Aaron goes to Rotterdam

Hallo all,

Tomorrow, I'll be heading out to Rotterdam to run the Rotterdam Marathon! According to Runners World, Rotterdam is one of the top 10 marathons in the world, so to run this event is going to be an awesome moment.

On top of that, this year will be the 30th Rotterdam Marathon, which also coincides with my age(!), so it's basically a jubilee event. To celebrate, the organisers are giving away 2 free trips to "some place warm", provided that your race number, upon collecting it at the marathon expo, is inside a "golden envelope". Doesn't that remind you of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?! Well, hopefully I can win that awesome prize!

Rotterdam is a very pancake-flat course, which is going to produce some spectacular times. Expect a world record (or close to world record time) this year! Unfortunately, I'm not in peak condition to run a fast marathon, so I'm going to take it easy, soak up the experience and jog my way through Rotterdam. Maybe I'll take my camera along with me and take a few snaps of Rotterdam, mile by mile! I was thinking of tweeting during the race, but I think that might be taking things a little bit too far!

The aim is to keep the intensity as easy as possible, probably around a 6 - 6.5/10 on the rate of perceived exertion scale. It will be interesting to see how well I reign in the pace as it's a natural tendency for me to speed up once I've hit my stride. I'm confident that I can finish the race comfortably, but I'm interested to see how my body holds up after the race, even at such a leisurely pace!

After Rotterdam, I'll be heading to Amsterdam for a few days to check out the city and hopefully stay out of trouble! In order to keep travel costs down, I've made a reservation in a budget hotel that has shared bathroom facilities on every floor. Not normally one to bring a towel on holiday, and being a hotel with shared bathroom facilities, I enquired whether the hotel provides towels to guests. The response I got was classic!

We change towels every day. However, if it is not a big problem for you, I suggest to bring yours, this is what I do all the time when I travel, it is more convenient for me. But we wash, dry and provide new towels every day.

HILARIOUS! I'm not really interested in whether or not you bring your towel on holiday. Isn't it more convenient to not bring a towel when you travel and just use what the hotel provides? I don't know whether she was serious, or just taking the piss. Is this a Dutch thing???

Finally, this week's training recap post will be postponed until I return. That will be followed by a race report, and hopefully some awesome pictures from the Rotterdam Marathon. As usual, I'll be tweeting from the event (but not when I run!), so follow me to get all the latest action from Rotterdam as it happens!

Tot ziens!

Aaron

Training Week 18 Recap

Hi guys,

Happy Easter everyone! I've had a pretty non-eventful Easter weekend so far. I'm actually looking forward to next weekend, where I'll be running the Rotterdam Marathon and going on a short trip through Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Suggestions on what to see and do there are always welcome!

Anyway, a week of rest is followed by a week of pretty hard running. I've cut short the volume in order to maximise the quality of each session. Let's see how I managed.

Tuesday

Type: Threshold

Time and Distance: 40 mins, 7.95 km.

Detail: 10 mins at 11 km/h pace. 1 x 10 min at 14.0 km/h pace, with 3 mins recovery at 8 km/h pace. 1 x 8 min at 14.0 km/h pace, with 3 mins recovery at 8 km/h pace. 1 x 6 mins at 14.0 km/h pace. Purpose was to find my threshold pace.

Thursday

Type: Continuous hills

Time and Distance: 39 mins, 7.7 km.

Detail: 2 sets of 6 hill reps at threshold pace. Recovery of 3 minutes between sets.

Saturday

Type: Long

Time and Distance: 96 mins, 16.6 km.

Detail: Kept the pace and intensity easy the whole way.

Total Weekly Distance: 32.25 km.

Comments: My first week back into running, and also my first week out of 10 weeks of pre-training before I commence the 16-week training programme designed by the FP Run Club. Anyway, how do you spell pain? C O N T I N U O U S - H I L L S. That is probably the hardest running session I've ever done! And I'm still feeling the effects after that run. Unlike the conventional hill session where you run hard up a hill and jog/walk/recover on the way down, continuous hills requires you to run hard up and down a hill, preferably at your threshold pace. The basic idea is that you gain strength, and build running economy and lactate threshold at the same time. This week has placed heavy emphasis on threshold running, which is the key to going faster for longer.

Improvements: It's going to be more of the same for next week. However I also have the Rotterdam Marathon next Sunday, and it's prudent that I don't do myself any damage with these threshold runs right before a 42 km long run. I may have to tone down the intensity of those threshold runs to ensure that I'm reasonably fresh for the marathon. Again, Rotterdam is just going to be another training run, where I need to make a huge conscious effort to go slow!

This week has really challenged my earlier beliefs of running and training. After my conversation with George Anderson from the FP Run Club he advised me not to be tied down to the pace I should be running at, and rather focus on the intensity of training. Pace is always going to vary. It will vary whether I have a good or bad day. It will vary whether I run uphill or downhill. And it will also vary on the weather conditions. Trying to run at a specific pace when it's hot, the course is hilly, or when I haven't fully recovered from a previous session, is likely to lead to over-training, burnout or injury.

Instead, George introduced me to the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE), which allows me to continually assess intensity and ensure a level of exertion that is comfortable or challenging. Training according to intensity is closely linked to training at your target heart rate zone based on your maximum heart rate, e.g. exercising so that your heart rate is between 85 - 90% of your maximum heart rate. At the moment I don't own a heart rate monitor, but I'm thinking of getting one. Does anyone have a favourite? The heart doesn't lie; the harder you work, the more your heart works, the more intense your training is.

The caveat that George mentioned is that maximum heart rate is unique for every person; using the basic formula of 220 minus your age is not going to apply to every runner. So, exercising at a specified zone based on a percentage of your maximum heart rate may not necessarily lead to you exercising at the right intensity based on the RPE scale.

Having said that, I'm still going to record the paces, times and distances that I run in training, but for each session I'm going to pay less attention to the pace I should be running at and focus on perceived intensity instead.

So for my effort at Rotterdam, I'm going to aim for a 6/10. Hopefully that will lead to a sub 4-hour time, but I won't be too disappointed if I go over that, even by a long way! Look out for some photos of Rotterdam (and Amsterdam) very soon!

Happy Easter everyone!

Aaron

Training Week 17 Recap

Hi all,

These training week recaps are starting to become a bit of an addictive habit. But it's even more problematic if you haven't got any training to report! That's right - I've done absolutely no running this week! :-)

The only recap I have to make is that I'm heading into a new direction in my training. After the Reading Half Marathon, I reflected on the experience and decided that I'd get a lot of benefit if I got a running coach who could put me on the right path. I joined the FP Run Club, which is part of the Full Potential coaching company. It's something I haven't done before or even considered in the past so I feel like I'm gambling or going all in here but, at this stage, anything is worth a try!

On Friday, I had a great conversation with George Anderson, one of the FP Run Club coaches, and in that initial coaching call he gave me a bunch of training ideas which I can incorporate immediately. After answering his questions, and also from checking up on my progress from my past tweets, he believes that I'm comfortable over long distance, but my threshold and strength could be developed further. Therefore he immediately prescribed threshold runs and continuous hills to build these areas up.

George also stressed quality over volume, and in saying that I definitely feel that the volume of running I've been doing lately has curtailed my other activities. Now that is part of being a serious runner, but I have a few other things going on outside of my running. Perhaps if I could cut back on volume and really (and I mean really) make every mile count, then I could strike a decent balance between training and my other activities. When I first started out on this journey, I was prepared to put in the volume. It's natural to commit to something fully when you start out on something new. But after I ran the Reading Half Marathon I concluded that the volume of running I was putting in wasn't bringing the desired results. I also felt that in those 16 weeks I didn't really have a life, and I couldn't really continue doing this for 26 more weeks. This is definitely not being defeatist - it's just a new approach to my training, which I am seriously hoping it will pay off in the long run!

I'm very excited with this new approach laid out before me, and starting this week I will be back into training.

Best,

Aaron

A step in a different direction

Hi guys,

This afternoon I had the pleasure of chatting to George Anderson on the phone for roughly an hour, talking about my training direction and my focus. The conversation was very enlightening and George offered ideas that I probably wouldn't have considered had I been training on my own.

I recently joined the FP Run Club, which is an online coaching resource combining the experience of the UK's top running coaches. George launched the FP Run Club a couple of months ago to support marathon runners wanting to achieve their goals. He also offered two free coaching calls to his Twitter followers (ah, good ol' Twitter) if they signed up to the FP Run Club within a particular time. I quickly jumped to the opportunity.

On the phone, I told George about my goals, my training direction and what I've normally done in training. He also took note of the event I'm preparing for (Berlin on September 26th).

George commented that September 26th is still a fair bit of time away. What he was really getting at is that the running programmes offered by FP Run Club have a maximum length of 16 weeks! At the time of writing, I have exactly 26 weeks to Berlin. The 16-week running programmes are designed with time goals in mind, from just finishing a marathon to sub-3 hours which is what I want to follow. The rationale is that extended periods of training would more likely be more harmful than good, such as peaking at the wrong time, or picking up injuries as a result of prolonged training. This leaves me 10 weeks of running to no programme, so what am I to do?

On the phone, George recommended 6 weeks of hard running, followed by 2 weeks of taper prior to starting the running programme. Since I actually have 10 weeks to go, I'm going to make this 8 weeks of hard running, followed by 2 weeks of taper. George also recommended that I drop the long run and hard intervals entirely, and devote most of my focus on hill work and threshold runs. After noting down the pace and distance of my recent long runs, he suggested that I limit the time spent on my feet to around 90-110 minutes, instead of going as far as 150-180 minutes. The extra volume will most likely lead to injury, and since I'm already accustomed to running long distance, I'm already running to my strength instead of addressing my weaknesses. My weakness, which I've alluded to in my earlier post, is speed endurance (the amount of time where high speeds can be maintained).

I mentioned that my 5 km splits in the Reading Half Marathon were averaging between 22-23 minutes. George advised me not to look into it too deeply, but agrees that if I want to break 3 hours this year I would need to lower my 10 km time to around 35-38 minutes if I were to run a 10 km race. The only way to get faster over shorter distances is to increase the quality of my threshold and hill runs, and not focus on volume, which is something I've been guilty of (by association!) over the past couple of months.

Two key workouts that George proposed include:

• Threshold running
• Continuous hills

I'm already familiar with threshold running, having done forms of it in training already. George defined over the phone what he believes threshold running is, and I'll be trying to incorporate that definition into my training.

Continuous hills is a whole different workout for me. Also known as Kenyan hills, which was popularised by the Kenyans, who are of course the world leaders of distance running. Looking back at my past training schedules, hill workouts have been very few and far between. So I'm keen to include hill training as a regular run in my training programme.

As to the frequency of training, George stresses quality over volume. I've already known this, but looking at my past training recaps, I've been emphasising volume over quality instead. For the 10 week period, George recommends at least a continuous hills session, a threshold session and a long run session, with some recovery runs thrown in. I'm not sure what's in store in the 16-week training programme, but the 10 week "preliminary period" is designed to get me in the best possible form to allow me to undertake the 16-week sub-3 hour training programme. Without the long run at this stage, I'm using these preliminary 10 weeks as a means of improving my times at shorter distances, and I mentioned to George that the kinds of running workouts in this period is similar to training for a 10 km race (just without the faster intervals).

Lastly, I mentioned to George that I'll be running the Rotterdam marathon in April and the Copenhagen marathon in May. These will be like my marathon long runs, so to speak. As I expected, George advised me to take these slowly and run for the experience.

Overall, this was a very fruitful discussion with a top running coach, who has given me something new to focus on. I can't wait to get started again.

Itching to get the running shoes on,

Aaron

A few days later.....

Hi all,

It's been a few days since I've had a run. These few days are to recover from the Reading Half Marathon on Sunday, to get many things done that I've neglected over the past couple of months, and to just put things into perspective. Having trained hard for 16 weeks I've more or less had to neglect a few things which kept building up over time. I've moved into a new house at the start of the month, and have just finished unpacking! And I've managed to complete a bunch of tasks on my never-ending to-do list. It's now more manageable, though when I start running again in a couple of days, it'll probably grow bigger.

I've had some time to think about the Reading Half Marathon and take in comments from many people, most of them being non-runners. I can honestly say that I gave it my best and that I'm happy to have set a new personal best despite not meeting my original goal. Goals are supposed to be ambitious, but also realistic at the same time. If the goal is too easy, then that could hardly be called a goal.

In saying that, my goal is to break three hours. I could reach my goal this year, but on the same token I might not reach it this year. But it is still a goal that I believe is realistic for me. And it is something that I'll continue to work towards whether it will take me one year or 10!

I've received a lot of supportive comments from friends, family, colleagues and others who have helped me look at things differently, and allowed me to refocus. One colleague told me that we only appreciate things that we achieve slowly or not at all. If we are able to do something quickly we lose interest. How very philosophical.

My office manager told me that I shouldn't always try to push so hard, and told me about the mail girl in another office who ran the Reading Half Marathon for charity and a couple of days later is now walking around in crutches! Bizarre! This reminded me of a runner I saw collapsed on the side of the road, just 1 km from the finish line. He needed paramedic assistance. What price for trying to beat 90 minutes? By the way, the mail girl ran for a charity and finished in over 2 hours, however since she's not a runner the stress of completing a half marathon took its toll on her body, so she's just taking things easy with regards to moving around.

I also got a text from my former housemate, who has no interest in running but knows how much I'm passionate about it. She simply asked me if I had a good time and if I was okay. Messages like that can be very uplifting.

And I've had many kind comments from others congratulating me on my new personal best, to learn from the experience and not to get discouraged. Thank you all for that.

I've more or less figured out why I ran how I ran on Sunday. Simply put, I wasn't fast enough (obviously). I got my split times and they are:

• 5 km: 22:29
• 10 km: 44:05
• 15 km: 1:06:54
• 20 km: 1:29:41

My average times over 5 km are nowhere near the pace to be achieving a 90 minute half marathon time. Between the 5-10 km mark, I ran the fastest 5 km with 21:36, but that is still too slow. Having run mostly marathons and halves, I've never really prepared for shorter distances which specialise in speed over endurance. I say this because I haven't really got a 5 km race time, so I don't know if I can run a 5 km race under 21 minutes. This is one area where I feel I really need improvement. Training from now on will need to incorporate a lot more faster running to build speed and maintain that speed over long periods of time. It's amazing to see what my split times can reveal.

Also I've decided that in order to take my running to a whole new level, and hopefully break three hours, I've decided to get myself a running coach and have approached George Anderson, the 1:30 pacesetter from the Reading Half Marathon and the guy I was trying to catch up to last Sunday. George is a running coach and strength conditioning specialist who has a wealth of experience. Before, I was my own coach but sometimes I went about things the wrong way. No doubt this was evident when I spent 16 weeks training for the Reading Half Marathon, and only managed to improve by 2 minutes. Having someone experienced like George to guide me along the way will no doubt improve my running. George is going to call me tomorrow morning (and it's for free too) to discuss training direction, focus and sub-goals I may have. Very excited!

So those have been the few days since the Reading Half Marathon. Just a time for relaxing, reflecting, and refocusing. In a couple of days I'll get back into it. And this time I cannot wait.

Excited about things to come,

Aaron

Reading Half Marathon 2010 - Race Report

Hi all,

Here's my race report on the Reading Half Marathon, as it happened. In writing this, it will also help me dissect my performance, and what I can address in future with regards to my marathon goal.

In summary, I ran a new personal best of 1:34:35, a 2 minute improvement from last year. But I failed in running a sub 1:30:00 time. I did the best I could on the day, but ultimately came up short. At the moment, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what went wrong. And there's always the "what if's" that go through my mind as well.

I actually felt really good heading into the race. Having arrived at the stadium really early, I had ample time to find the necessary facilities, get changed and get to the starting blocks. The music was psyching me up as well, so I lined up at the starting block for runners finishing in 1 hour 30 minutes. I was hoping to stick to the pacesetter, George Anderson, as much as possible.

However, around 10 minutes to the start, I got a surprise when I found myself lined up with a pacesetter for runners finishing in 1 hour 35 minutes. Not to worry, perhaps I can catch up to George later on in the race. I couldn't see his pace flag as I looked ahead through the mass of runners in front of me. And believe me, there were A LOT of runners. The start felt really comfortable, but that was probably due to me being boxed in by the mass of runners in front. I tried weaving around them, which probably wasn't a good idea. Eventually the group of runners in front thinned out after around 2 miles and I was able to run my own race. At that point, I had already passed the pacesetter for 1 hour 35 minutes. I felt like I was working hard but I was confident that I would sustain the effort and reach George later on. Little did I know that I was going to be in for a surprise later on.

There were timing mats at 5, 10, 15 and 20 km this year. I managed to get to the 5 km mat in 22:29. I was over a minute off the pace, but I still felt strong despite feeling that I was working hard. Around the 6 mile mark, I saw George for the first time. He was running in the opposite direction after doing a loop on Kings Rd, so I figured that I was only about 400 metres behind him. I got to the 10 km mat in 44:05. Still a minute off the pace, but I was slowly catching up. Having managed to see George, I was about to pick up the pace.

Unfortunately the sun was high in the sky by then, and I started to get hot. I tried cooling myself by pouring water over my head, which relieved things for a bit. But I also felt myself getting slower in the later stages of the race. The Russell Street hill felt really hard for some reason. Every stride felt like an effort, and I tried not to stop or even walk for a bit. I got to the 15 km mat in 66:54, and the 10 mile marker in 71 mins. I did the maths in my head, and knew it was going to take something very special to break 1:30:00. My pace was 7.1 mins/mile, and I knew that wasn't fast enough. I would have to run the next 3 miles in 19 minutes, and I've never done that before in training or a race situation.

Alas, I wasn't able to dig any deeper and by the time I reached Green Park, I knew that the dream to finish in 1:30:00 was dead, and I have to settle on beating my current personal best as much as I could. I didn't realise how far off target I was when I saw the 1 hour 35 minute pacesetter a few metres behind me. How did he catch up? In an effort to outrun him, I tried pushing the pace one last time. It was pretty much agony as I just didn't have anything in my legs to go faster. On the way to the stadium, I saw paramedics tending to a fallen runner, wearing an oxygen mask in the recovery position. I'm thankful that I didn't suffer the same way. A few minutes later I crossed the finish line with a new PB, but also with shattered confidence.

After that, I managed to get access to the adidas VIP area for a free massage and food. I was pretty disappointed with the massage; I felt as if the masseur went too softly. Or maybe I was too angry with myself after that run to notice. But the food was great and I managed to help myself to two plates of delicious pasta.

I'm trying to answer what went wrong on the day. The weather did feel quite hot actually, so perhaps I could make excuses about the weather. I also lined up in the wrong starting area; maybe if I lined up in the correct starting area, I would've had an easier time coping with the masses of runners in front.

But if those split times are anything to go by, I think that I'm finding myself quite comfortable running at a certain pace. My 5 km time was 22:29, which is average but not that great. In my 5-10 km split I ran 21:36. I've never pushed myself to run a 5 km time faster than 21 mins. Having run the majority of my races over marathon and half marathon distance I haven't really been tested in shorter races, which emphasises speed over endurance. Maybe that is my current weakness, I don't know for sure. I'm sure that I have the endurance base, but maybe the speed and lactate threshold isn't as high as I would like them to be.

Looking at my overall performance, I went to McMillan Running Calculator to see the equivalent performance for a marathon based on my half marathon time. It gave a time of 3:19:29 which is pretty disheartening. My current PB in the marathon is 3:22:45, and I felt on the day of the marathon that I was on track for a sub 3:20:00 run if the weather was a little cooler. If I were to have any chance of running a sub 3:00:00 marathon time, I need to be consistently running around or below 1:25:00 times in a half marathon, and despite my best efforts today I failed to get even close. So the question is whether I'm able to break 3 hours in a marathon this year. Do I have the goods? Do I have enough time? Should I be revising my goal this year? Questions are ringing out like alarm bells.

Today feels like a setback, but this is a personal best so I'm happily going to take that. On a positive note, one performance doesn't make or break a season, so I'm going to take what I can from this and apply it in training. Physically, I'm actually feeling rather good at the moment, but that may be a different story when I wake up in the morning. I'll be taking things easy next week, and will get into proper training after that. It will be interesting to see what will change in my training as a result of my run today.

Weary, but still positive,

Aaron

Training Week 16 Recap

Hi folks,

Well I'm pretty sure you want to know about the Reading Half Marathon. All I can say is that I set a new PB of 1:34:35 in the half marathon, but I didn't meet my target time of 1:30:00. I'll write a report on the race once I've articulated my thoughts a little better. But first, the week's training recap.

Monday

Type: Intervals

Time and Distance: 40 mins, 7.4 km.

Detail: 15 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 6 x 1 min at 17.0 - 17.5 km/h pace, with 90 secs recovery at 8 km/h pace after intervals. 4 x 30 secs at 18 - 20 km/h pace, with 60 secs recovery at 8 km/h pace.

Thursday

Type: Intervals

Time and Distance: 35 mins, 6.45 km.

Detail: 15 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 4 x 75 secs at 16.0 - 16.6 km/h pace, with 2 mins recovery at 8 km/h pace after intervals. 4 x 30 secs at 17 - 18 km/h pace, with 60 secs recovery at 8 km/h pace.

Sunday

Type: Half Marathon

Time and Distance: 94 mins 35 secs, 21.1 km.

Detail: Splits: 5 km: 22:29. 10 km: 44:05. 15 km: 66:54. 20 km: 89:41.

Time between splits: Ran 21:36 between 5-10 km. Ran 22:49 between 10-15 km. Ran 22:47 between 15-20 km. Ran 4:54 from 20 km to the finish.

Average pace between splits: 5 km: 4:29 min/km (13.34 km/h). 10 km: 4:19 min/km (13.88 km/h). 15 km: 4:33 min/km (13.15 km/h). 20 km: 4:33 min/km (13.17 km/h). Finish: 4:27 min/km (13:47 km/h).

Slowed down in the 2nd half of the race.

Total Weekly Distance: 34.95 km.

Comments: Nothing much to say in this week. This was the 2nd week of taper before the Reading Half Marathon. I'll write more on the Reading Half Marathon in a separate post.

Improvements: For the whole of next week I'll be taking it easy. Strangely enough, I actually feel like going for a run now, but it'll probably be a different story when I wake up with sore muscles in the morning! When preparing for Reading, I haven't really given the Rotterdam Marathon any thought, and it's in 3 weeks time! Thankfully it's only going to be a glorified training long run, and not the real thing.

I'll start writing up my race report for the Reading Half Marathon right now. This is one report you don't want to miss.

Best,

Aaron