Sunday, December 30, 2007

07 Review, 08 Ahead

First up - 64km week - pretty good for recovery week 2 post SixInch. Included my first interval session in a long while - 1k/1k/600/600/500/500/400/400 for 5k of intervals all at 3:40-3:45 pace. And today 24k with Rob.

Year in Review:

Comparative runs - Started 07 with Christchurch, MatBay, Darlington and Asics all significantly faster than06. Then slowed to run Challenge, FreoHalf and Perth32k in similar or slower times than 06

PBs - 10k down by 7seconds, HM no improvement, Marathon 4 min faster, City to Surf 15sec faster.

2 offroad marathon plus runs

So - a minor improvement on 06 but not up to my expectations. I hit my PB form early in the year but never went beyond that. Again peaked too early and was on the downhill slide by Perth Mara

2008 Goals

Feb: Sub 40min 10k at Matilda Bay

April: Canberra Marathon locked in - 3:15 goal time. Goal is preparation with at least 5 weeks at 100k plus in the next 3 months.

Doing Canberra with the changes to WAMC program this year means I'll do very few early season runs - would interfere with long runs.

Second half of the year will see Perth Mara PB (3:15), City to Surf PB (sub48), Half mara sub 1:30 and SixInch 4:15

Getting Lore of Running for Christmas has sparked my interest in training, and doing the SixInch in December prevented the lull I've had in Oct-Dec in '05 and'06.

Training with Rob, who is in better form than me currently, should hopefully stretch me towards his level, and the 3:15 goal which would see Boston 09 qualification.

I hope to be a bit more specific in recording of my distances and sessions over the next 12 weeks as I build up 10% per week to a max of 100-110k weekly.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Recovery Week

Not much to say - 30km only, more due to being busy than problems recovering from last Sunday.

Would like to have done a longish run this morning but had other things to do (read hangover). Took a 10k at 6pm after cooking my Turkey(!!!) -got a taste of what's ahead this summer, running in 31degrees.

Next week will post the 08 goals, and 07 review.

Happy Christmas all!

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Six Inch Trail Marathon 2007

Well its been run and done. Generally happy with the day.

had to get up at 2:45am, left home at 3:10, got to Dwellingup and we shuttled back to the start in one car so most were at the finish.
Great conditions - cool but not raining, although a bit of a headwind at times.

The first 4 k were a shock to the system straight uphill, and were exceedingly slow, ruining my intended pacing plan straight away.

Dave, Colin and Victor went out ahead, leaving me in 4th. At 4k Rod, who I hadn't met before, started after not being able to find the start line (understandably in the dark), so we ran togather for 5k or so. I quickly realised he was going faster than I wanted and let him go.

At 11k or so I stopped for a gel and felt really crappy. Luckily there was some downhill thereafter and I made up some time. I actually came back to within 100m of Rod after he stopped for a supply from his wife, but then I stopped at the 22.5k mark to have another gel.

At 30k I was still doing OK, although I struggled through the Oakley Dam section which was steep and rough.
I had built up a few minutes ahead of my 6min/km pace so I started to feel I could hit my planned 4hr30 total time

Slightly longer stop at 34k to fill the hydration pack and have a power bar, then struggled through the last 10k. I hit the 45k mark in 4hr28, but the course was almost 46k - a tough psychological challenge.

So finish time 4hrs33:43, 45.9k on Garmin (Sportstracks seems unable to handle that many laps)
5k Splits 31/28/27/28/29/28/32/33/32

They say time should be Marathon time plus an hour, so that fits me.
My lack of endurance showed in the end, but I was happy to finish the run
Groin twinged a bit on the hills, and quads cramped up a bit. All in all though, relatively unscathed.

Monday, December 10, 2007

One week to go

Somewhat of a taper this week - 60km all up

Limited Sunday to 17km, at 4:53/km, after a tough first 5k warming up, I then felt great for the remainder - hopefully a good sign

This week I intend only to do about 30km, will drink no alcohol for a week, leave the family Christmas Party very early Saturday night and will need to leave home at three am to get down to the start for car movements by 4am!

Clown - no worries if you cant get there. If you do think you might head down later, I can fax you or email a scanned copy of the course map. There will be access points further down if you wanted to join in for a while at a more reasonable time of morning

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Two Weeks To Go!

A bit of an anticlimax this week

Ran my 4x10-11k Tues-Fri mornaings. Mixture of easy, tempo, progression runs. Even did a final km in 4:00 to gently test the body for speed ( also becouse there was a lady running ahead of me at 4:30 pace and once I passed her I had to keep going fast to maintain my pride)

Fri pm I developed a sore throat and general aches - had been a virus around the last fortnight - likely I was going to get it! So no run saturday. Today felt OK on waking so did a gentle 20k with drink stop every 5k, and feel pretty good now (although that may also have something to do with what I drank at the work christmas barbeque this arvo).

Might try to stretch a 15-20k tomorrow if I still feel well to push the distance a little more, although I am very aware of advice saying theres not much to be gained in the last 2 weeks, only chances to f*** things up.