Sunday, October 31, 2010

Didn't kneed that

Monday morning I ran an 8k recovery run, and on the hill back towards home I suddenly felt something tear under my kneecap and within 10 paces couldn't run due to the pain.

It felt exactly like what happened at the start of the year, leading to my knee surgery.

I went to work where the knee started to swell over the course of the day. Needless to say I was thinking the worst.

Luckily with the aid of anti-inflams things settled and I adopted a very gentle approach to the week, running all on completely flat grass surface of McGillvray Oval. On the flat, things are OK, but a bit of hill and it hurts. I can only presume I have a small tear in the fibrocartilage that has filled in the articular cartilage removed in my operation. This type of cartilage is much 'softer'/fragile than the original cartilage.







Day
Distance (km) Time Pace (min/km) Speed (km/h)


67.66 05:03:54 avg. 00:04:29 avg. 13.40
Sun October 31, 20106

21.29 21.29 01:34:35 5675 00:04:27 267 13.50 13.5
Fri October 29, 20104

11.65 11.65 00:55:54 3354 00:04:48 288 12.50 12.5
Thu October 28, 20103

0.00 0.0 00:00:00 0 00:00:00 0 0.00 0
Wed October 27, 20102

9.68 9.68 00:41:12 2472 00:04:15 255 14.10 14.1
Tue October 26, 20101

8.18 8.18 00:35:40 2140 00:04:22 262 13.80 13.8
Mon October 25, 20100

7.74 7.74 00:37:25 2245 00:04:50 290 12.40 12.4
There should be a saturday 9k@4:15 session in there as well

So a 67km week, not bad considering. The highlights were screaming at a dog owner on McGillvray who's massive German Shepherd ran 400m to jump all over me while I was trying to do a 1k interval, and this morning's 20k with Clown - the 4:25 pace was pleasing.

As you can see from the crudely cut&pasted table, I'm trying Strands again for my running log. The first time I found it fed into my obsessive/TypeA personality traits too much, especially at a time when I was coming back from injury and really needed to be holding back.

This week, 10k track race is on the cards. I'm not sure if the 37:30 goal is appropriate or not, but I have found running on a track to be pretty fast, so I'll just see how things go. Clown may even decide to do a tempo ( or is that MP) run and pace me to 37:30

Sunday, October 24, 2010

FunRunning

Running is going well for me right now. I've done 3 consecutive weeks over 80km each, making October my second biggest mileage month this year already (more a reflection on a crap year than an exceptional month). I even improved my average pace over the week this week to 4:30, with Tuesday's interval and Friday morning tempo over hills being the highlights. I still haven't felt physically or emotionally ready to approach a true long run, so each of the last 3 Sundays I've done a 20k morning and 10k evening run. This morning I ran over Hale Rd hill for the first time in ages, managed to do it without a stop until the oasis at Churchlands Primary School with it's refrigerated water fountains.

I hope to maintain 80km weeks for the next 5-6 weeks with 10k JG, 5k Penninsula and 3k JK track run (assuming it's on) on the radar before a taper for SixInch

Hope B'Man had a good Rotto,

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Boston Chaos

Talk about lucky! In case you didn't hear, Boston entries filled up in 8 hours! - compared with last years 6 weeks, and up 'til 2006, didn't fill up at all.

I only just remembered by chance that it was opening last night, and logged on. Like many, I had to try about 10 times, each time it was rejected, all the info was cleared and I had to fill the form out all over again. I gave up, went to bed, and thought I'd try again today. Luckily I couldn't get to sleep and had one last try, with success!

I was only enetering as insurance, thinking that I could always defer by a year, but for the first time ever they won't allow deferral for any reason so I guess there's more motivation to get there, even if I end up doing it on the cheap.

I certainly think this will make the BAA tighten their qualification criteria. There was an article on message from Mzungo last week suggesting the female qual's were already too lax - 30min slower than equivalent male times when women's performance is generally only about 20min slower. Also, given that people dont hit peak marathon performance until about 40 (or exactly 40 in Clowns case) I think that the qual. time under 40 should all be the same.

Overall, I'd rather see the qualification times come own rather than a lottery - there are lottery runs around already, the popularity of Boston is due to it's aspirational aspect. Similaly I dont think increasing the field significantly would be good either.

Perhaps linking the qual times to a percentage over the worlds best for that age group would be better (eg world record plus 50%), although messier.

World records age male female (BQ)

all 2:03:58 (3:10-15) 2:15:24 (3:40-5)
40 2:08 (3:20) 2:26 (3:50)
45 2:14 (3:30) 2:28 (4:00)
50 2:19 (3:35) 2:31 (4:05)
55 2:25 (3:45) 2:52 ( 4:15)
60 2:36 (4:00) 3:01 (4:30)
65 2:41 (4:15) 3:12 (4:45)
70 2:54 (4:30) 3:45 (5:00)
75 3:04 (4:45) 3:57 (5:15)
80 3:39 (5:00) 4:36 (5:30)


A little confusing, but you can see that the steps up with WRs dont necessarily correlate with steps up in BQ. Anyway, it's not up to me.

Off to intervals tonight, repeating the mantra taken from Craig Mottrams talk last week - maximum 80% effort. Last week I ran 4x1000m with 2 min walk recovery in 3:15/3:16/3:16/3:15. Garmin made the track 1:02k which makes me think it was a bit short as Garmin generally overestimates round tracks with measurement error, but even with 5sec xtra each, thats closer to 100% effort, and I paid for it with a flare of viral symptoms and swollen neck glands later in the week, as I do when I push too hard.


Addit... Intervals for my future reference
10x400m, 75sec recvery
74/73/71/73/71/72/73/71/73/72
Pretty happy with this - did exactly the same session 2 years ago and av 78s, so at least I'm faster than then!

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Booyah

Congrats Clown on a massive Melbourne Marathon!

6 months, 3 marathons, 3 PBs and taking his running to another level. All thanks to hard work and dedication. I'm rapt to hear about the run.

This has again given me some much needed motivation. I'll put it out there - 10k PB at John Gilmour, aim 37:30. It would be a big step on current form and training, but let's aim high.

Congrate also to TB, and I'm yet to hear if Sling ended up running the half.

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Freo HM 2010

A bit of a last minute decision to run today - entered Friday lunchtime. Having pulled out of Melbourne I thought why not? The HM is the distance I have always performed well at, and this would give me some confidence and benchmark my current fitness position.

I'd run 55k leading up, having returned to WAMC/JK intervals on Tuesday with 2x400, 2x500,2x600,2x500,2x400 all with 90 sec breaks. Was surprisingly solid and surprisingly similar pace to 2 years ago when I last regularly ran here. The rest were easy-ish runs through Bold Park

I decided to run today without looking at my watch too much, just run by feel to maintain a consistent HM pace

5k splits 19:52, 20:10,20:25,20:23, last 1.3k@3:48 total time 1:25:42

Nice day for running and I felt solid without going into the red zone. Although I slowed slightly in the second half, I passed 8 people in the last 10k, 3 in the final km. No-one passed me after 3k (except one frontrunner who must have stopped for a pee). I think my recent bold park running has helped as I powered up the few little hills in the final 1.5k - which is how I caught the last 3.

Sugar looked good but I note not quite on PB pace - 145km weeks will do that to you. I was mightily impressed by the female winner - Clare McKay- who finished less than a minute behind me and came home like a train in the second half. She said afterwards that she'd run the C2S half in 1:30 and was happy to beat that - I suspect she'll be winning a few races in coming times.

My pace today was very similar to that which I ran last year with Clown, and gives me some confidence moving forwards.

I'm still in a quandry re track this summer. I looked at last years Masters McGillvray results and I'd have won the middle distance race every week by some way - most competitors were in the over 50 category. I dont really fancy being in that situation. Looking at the Friday Athletics WA meets at AK I'd be near the back of the field with several near my pace and not dead last. This might be the better option although I dont know about Friday evening running - thats usually prime summer beer and BBQ time!

Happy B'Day Clown and good luck next week - hope it's a good present to yourself!