Catch up on a busy week

Bit of a funny week this.  Let's back up a little first though.

I've been struggling and feeling a little under the weather for the last few weeks.  This started a few days after setting my new mile PB of 5:52.  Just a few days later i ended up detonating on a club run, proper detonating mind you, full on hanging out of my ass, dead last type detonating.  The next day i felt a little under the weather so took a few days easy before having a shot at a parkrun 5k time trial that i'd been targeting for a little while.  The parkrun was a disaster, i really, REALLY wanted sub 20.  I ran a 20:23 in May off a 6:08 mile pb and in general feel in significantly better shape now.  It wasn't to be though and again i detonated and ended up with a 21:19, i wasn't happy and there's a chance some toys ended up outside of the pram.  This was a mystery to me and i'd already scheduled a rest week from training to clear up some niggles and figured that it was best to go through with that and see where it left me.  

The rest week was great, felt a little flat in work and the evenings but was so strong on the bike which was a pleasant surprise.  After the week was up however, running training was a disaster.  I felt slow as can be and was having to maintain excessive work levels just to run 8:30 miles.  This continued for a week with only very gradual improvements, i was putting a low 7 minute mile in on each run but it was feeling much harder than it should and evenings were regularly spent completely wiped out.  I figured i was probably slightly ill but nowhere near enough to merit a trip to the doctors.

That brings me to last week.  I've had a long standing target of a fast mile inspired by Marathon Talk podcasts Magic Mile promotion.  So i spent last Sunday evening killing myself around a track in the hope of finding out where i'm at speed wise.  Probably, needless to say it didn't go well.  Major pacing errors made me cut short my first attempt at 800 metres much to Sean's amusement.  In my defence it was a little windy but the extent of my timing foolishness was staggering, i think i did the first lap around 5:25 pace.  Second time around wasn't much better and i ended up downbeat again with a 6:25  

So, bad start to the week followed the next day by a long slow run, again with Sean.  The plan was for a slow, easy, reconnaissance run around the upcoming Where Ravens Dare trail marathon.  Well, it was slow.  Again, i ended up hanging out my ass.  Sean was patient but it must be fair to say he got a little bored waiting for me for the last three hours.  At least the course was good and i did enjoy myself in a sick way, i've been conscious that in my opinion i've been a little under-miled through the summer so the chance to inflict a good few hours suffering was something that won't do me any harm.  

Completely wiped out the next day, so had a rest day before getting a slow 8 and a slower 4 in over the next couple.  The general wiped out feeling returned though so yesterdays run turned into a bike ride instead.  Was beautiful though and i got to play with the Panorama feature from Ios6.

Followed up with a fantastic Coffee#1 Machiatto and a lovely walk by the river with Lis' and the kids.

I'll leave it there for now, i'm going to mull over strategies to deal with this tiredness and will post some thoughts soon.

Shoes and bike kit

So, what have i learned about shoes in the last year?  Coming from more than a decade where biking was my main interest i was always going to be interested in the equipment side of running.

The biking world is pretty obsessed with kit.  You only have to look at any of the huge number of bike sites online to get a feeling for just how kit dependent biking is.  Looked at from outside it seems kind of strange the levels of expense and obsessiveness riders will justify to save a pound of weight.  This from the same riders that have nowhere near exhausted the self generated skill or body improvements that would produce much larger returns that any amount of expensive tinkering.  

The counter argument to this is that our whole economy is based on smoke and mirrors anyway so why not buy nice things that we like?  How many of us really buy only the things we need?  I am after all writing this on a new iPad when i had a perfectly good first generation model.  The people buying those nice bike parts are spending their disposable income in a way that allows them to feel good, and in the great scheme of things in a way that is pretty healthy.  Is that really so wrong?  After a year away from the bike and after having the opportunity to view this behaviour from afar, one of the first things i did after picking up a rigid singlespeed was to replace the stem and seatpost.  :-S

So, onto shoes.  Over the next few weeks i intend to offer my thoughts on some of the shoes i've tried.  I'm not going to pretend that my opinion is going to be relevant to whether a shoe is right for anybody else.  I think i've come to realise that in terms of shoe choice, much more important than reviews of individual models, is an understanding of what type of shoes work for you.  

I've bought at least three pairs of shoes that in hindsight were mistakes.  All three were fantastically reviewed, and indeed, i still really like two of the three pairs concerned but i just don't get anything like an adequate amount of use out of them.  I now know i ended up buying them out of the desire to follow what i thought i needed at the time.

First up was the Adidas Adizero Boston 2.  Straight after finishing my first ultra and having decided i really enjoyed this runnning malarkey i thought i'd better get some road shoes.  With some biking hangover i figured that lighter was better and spent some time researching well reviewed bargains on the internet.  When they arrived they ticked all the boxes, boy were they light...and bright!  Within a fortnight though it was obvious that they were both too narrow and too firm for me.  £50 lesson number one learned, my feet are quite wide in the forefoot and i need them to not feel cramped.

It wouldn't be fair to call either of the other two pairs of shoes a mistake but that doesn't mean they don't offer valuable lessons.  

At around the same time as the Adidas i picked up some Inov8 baregrip zero drop, minimal, off road shoes.  Again, these are far too narrow for my feet, one of the perils of buying shoes online.  I still got some use out of them last winter doing speed and form work on local playing fields but i'm kidding myself if i trying to justify an £80 outlay for 20 miles in 9 months.  

Finally i picked up a pair of Nike Free 3.0's.  A friend had great experiences with these and managed to put over 300 miles on a pair and i couldn't help myself being interested.  Whilst nowhere near as bad a decision as the Adidas or the Baregrips, nevertheless they haven't represented good value.  I find the Frees completely comfortable for wearing in general life but ouch do my feet hurt if i run more than 3 or 4 miles in them.  The problem with this is that i only ever run less than that distance if i'm doing speed work of some kind yet the very flexible soles of the Frees mean that i'm mega slow in them.  As such they have been relegated to being a very comfortable, very good looking, very smelly pair of casual shoes.  Bugger.

So have i learned my lesson.  Sort of.  I'm on my third pair of Kinvaras now which shows that my urge to try shiny new things is at least under control and for trail stuff i've recently bought my second pair of NB110's as they offer a great fit and fantastic value for money.  But...  The new Inov 8 Trailrocs look rather fantastic don't they?

So, one year later...

I'd like to resurrect this blog as a means to provide motivation and perspective on my training.  In the 11 months since my last post running progress has been pretty good but has undoubtedly plateaued lately.  

The last year has been a really interesting learning experience.  I came into it with no real adult running experience though with relatively good all round fitness.  Translating this fitness to running whilst trying to avoid injury has certainly been a challenge.

The year has included another Ultra (42 miles), a marathon, and a few shorter races.  I'll not try to catch up with all of those in one go but perhaps look at each in turn.  I think i've learned that relatively minimal shoes work well for me, though there's always the nagging doubt in my head that i started down that route for fashion reasons and am now too scared to change for fear of messing things up.  Good advice i've read though says that if it ain't broke...

Shoes have also not been cheap.  in the 13 months since i started running, the total shoe bill adds up to around £470.  Ouch, hadn't quite worked that out before. As my mileage log only extends back to March i'm not sure of an accurate amount of miles in that whole period but i'd be pretty sure it's not more that 1500.   That's about 31 pence a mile!  Double ouch.  Though there probably are 400 miles left in a couple of the shoes i'm currently using.

Finally, it hasn't all been fun.  i did a parkrun a couple of weeks ago whilst feeling a little under the weather, unfortunately there's a photographer present for these events and the photo below shows just how much fun i was having.