 meter races stright away off winter training. the consequence of this was my leags very quickly had to get used to running at speeds that were way faster than what i was used to and i think that was a major contributory factor to the fact that the second half of the summer wasn't as good as the first. my legs were just too badly beaten up. this year the plan is to tackle more 3000 meter races before moving on to the shorter stuff and so far so good. last night while the 800 meter runners were doing a session of 500, 400, 300 x 2 off longish recoveries the 1500 and 3000 meter runners were doing a session of 800 short recovery 400, 3 times for the 1500 people and 4 times for the 3000 meter people, which amounted to a hardcore of me and a n other. it will be even more lonely on thursday as the students will be resting up ready for the busa championships over the bank holiday weekend. i on the other hand will be watching bristol city v preston north end on the sunday, probably looking at cars on the friday and i will probably watch about 2 dozen races and participate in one on the monday, starting with the newest race on the calendar, the run bristol 10k, which i would of been doing my self had it not been for the clash, and a series of 800m 1500m and 3000m races at millfield as well as a swimming gala which is usually entertaining. plus there is the possibility of a game of tennis or golf on saturday so that will be a weekned full of sporting action!

slow start at bath

i ran a pb at bath. 10.21 for 3000. really though that is simply not good enough and before anyone starts giving me that shite about "ooh but its a personal best though" i don't care. i can don much better than that and i am not going to make excuses for bad rubbish. the conditions themselves were hard work, very hot and very windy. at bath university, which is not a favourite track of mine in the first instance it only takes a small amount of wind to play havoc with race times as it is over 100 meters above sea level and is consequently very exposed to the elements. track race number 2 is at millfield on monday evening, where i will again be running a 3000. this time though rather than being on my own i will be in a paced race against people of a simialr ability. millfield is one of only two tracks where i can ever seem to run well, the other one being exeter, so it will be interesting ot see whether or not it amkes any difference. mind you on saturday the times were slow all round. the race was won by julian emery of clevedon, someone i would expect to beat 9 minutes fairly convincingly, but he only ran 9:15 in similar circumstances to my self eg he was on his own in front for most of the race after martin flook dropped out. no one else broke 10 minutes, the 2nd place guy ran 10:17, i was third, the fourth place guy ran 10:31 and there was a young female who ran 11 minutes some thing.

i spent most of the rest of the evening feeling very tired hungry and thinking why do i bother with this to myself, before as i usually do when i'm thinking this, i realised that without the running there would be a huge void in my life that would need to be filled somehow and quite honestly i don't know how i would fill it. there will be two more training sessions between now and monday, both of them on the track. there is a 5k at shortwood but at this stage of the season, training should not be sacrificed for racing and i wouldn't expect to run a fast time at shortwood as it isn't the quickest course around. its also quite important that i get my self used to running ont track again so my calfs don't get injured when i start oputting my spikes on on monday. saturdays race was done in my much heavier road shoes. right now i'm going to have another look at cars on some of the websites. cheerio for now

i've come on here just to say one thing today...

after about a year of e=searching, i have found a copy of american pie-the greatest hits cd album, in waitrose of all places after about a year trying to find it. this was an album that was originally brought for me several years ago, on tape that has been lost in the midsts of time, by martin greenwood and jon waymont. shortly i will be going home to have lunch followed by a trip to bath for the first race of the track season this afternoon, interspersed hopefully by a bristol city win over sheffield united and hull city and stoke both losing to keep our faint automatic promotion hopes alive for another week at least.

test results

having put myelsf through half an hour of discomfort yesterdayon a treadmill i have learned the following. firstly that my vo2 max has improved from 57.89 to 59.something, i have also made considerable improvement with my lactate threshold, in that my blood lactate levels were lower at every level of intensity, from the slowest pace right to the quickest. this is pleasing when you consider that i did a minute longer on the aerobic section of the test (so 19 minutes of running in total as opposed to 18) and i did 7:30 on the anaerobic section which is 30 seconds more. so hopefully, come the summer this will mean that i am more durable and faster as well. the lactate results were especially pleasing when you consider that i haven't done any top end speed work at all yet, so clearly i am doing some thing right. so in theory my current for should translate as follows, according to the information i have found on the serpentine running club website (their website's the best for that sort of thing) 1500 4:39, 3000 9:59 5000 17:13. i'm running a 3k tomorrow at bath university so it will be interesting to see how accurately those predictions translate to the track. it will also be good to guage the early season form of some of the other competitors. going to the sports department at bath university can some times be like a whos who of british sport. for example yesterday i saw craig pickering (fastest white man in history) duncan goodhew the former swimmer now coach. in addition their famous alumni include colin jackson and jason gardner mbe two former world champions on the track-and that just some of the athletics bods!

the other race going on tomorrow is the national road relay championships at sutton park in birmingham, but i wont be there as the club have decided to enter only one team this year despite qualifying two at the midlands. it was disappointing to hear of the withdrawl of rob whalley due to a familly wedding-he declared his availability for the wedding after someone sent an email round with the wrong dates on, so with that our chance of a medal could have gone but one of the great things about the twelve stage is that you never know how the other teams are getting on til they turn up as well

why i hate sitting around doing nothing

i hate sitting around doing nothing because it feels so unnatural to me. i am an outdoor active person by nature, so therefore the days before treadmill tests can be quite, well boring as you're supposed to do nothing as it may affect the results of the test. i may go for a run around weston bigwood tonight only a jog but enough to keep my legs ticking over. i wont sleep very well if i don't you see.

talking about unatural forms of running, the treadmill test it self is slightly odd itself for a number of reasons. for a start you have to wear a head brace which in turn holds a tube in your mouth which is connected to a computer. you also have to wear a nose clip, so that the machine can collate all the oxygen that you breathe. for the first section of the test you have to start off at slow speeds, and every three minutes they will take your heart rate and a blood sample to measure your blood lactate levels. after you have completed, six phases of this you then with a thirty second break between the intervals, for them to do the samples. at the end of each phase of this the treadmill speed goes up by 1 km/h, so it gets progressively more challenging. at the end of this section of the test, you have a ten minute break ready for the piece de rennaisance-the anaerobic section of the test. starting at a slightly lower speed than you finished the first section of the test, the incline of the treadmill rises by 1% every minute, until you can take no more. sound easy? well it is at first, but it gets VERY hard VERY quickly.

on a different subject, after last nights result bristol city's play off ambitions are still in the balance after wolves 3-0 thrashing of the scum last night. one more win will do it for us but the way we are playing at the minute. on the other hand automatic promotion is still a possibitlity but with the combination of results it would require, it is now highly unlikely. it would need hull and stoke both to lose their remaining two games and us to win both of ours. but looking back to the start of the season, we were freshly promoted and the over whelming majority of fans would have taken any thing outside of the bottom 3 after 8 long years in division 1. its just a shame that our first real bad run of the season has come at such a crucial phase, but we have proved a lot of people wrong and will hopefully do the same again next year

a great weekend down in brighton

it was good to get away from everything for a weekend away in brighton this weekend and for this i must firstly give a shout to jon and scott for hosting me and martin g for a very relaxing weekend. not sure when the next time i'll be down is but i'll hope to be down in the summer some time. but really i have to visit scotland some time as ewan and kelli want me to come and visit their new addition to the world, isaac, who was born at 6:47 on the 14th of april, so massive congratulations to them and i'm sure they will both prove to be fantastic parents...

on another non running subject i have decided to do the pass plus course in the old motor which should help to massively reduce my insurance premiums. having seen some of the prices that people are quoting on the internet the extra £150 seems like a worthwhile investment. even if i don't get that much money back in the first year, it gives you a lot more confidence for things like motorway driving and country driving etc

running wise these are the plans for the summer-1500-sub 4:30, 3000, sub 9:30 5000, sub 17:00. i would also like to try abd establish more of a profile locally as we get towards the cross country season and maybe get closer to winning a county vest, which is my long term aim. but with andrew hennesey, james thie, rob whalley, ben tickner, frank tickner, ben noad, craig peters jon wills all ahead of me in the avon and somerset pecking order and established international athletes i think i may need to move else where to get one!

the winter is over

and the summer is now upon us-or so it seems. my period of winter training is now officially over and the first race of the season will quite probably be a 3000m track race at bath university on the 26th. wouldn't it be fantastically good to open up with a pb? the aim has got to be to break 10 minutes. it feels like i'm taking a wild stab in the dark as it is sooo long since i raced a 3000m-nearly 2 years i do believe. there is the small matter of a lactate threshold/vo2 max test to complete 2 days before the race but i am hoping to get that brought forward so i have enough time to recover. at this stage of the season, provided i don't get selected for the national road relays on the same day instead, i will probably train on the thursday evening as well, but maybe not do the full session. we're doing horfield common hills tonight on the grass. a session that involves doing lots of short reps, in sets of 5 or 6 and usually totalling between 18 and 24 in number. it was at this stage last year that rob whalleys summer was completely wrecked by injury that was basically caused by running too fast too soon. we had to help him to his car after the session and didn't see him at training again until about october time, so i'll be wary of that tonight as running on grass can have that effect on your calves.

finally congratulations are due to ewan and kelli who gave birth yesterday to a baby boy isaac

the end of the winter

i have now officially reached the end of my winter training period. i feel as though i have learned a few things about myself this winter which in all honesty if you had told me in september i would have slapped you for lying to me. i have learnt that i can run on the cross country-proof being the gold medal that i achieved in december at the county championhips...i have learnt that i am most emphatically not a half marathon runner 5k's and 10k's are my strongest distance. i have also learnt that i have an annoying habit of saving my best performances for bad conditions. and have also learnt that it is not just about running pb's although they're nice. good performances in bad conditions and beating people can be very satisfying although there is onebloke that keeps on finishing one place in front of me all the time.

after missing out on the relays due to work commitment i a still currently unaware of how we got on and whether or not we qualified two teams for the national 12 stage. if we didnt i will be doing a 3000m race at bath on the day in 26th instead. and hopefully i'm gonna get a car sorted out this week...

a close shave at aztec

we trained at aztec last night and i set my self a target of running under 5:30 for every repetition i did. i did 4of them and i ran 5:30 bang on for each and every one of them. i wa well ahead of the people that i normally run with so i was pleased in that sense, but i'm mostly annoyed that i've got myself really fit for the relays can't run them and i can't find a race on the sunday either, all due to the usual incompetence of royal mails management (lets not go any further down that road)

no excuses anymore

there are now going to be no excuses for me this track season, i can no longer say i can't go to a race because i haven't got a car, which means that meetings like exeter and solihulthat were usually out of bounds due to my inability to transport my self are now on the radar. this means now that it is a massive summer for me and my running. one that will sort out whether or not i will make it as a runner or whether or not i'm closer to the limit of my potential than i think. on the other hand it may not happen over night but i do expect a bigger improvement than i have seen in the past two summers. the heat is on!