Race Report: Sale Sizzler 2015 #1

Sale Sizzler's they live up to their name. This is the fifth Sizzler I've done and at twenty-three degrees this was the coolest conditions yet.

I'm feeling relatively good running wise at the moment but never run that well in warm conditions. I was covered in sweat after a warm up so had a nice chill out on the grass by the track for the last fifteen minutes before the start.


The Sizzlers are fast; the winner normally finishes in about fourteen minutes and my 5k PB was set here last summer. Starting on a running track is never good as I always set off too fast and so it proved tonight. The course is pan flat which I'm still not sure if it makes it easier or harder as there is no let up over the entire 5k. I was feeling good over the first two miles but that final mile started to hurt as the lactic started to fill my legs. I dug in as much as I could and somehow I manged to put a burst on a pick off five or six people as I closed in on the finish line but my finish time of 19:05 was a little disappointing as I'd expected to dip under nineteen minutes. It's still my fastest 5k of the year and there are three more races to go at!

parkrun: A Journey

Where do you normally spend 9am on a Saturday morning? Up until three years ago I'd have said slouched on the couch not doing much. But then came parkrun.

For those unfamiliar with the parkrun concept it's a free 5k timed run (not a race) held every Saturday morning at locations around the world. All you need is your registration barcode and the will to run.

This weekend I celebrate my third year of parkrunning; I’ve completed one hundred and twenty-two runs at twenty-two different 5k events my quickest time being 18:43 at Heaton Park and my slowest 42:22 at Oldham, but this is just half my parkrun story.

A slightly larger me at one of my first runs.

Going to parkrun week after week has help turn me from a fourteen and a half stone couch potato into a ten and a bit stone runner. It’s become the cornerstone of my running, I can tell you how many Saturday’s I’ve not been at a parkrun since I did my first (five if you were interested) fit or injured going to parkun is what I do on a Saturday morning.

parkrun has changed me in many ways and not just my weight. I now do things I'd never have thought I could do: stand up in front of two hundred people and give a run brief? Not three years ago but now I wouldn't bat an eyelid, just a normal Saturday morning now. But it's not just what I do that parkrun has changed its who I am and how I act. These days I'm a lot happier and lot more chilled out in my attitude to life.

How has parkrun done this? Well it hasn't. It's not the weekly 5k run that has helped change me it's the people I've met  that have done that. Over the years I've had the privilege to meet some amazing people. parkrunners come from all walks of life and have many different backgrounds but where you come from or how you got into parkrun doesn't matter. I've met some crazy people, some very serious people but most of all people who are so supportive of what you are doing no matter how long it takes you to complete a 5k run. People are the cornerstone of parkrun. It might take me twenty minutes to complete a run but I'll normally be in the cafe a couple of hours later chatting away with people over a breakfast and a brew.

Pushing Abigail round Oldham parkrun
while pacing with Royton Road Runners.

I’ve also got more involved in the organisation of parkrun. When I was first approached by Bev the event director of Oldham parkrun to become a run director and be responsible for a week's run including doing a run brief in front of all those runners I was scared stiff. I didn’t have the confidence to stand up there and talk to all those people or coordinate a group of volunteers to make sure the event went smoothly. With the help and support of all those great parkrunners I got there. I even know how the stopwatches work now! Now, two years after my first run directing event I’m event director of Stamford Park parkun and have a team of run directors to be responsible for. Explaining how parkrun works to first timers chatting to visiting runners and doing run briefs are just something I do now. Big change from three years ago.

The concept of parkrun might not be been created to give people more confidence, boost their self esteem but it has.

If you’ve never tired parkrun you don’t know what you are missing. It’s a lot more than a weekly 5k run!  

Pacing Myself (and others)

Once a month at Oldham parkrun Royton Road Runners provide a team of pacers who aim to complete the 5k course in a fixed time at an even pace. Today was June's pacing event to tie in with the clubs twice a year "parkrun day" where we try and get as many club members to come down in their vests, hoodies & coats to celebrate being part of the club and the links we have with our local parkrun.

The RRR pace team (l to r: Simon Howard, John Lambe,
Garry Bower, Neil Brock, me & Abigail & David Ellis.)

I was running the 30 min pacer slot while pushing Abigail round in her pram so my wife could also have a run.

I've never been great at pacing and today proved no different. Half way round lap one according to my watch I was on schedule to finish in 30 mins yet I could see the 35 min pacer ahead of me and not just a little he was a good hundred metres or so if not more away.

Three quarters of the way round the lap I finally caught up, "Something's not right here Simon." I said I as started to pass. "I've only just got satellite signal on my watch." was the reply.

I went on to finish the run in 29:18 which is well out for pacing 30 mins at 5k. According to my watch I was on schedule most of the way round with for me not bad kilometer spits (6:12, 6:04, 5:34, 5:57 & 6:01* *pace for split as only 0.9k)  but I was still over forty seconds fast.

Why?

Well I was pacing myself from my TomTom watch and that clocked I'd only ran 4.9k not 5k.

This caused some discussion among the pacing team post run. We are all so dependent on the Garmin/TomTom/et al to keep up on pace this falls apart when the device measures short or long, or in Simon's case isn't ready to start when the Run Director says, "Go!" Perhaps the problem is we are all so brain washed to look at our GPS devices to know what pace we are running we can't do it on feel. I know I couldn't run 30 mins on feel: I'd be running what felt 'easy' and still be doing 5:20m/km's which would be far too fast.

What's the solution? For people like me who have only ever ran with a GPS device, be it a mobile phone or a dedicated running watch I'm not sure there is one. I'm not going to run without my watch as I like to see where I've ran and at what pace recorded, plus there are all those Strava segments to be recorded. Perhaps with time I could teach myself to run that pace on feel, but my first thought was that I'd need my GPS watch to tell me I was on that pace!

Maybe we'll just have to live with the pacing team not being 100% on target every time.

Housekeeping

Avid readers of this blog (if such a thing exists) will have noticed it stopped dead towards the end of January when I was in the middle of my training for this year's Greater Manchester Marathon. So what's been going on?

What I hadn't mentioned in my blogs back in January was that I was carrying an injury. I didn't mention this for a couple of reasons: firstly if I didn't talk about it then it wasn't there and second I know runners and once you mention a niggle or a problem everybody has a solution that 100% worked for them/their friend/some bloke they heard about on the net.

So I plowed on with the heavy training I was doing. Back to back weeks of 60+ miles finally did it for me and I found I was limping when walking, albeit I could still run when everything was warmed up but it wasn't good.

I knew I couldn't carry on like this, but the first RRR championship race of the season, the Mad Dog 10k, was a week away. I love that race and on top of that it was my wife's first ever race. I wasn't going to miss it! So stupidly I dragged myself through another week of training and got myself to the race.

"I'm taking it easy" I told everybody and dropped back a wave so I wasn't going to try and keep up with a pace I didn't think I should be doing. Didn't work though did it? While it wasn't the kind of time I'd expect from a flat out 10k it was still a lot faster than I'd set out to do. I'm sure this didn't help matters but after the race I was determined to have a rest and get fit to carry on with the marathon training.

9 days. 9 long days. I waited 9 days before going out for my next run. It felt okay but again I tried to come back too quickly, doing consecutive days rather than on one, one off. The pain returned, I was going backwards but I only had myself to blame: the marathon wasn't far off and I needed to be getting the miles in as March had two key tune up races and I wasn't feeling ready.

Back to resting it was then. The month of February was creeping by but my miles, on while my marathon progress had been gauged on were stagnating. I'd done less in a month than was previously doing in a week.

By the fourth week of February I was looking on the Greater Manchester Marathon site about deferring my entry to 2016. I could still, just, move my entry but had to do it before the 27th of the month.

Working towards that PB at Wilmslow

What to do? I'd spent months reading up on things, working out my training, identifying my target tune up races and times I should be hitting at them to get the sub 3:05 I was working towards. I knew in my own mind that if I kept my entry for this year I'd push myself to run it and get that time. It wouldn't end well.

So I bit the bullet and rang the Xtra Mile Events office. It was the last day for deferrals and they were busy, lots of runners had left it till the last minute to decide. After a quick call my entry was transferred and my marathon dream for this year was over. Yes I could still buy another entry to the 2015 event right up to race day eve but I was out and if I even thought about doing that I would be back on that slippery slope.

By the time I had differed I was on the road back to recovery but it is only now as I write this on the last weekend in April that I feel I'm back in what I consider full training.

This now left me in a bit of a quandary as my running year had been focused on Manchester in April and the tough Oldham half in October. I still had the Trafford 10k at the start of March and Wilmslow half marathon at the end to try for. I wasn't sure I could be fit for either of these but I was going to try.

I set off conservatively at Trafford and was finding the pace comfortable even though I was doing sub 40. I finished the race in 39:13 which was 1 second faster than my PB set at Ribble Valley back in December.

This made me think I still had a chance of bettering my best half time set at Wilmslow last year (1:29:26) and so it proved I ran a great race to finish in 1:27:34.

So I'd had nearly a month of little or no training yet I was flying when I raced. What was going on? Runners all know about the taper before a big race but this was too much surely? I was convinced that I'd had so long off I'd have lost all my fitness but it turns out my body had in addition to having chance to recover from the injury and have some much needed rest.

Having no spring marathon on the horizon gave me chance to look back of the past 6 to 12 months running and see if I could work out how I'd ended up in this place. Looking at my monthly miles after the dip last summer of the birth of Abigail the miles kept going up, I was focused on doing well at the Stockport 10 in December and put plenty of miles in for that. Nothing wrong with that I don't think, however there was no easing up I kept knocking out the miles week after week long before my marathon training was to begin.

Looking back now I should have backed off after Stockport and possibly not trained as hard for it as I did. When I reached the end of January this year I think in terms of miles laid down I'd done a full marathon training plan as was still over 2 months from race day.

Taking stock everything that has happened I'm determined to put a positive spin on things. I've spent plenty of time reviewing what I did and what I can do better for next time. Miles in a training log mean nothing if all they do is leave me injured and unable to complete the event I was training for. On top of that I now realise my body needs a period of rest, especially if I'm going to put it through 4 months of tough marathon training.

My focus this year remains the Oldham Half in October, an autumn marathon doesn't fit with either this or having a good rest before working up to a spring 2016 marathon. I’ll be doing it with more thought about what I’m doing and making sure I don’t do too much when I don’t need to!

Manchester Marathon Training Week 6 : The First 20 Miler

Monday: 6.7k Easy run
Tuesday: 12.6k Not so tempo run.
Wednesday: 19.6k Medium long run & 8.8k easy.
Thursday: Rest
Friday: 14.2k Fartlek run.
Saturday: Widnes parkrun + warm up & TomTom watch test run 11.6k in total.
Sunday: 32.2k Long run.

Total: 105.8k (65.7mi)

Week six and I'm up to 20 mile runs. This time last year I was struggling with my motivation for my long runs. More than once I'd go out on a long run and end up coming home miles short of my target. On one run I remember sitting on a park bench for ten minutes wondering what I was doing and why I was putting myself through this.


No such feelings today. My original plan was to head on up onto the hills around Saddleworth above Oldham but I was advised to avoid it this week due to the bad weather over the past week or so. Not having planned a route I hit the Fallowfield loop line and link up with the Rochdale canal in Manchester for the run back to home. Basically this was my morning run to work and evening run linked up. However this would leave me about 6k short of my 32.2k target. This happened as I passed my house on the canal, I couldn't quite see my house but I could see the road next to it. Last year I'd would have been off home to put my feet up. Not this time round! On up the canal and a few loops near home and I hit the magic figure at the end of my road.

Previously I've been shattered at the end of long run of this distance and I'd be getting slower and slower but not this time, even at the end I felt good and strong. Perhaps all this hard work is starting to pay off....

Lap 2 of Widnes parkrun - not sure where everybody else is!

I don't often get chance to run a parkrun fast between volunteering at Oldham and pushing Abigail round in her pram while Jan runs. But this week I had the opportunity to visit Widnes parkrun. This was only their second event, their first being cancelled due to the weather. I went over on the train with my usual parkrun tourism buddy Simon who unfortunately is injured at the moment, but that didn't stop him coming over and volunteering to help the new team out.

Widnes is a fast course, pan flat and all on tarmac. The only downside is the top part of the park. As a three lap course it is difficult to pass people while going round the duck pond there isn't much room. This isn't much of a problem for me as I'll slow down until there is a safe chance to pass but I'm not sure everybody will do. The other "slow" part is the 150 degree corner: a couple of times I was leaning at a 45 degree angle to get round with some pace. Still this is a great fast course and I'm sure now I know it I can go faster but I'm not sure it's a PB course with that corner! Still well worth a visit. 

Manchester Marathon Training Week 5: The "Recovery" Week

Monday: Rest.
Tuesday: 13.1k steady with strides.
Wednesday: 19.6k run to work & 8.8k run home (total 28.4k)
Thursday: Rest.
Friday: 7.8k easy run.
Saturday: 9.6k SELCC Race 1: Leigh + 2.6k warm up (total 12.2k)
Sunday: 24k long run.

Total: 85.5k (53.1m)

A 53 mile recovery week, which actually felt easier than it sounds given the past two weeks were 60+!

Yes, my recovery week included a cross country race. The return to Leigh, which despite being an

XC at Leigh. I always find a Rohdale Harrier to race!

easy course is by far and away my least favorite. There is nothing to it, pan flat either on a golf course, field, or path. There was however plenty of mud. The word around our club gazebo was trail shoes would be best as spikes were not recommended with the long compact path and shorter concrete sections. Having ran the race I think I'd have preferred my spikes; the mud was so deep in places I couldn't get any traction and was slipping all over the place. Looking at my Strava stats I also wonder if even in trail shoes I could have put more effort in for a better time? Perhaps but I don't have much confidence in my trail shoes in that mud.


The weather hasn't been great this week and due to other commitments I had to squeeze my long run it early on Sunday morning long before any ice and snow from the previous night had chance to clear. It might only be a 15 miler but I still managed to pass through areas of solid ice, slush to three inches of snow. The conditions made traction hard, especially going uphill but given it was a long slow run it didn't matter that much!



So that is the end of the first Mesocycle, things can only get tougher from here with my first 20+ miler on the horizon for next Sunday. 

Bring it on!

Manchester Marathon Training Week 4: Another Week, Another 100k

Monday : Rest
Tuesday: 14.5k steady run.
Wednesday: 21.5k medium long run to work & 8.7k easy to home.
Thursday: Rest
Friday: 17.3k medium long run to work & 8.9k easy to home.
Saturday: 5k Oldham parkrun with Jan.
Sunday: 27.5k long run.

Total: 103.4k (64.2mi)

This week has been tough. After last Sunday's marathon pace long run my legs have felt shot. Tuesday's run was particularly tough given there wasn't any recovery run on Monday, though I did do some yoga which helped.

The festive break was over so I was back at work this week which meant that my mid-week long runs were done as my morning commute. Normally these are done down the Fallowfield Loop Line which is a great traffic free route.


 The only downside to running down here when the sun doesn't come up until 8:20'ish is it's not that easy to see. I don't have a head torch and have seriously considered investing in one but the morning's are getting lighter again so I'm not sure it's worth it.

I've used the trip home on these day's to do my recovery run down the canal which gave me an extra rest day, and a lie in! No need for a head torch on that route as there are street lamps all the way.

So four weeks in, how am I feeling? The miles have jumped up and I'll be honest I am feeling it but I am nowhere near the fatigue levels I was at this time last year on an arguably an easier training plan. I'm guessing that's due to having another year of running under my belt.

Next week is a recovery week, just the 55 miles then.