Tag: Bournemouth Bay Half Marathon

Update on my 800m training – Apr 2023

April has been a quiet month. Entering it I had high hopes of recording a decent time at Bournemouth Bay 1/2M but those were trashed when I ran three minutes slower than last year. I tapered better this year and my legs felt fresher on the day but, come the run it was a gradual slide with the first 2-3 miles coming in at just under seven minute miles. From mile five onwards the pace dropped to 7:25 and worse. I just had nothing and have easily done better runs in training. I documented last month how I ran six miles in 42-mins in training.

What was strange was how low my heart-rate was throughout the run. It ended up averaging 149bpm which when I consider I do Steady runs in the low 150s was very out of place. What it does go to prove is how little use a heart-rate monitor can be.

I took five days off after the half (no running at all) then went to Poole parkrun and ran 20:57. Both my calves and glutes were sore from it and I had a very slow, dreary Sunday 10-mile run. I ran thirty minutes each day through the following week and returned to Poole parkrun knocking my time down to 20:39. The following week was the same routine, a slightly faster but still drudgy ten mile run then thirty minutes each day. This resulted in a 20:17 parkrun! Three weeks of easy running, no speedwork and my racing simply got faster by forty seconds.

It now seems clear that I’d fatigued my legs too much in training. When I look back I’ve been doing fifty mile weeks since last summer and training hard in the week. The heart-rate monitor numbers were correct but the monitor itself can’t tell you how fatigued you are.

My overall feeling though is one of disillusionment – I’m simply not cut out for distance running. When I compare my training to others, I simply don’t get the results from training that they achieve off much less. I train hard with all sorts of different sessions but ultimately I’m physically not cut out for long distances.

I’ve known this for a while, it’s why I started training for the 800m. Thus far I haven’t really worked on developing my speed to a high level because I’ve been trying to keep the aerobic side in balance. As I’ve written in the Ageing series, the best male sprinters of my age are running under 11 seconds for 100m, 22s for 200m and 50s for 400m. While I’ve not gone all-out at any of these I’d be surprised if I could crack 14s for 100m, 30s for 200m or 1min15 for 400m – that’s just too far down and a gap I need to close up. It’s not because I’m not capable, it’s because I haven’t trained for it in years.

I’m beginning to conclude this has been where I’m going wrong. The first two iterations of training I followed JackD’s plan as he is a proven coach. It didn’t really help me. Last year I began hill training using a progression from Steve Magness’ The Science of Running and I felt this made a difference despite only doing one weekly session for three months.

I’m torn between entirely given up on the distance work until I’m notably nearer to the age-group records or trying to keep the two things in balance. All I know is when I started running seriously a decade ago, I was probably quicker on the speed side. I have little objective proof of this but my legs were much bigger and stronger. I was quickly able to build some of my best times at parkrun, 10K and half marathon on lower mileage than I’ve been doing recently because I had the speed first.

This summer’s plan is to repeat what I did last April / May / June. I combined Steve Magness’ hill sprints on a Monday with Jack Daniels’ 800m training plan on Wednesdays and Fridays. I lasted about nine weeks before I could see I’d peaked and my aerobic fitness was declining.

This year I’m intending to do the same but with some changes. Where I previously followed Jack’s plan for runners covering 30-40mpw, this year I’m downgrading to the 20-30mpw plan with shorter recovery and long runs. Actually Jack’s long run has always lasted only about an hour on these plans but I always did something in the 1hr30-40 range in an attempt to keep my aerobic system up.

The other change I’m going to make, as I’m not doing a time trial prior to starting training, is to be conservative on my numbers. I’m based my training level on my half marathon and fastest parkrun which basically have me running at the level of a 2:36 800m runner. It’s not that fast but I’m aiming to keep my legs fresher this year through less intensity and lower volume of training. Again this 2:36 start point is why I don’t think I’ve got the speedside sorted. It really isn’t that fast given how in shape and athletic I am. I just haven’t trained for speed enough in years.

I resumed faster training in the final week of April. I did 6x8sec hill sprints on Monday which felt great and I loved despite blowing hard at the end of each effort. On Wednesday I did 6x200m with 200m jog recovery aiming for 43s, they avg’ed 40.4sec. On Friday my legs were perking up and I repeated the session, this time with eight efforts, and they avg’ed 39.6sec. My body felt like it was hitting new territory. Or at least territory which it hasn’t been to in a long time. My breathing was gasping in the final efforts. I’ve been there before but this felt different for some inexplicable reason.

Before each of the workouts, I’ve been doing drills and strides to help warm-up and ingrain good form. I began these eighteen months ago and change has been gradual, notably beginning to kick in at the start of the year when I was doing my last block of short intervals. This explains why my glutes and calves hurt after the half marathon. It was the longest sustained effort I’ve done using that running form and therefore being powered by those muscles. My stride seems to be lengthening and when I begin an effort I can hit higher cadences than usual. This all suggests I can get quicker and build my speed up to the levels I desire.

Update on my 800m training – Feb / Mar 2023

Winter training isn’t fun if the weather isn’t amenable to it. And it hasn’t been. We seem to have had windy, cloudy days through Feb and March. Fortunately not much rain although that doesn’t particularly bother me. But when you’re trying to do longer intervals or steady runs and track improvement week-to-week, windy is frustrating.

I came into these months looking to build endurance ready for a half marathon on April 2nd. I’m generally very pleased with how this training block has turned out although, as they say, the proof will be in the pudding. Let’s see how the actual race goes.

I did the race last year scraping under 1hr34 which was my fastest half marathon in almost ten years. While results-wise that is pleasing, I didn’t run my best race, my best running was left in training. On race day my legs had gone. They were heavy and lethargic and I couldn’t push any faster than 6:40/mile at any point. This despite having averaged 6:32/mile for three two-mile efforts on March 15th. The aim was to avoid that this year.

I went with the same training plan as last year but started the long interval build-up two weeks earlier to give myself more time for a longer taper. On Fridays I did my Steady hour run on the flats of the beach promenade whereas last year I ran a hilly local route. The knock-on of this latter point, as I shall explain later, is I ran quicker parkruns immediately the day after.

Below in the tables are the sessions I ran last year and this. You can see on the first week my mile repeats are very similar – both averaging around 6:55/mile with the first mile quick and then a slide as the endurance ebbs away. In the following weeks the body gets better at stamina work – holding a fast pace for longer and the efforts improve.

Last yearEffort 123456TotalPace
15-Feb6x1mile6:496:526:526:546:457:0241:146:53
22-Feb4×1½ mile10:0210:0910:0110:1140:236:44
1-Mar3×2 mile13:1613:1913:2840:036:41
8-Mar2×3 mile19:4220:2440:066:40
15-Mar3×2 mile12:5413:0413:1239:126:32
22-Mar4×1½ mile9:559:599:569:5839:486:38
This yearEffort 123456TotalPace
31-Jan6x1mile6:456:546:556:566:597:0541:366:56
7-Feb4×1½ mile10:0210:1910:2610:3341:206:53
14-Feb3×2 mile13:1113:5014:1641:176:53
21-Feb2×3 mile20:0720:3440:416:47
28-Feb3×2 mile13:3114:5314:3542:597:10
7-Mar4×1½ mile9:449:5610:0610:1640:026:40
14-Mar6x1mile6:256:356:346:426:496:5540:006:40

While the general improvement seen is similar, this year’s numbers were behind last year’s. While the weather wasn’t perfect, I can’t blame that. There was something else at work. What these numbers don’t show is the effort being put in. While I could add heart-rate data, that doesn’t really show it either.  This year my heart-rate has generally been 2-3 beats lower on these efforts which chimes with the slightly slower pace.

What’s not revealed is the effort I was putting in. When I ran last year’s effort, I would overcook them and go anaerobic. Gasping for breath in latter efforts and pushing hard to keep the pace up. I might have expected that effort to show up in higher max heart-rates, if not the average, but it doesn’t which is why I’ve moved away from gadget / data-driven training. This year I deliberately tried to keep my pace under control by focusing on my breathing and not pushing my self too hard. I still pushed hard but not too hard.

As a sidenote, it’s worth explaining what happened in the session on 28th February. The local roads were being dug up to install higher speed broadband cable so I went to the beach. I had hopes this would be quick as it’s on the flat but it was windy. Even so I set it up to have the benefit of the wind on two of my three efforts but my legs had nothing. On reflection, I was suffering a VO2 lull so I just tried to get through it as best I could. Trouble is, I also misprogrammed my watch and instead of having a 0.5mile recovery, the next effort started after 0.05mile which had only taken about thirty seconds to jog! I had to reprogramme the session on the fly and guesstimate the recovery. All in all it was, what we technically call, a balls-up. It would have been easy to get downhearted about the day’s numbers, but after all these years of running I have learned it is just part of the process.

Fridays and parkruns

I consider the hour long Friday sessions to be an important part of building endurance. They highlight where aerobic speed is at. This year’s sessions weren’t as fast as other years but what was incredible was going to parkrun the following day and running decent times. Last year my parkrun was around 24-25 minutes following a Steady run; in 2019 it was more like 27-28mins. That said, I think last year’s hilly route took more out of my legs but perhaps also provided the extra ounce of speed I was seeing in the long intervals.

DistanceRun TimePace per mileFastest mileParkrun
3-Feb8 miles1:02:187:477:0922:53 Upton
10-Feb91:07:007:246:4322:22 Upton
17-Feb91:12:248:007:2921:53 Upton
24-Feb91:06:247:206:5821:19 Poole
1-Mar91:04:227:066:5921:44 Upton
10-Mar91:05:267:136:4021:17 Upton
17-Mar81:00:187:317:11Tapering
24-Mar6 (local)42:007:006:52Tapering
26-Mar7½ (fasted)54:597:236:56Tapering

One reason why I’ve moved away from data-driven training is that some of my endurance days are coming in at relatively low heart-rates yet I’m not racing significantly quicker. My 21:19 at Poole averaged 6:50/mile at a heart-rate of 147bpm – well below the 152HR I consider to be the top of my pure aerobic for a Steady run. I’m hopeful these numbers point to capacity for getting quicker in the summer but I think they actually point to simply having better endurance which is not that important in a shorter distance race especially the 800m which I’m targeting.

Recovery

The notable improvement in my running seems to have come in recovery. While not every session has been as hoped for, my average speed through the week has been improving. Being able to run fast on Tuesday, on Friday, on Saturday and then sub-8 on my long runs is a far cry from where I was a few years back. I could barely run 8-miles at a sub-8 pace once in a week. On top of the effort days, my recoveries have generally been approaching or faster than 8min/mile – a few years ago these would have been well over 9min/mile.

I think this has been the route of the problem. Running easy runs too fast – it is a perennial problem among runners – I can screw it up as well as anyone! Although the runs are manageable and haven’t been causing me any pain, I think they have been creating muscle damage and fatigue. That explains why I can’t run faster in actual workouts. Again, the data isn’t good enough – my heart-rates on runs have been low enough to be classed as recovery but the tech can’t measure muscle damage directly. We can only infer it from how training is going.

In the middle of March I made a decision to go slower on my recovery runs and I think it was the right one. Along with the taper my legs have begun to perk up.

The final workout

I did my final workout on Tuesday. I call it a workout but it wasn’t there for training effect, only to keep the legs reminded of what’s coming up. I did a 30-min Steady run with a half mile effort dropped in after two miles. The two mile warm-up came in at 7:10 pace and then the half mile was unexpectedly quick. It came in at three mins exactly – 6min/mile pace. I did push it a little towards the end but considering I went straight into it off the warmup I was pleased with it. Thinking back to December 2020 and my first 800m time trial that’s essentially what I ran that day – except I had fresh legs and my lungs burned for an hour afterwards. This time I jogged home and got on with life

Half marathon on Sunday April 2nd

The rest of the week has been some easy 30-min jogs and rest days. I’m hoping the 800 wasn’t too much of a shock for the legs. If it was, it’s probably not going to go well and I’ll be left rueing it but at least knowing I’m set up for excellent spring training.

I’m not sure what to expect on Sunday. I believe my stamina is better than last year and therefore I will record a better time. Last year I struggled because of the misjudged taper, this year I’ve hopefully corrected that. The weather forecast is decent – sunny with 7-8mph wind – I probably can’t ask for much more than that. Let’s see what happens.

Streak ends

Two years later than planned but my running streak finally came to an end at 845 consecutive days of 5K or more. The daily average was 6.3 miles, a touch over 10K. It started back on Dec 8th 2019 at the Christchurch 10K. I ran 46:30 that day and knew I needed to rebuild my running fitness. I’d been running 10K in 42-mins in the summer but about three weeks before the race, I’d caught a mystery illness that affected me for five days – headache, fever and then a loss of fitness. I’m tempted to say it was some early variant of Covid19 and well, who knows.

So I targeted rebuilding fitness thinking I’d enter Bournemouth Bay 1/2M at the start of April 2020. But, news of the Covid19 pandemic broke and I held off entering and it turned out to be the correct decision as we went into lockdown in late March. By then my running was beginning to pick up and I was running a nine mile Steady run around the locale in 1hr9.

My run streak was out to 100 days and I thought I’d see how far I could take it, fully expecting we’d be out of lockdown in 2-3 months and everything would be getting back to normal. If it went on longer and I reached September with my run streak then I’d try to take it through to the end of the year so I could say I’d done it. Of course, it didn’t work out like that.

With the endurance looking good, I dived into a routine of hill sprints, bounding and plyometrics to strengthen the legs. I overdid it and by mid-June I was feeling overcooked, suffering aches and pains every morning, before and after runs. These went on through July and August even though I adjusted my routine.

At the beginning of September I made an honest assessment of the situation. As much as I wanted to try to get to the end of the year with my running streak, I knew four more months of the aches and pains would be too much. If it had been say 4-6 weeks I could have pushed through. So I made a deal with myself, I’d back off the training pace but if I was still in agony at start of October, I’d take some rest days and end the streak. It worked, as after three weeks, the pain had eased but I still wasn’t fully recovered so I backed off even slower than the 9:15/mile I was jogging at. Some way off the seven minute mile pace I was running for 5K.

The true beginning of my rebuild, and all that has come since, began on September 21st 2020. I cut my daily recovery runs from an hour to forty minutes and dropped the pace down even further. My first three runs averaged 10:02/mile, 10:05/mile, 9:48/mile! I kept a Sunday long run and this came in at 9:25/mile. Within 2-3 weeks, I was beginning to feel much better, all the aches and pains had disappeared and the pace was a little quicker. There was still the occasional recovery run which was closer to 10min/mile but my 3rd Sunday run came in at a more effortful 8:41/mile (HR averaging 146bpm). By November I was beginning to feel strong, to add in strides and look for ways to work on adding more ‘stress’ to the runs. Everything was beginning to feel comfortable.

At the start of December, ten weeks after starting my rebuilding; I began 800m training with a time trial. And since then my training has been ever focused on that. I ran every day of 2020 and 2021 and continued on into 2022. Finally two years later than planned, I entered this year’s Bournemouth Bay run. I spent February and March running the nine mile Steady run again. Where in 2020 it had peaked at 1hr09, now it was 1hr03. My run streak finally ended two days before the half marathon and gave the legs a couple of days to carbo load and hopefully be at their best. It didn’t turn out that way but that’s a different story.

And so having run the half marathon I began a new streak … I didn’t run for the next five days!

This is the moral of the story. Streaks don’t matter – they should support your training – not be the goal. My run streak ended at 845 days because I had a race coming up. I didn’t run for five consecutive days because I was recovering from it.

On reflection there were one or two days in my run streak where I would have been better off taking a rest day or doing the run at a different time of day, or shorter distance – even I’m not immune to flights of ego but it never came to dominate. I was ready to give the streak up in September 2020 when the aches and pains were at their peak but some adjustments allowed everything to get on track.

But the streak itself? Well, it’s nice to talk about but the experience is more important to me. I’ve learned so much from going out every day. You get to see how the body is affected and reacts to tiredness. You begin to learn how quickly you recover, to learn when the legs genuinely don’t have more and when they do. And, of course, my fitness has improved. Recently able to run nine miles at the same pace as I would have run 5K a couple of years ago.

For the most part though, I’ve simply enjoyed going out for a run or jog. There is no new streak. I doubt I will ever run every day for over two years again. I hope to be entering more races and taking rest days before and after them.

Eleven Bay Run Half Marathons – a retrospective

This year was apparently the 39th running of the Bournemouth Bay runs. I did my first in 1996 but it was almost a decade before I got back to it. My sporting time back then was dominated by playing and coaching volleyball; as well as going to circuit training and just about any other sport that I could find to fill my time with.

In 1996, like the majority of runners in yesterday’s race, I did a couple of months’ worth of basic training registering 10-20 miles per week at most in my preparation. I’d run my first half marathon at Portsmouth a month before and, in the lead-up to that, my only training aim was to do the distance in training albeit at a slow pace. I recall running on the February 29 (leap year) from Bournemouth pier to Boscombe pier and back (I reckoned it was 3-miles – not bad given it’s actually 2.85!). Then from Bournemouth pier to Shore Road and back (6-miles estimate, actually 5.6) and then another run to and from Boscombe pier to take it out to twelve miles which with a bit of distance to and from the car parked up on the East Cliff gave me confidence I would manage the distance. Then I went to Poole Sports Centre and played a volleyball match. That’s how I rolled in those days, cram in as much sport and activity as possible. No thought or understanding for recovery or the impact of doing too much.

I didn’t worry about how fast I was running, it was all about completing it. It was a time when my legs were big and strong from all the volleyball jumping and on race day I felt I couldn’t run any faster. I now I understand I simply didn’t have the aerobic training required for a fast half marathon and that reflects in my average heart-rate being in the 170s during the 1996 race. I distinctly recall running along, feeling comfortable, chatting to the chap near me and saying my heart-rate was at 177bpm and him replying “That sounds a bit high”. I’d tend to agree with him now!!

YearTime (HH:MM:SS)RankPace (min/mile)Avg. HR
19961:50:3510th8:26170-175
20051:54:46Slowest8:45—
20061:49:559th8:23—
     
20101:38:304th7:31—
20121:31:08Fastest6:57160
20131:39:436th7:36159
20161:40:178th7:39157
20171:35:373rd7:18157
20181:39:547th7:37158
20191:39:345th7:35155
20221:33:432nd7:08153

By the time I ran in 2010, I’d given up the volleyball and while my legs were still big I was running more regularly yet rarely more than twenty miles per week. I’d run a 1hr16 ten mile race three weeks before and most of my lunchtime 6K training runs were all-out efforts with a long run on the weekend. That was a game changing race as I set off fast from the beginning where previously I’d always lagged back then enjoyed working my way through the field. When I ran 1hr38 I was somewhat elated to take over ten minutes off my previous best.

It was late 2011 when I started taking running seriously and building my aerobic base. So at this stage, I still had the strong legs and while I didn’t fully understand how to train, I was beginning to learn. It led to my fastest half marathon ever and two-plus minutes ahead of this year.

What strikes me about most of the intervening half marathons is they’re all grouped around the 1hr39 mark. This could be a coincidence but I don’t think so. I’m sure it’s some kind of indicator of my natural level when I’ve done some training but not too much. The halfs in 2013, 2016, 2018 were all coming back from injury during the month or so before.

The one recent outlier is 2017 (my 3rd fastest) when I had deliberately done lots of jogging in the two months preceding it (400+ miles) and less than fifteen total miles at race pace. The result was good but I paid for it in the following days with soreness lasting until Thursday. Even so when I’d recovered three weeks later, I found myself running a 2½-mile effort run at 6:30/mile – significantly faster than the 7min/mile pace I had been running it in the weeks before the half.

Comparing 2012 vs 2022

In 2012, the average heart-rate was 160bpm and I spent fifty-nine minutes above it, maxing at 170bpm! Compare that to yesterday where my max only touched 160 a couple of times. It’s clear my aerobic base is improving yet that isn’t the only part of the story even for a half marathon. I was able to run a faster half marathon in 2012 with a worse base but the faster speed wasn’t there. I’m fairly sure my legs didn’t have enough taper from all the training but had I done so, I might have been in record-breaking form.

The flipside to the heart-rates is when I look back at my early Bay runs, I didn’t have enough of an aerobic base to run these sort of times. The high heart-rates in the 170s demonstrate that. There’s some kind of balance to be found.

Mileage isn’t everything

Another point of interest when comparing my 2012 and 2022 runs are my training logs for the preceding weeks. In 2012, my average weekly mileage was 33½ – 39, 26, 30, 36, 39 and 32; which is about 50% less than what I did this year when I was averaging 50.

I seem to run much better off lower mileage – perhaps in part because it leaves less to recover from. In those days I would take at least one day – Friday – off each week; this year I’d been running every day for over two years until I rested the two days before the half marathon.

I’m increasingly conscious that while some bang on about doing high mileage – it is not the be-all and end-all of running success. And certainly not critical if all you’re interested in is a parkrun or 10K race. Get quick over the shorter distances and the mileage will naturally increase.

I‘m hopeful once my legs recover I will be in a position to surpass everything I did in 2012. Back then I spent the year running sub-20 every Saturday at parkrun and training hard to break nineteen minutes but it never quite happened until the end of the year – after I’d done a block of endurance training. I always knew endurance training was important but could never quite understand how, ten years on I do.

2022 Bournemouth Bay Half Marathon recap

The result of my half marathon wasn’t quite what I hoped for. I’d gone into it with very decent training runs – the highlight of which was a session of 3x two miles which had been at 6:27, 6:32, 6:37 pace and consequently left me believing I might have a chance of breaking 1hr30 (6:52/mile). But it wasn’t to be and the run felt hard from start to finish as I ran 1hr33:43.

At eight miles I was just hanging onto 6:52 pace but there were hills to come and I faded badly. Reaching the 9th and 10th miles my quads began to ache and seize up. I struggled up the overcliff incline at about 7:40/mile with the added demoralisation of being overtaken by other runners. The steep descent down to Boscombe pier at mile 12 had the quads screaming as I hit close to 5min/mile and then there was the final run to the finish, again with runners overtaking me and barely able to summon a sprint at the end.

Going backwards isn’t a pleasant feeling but this was my 4th fastest half marathon ever and the 2nd fastest on this course – so it wasn’t a complete mess. And the other point of rationalisation is that six months ago, the aim of winter training was to improve my endurance base and I’m sure I’ve done that. My average heart-rate for the run came in at 153bpm which is notably lower than many of my past runs.

What went wrong?

At the start-line, I positioned myself near the front but my legs just never felt like they had any decent push. Usually if you’ve tapered well, when you get to a race you have to hold yourself back to avoid going off too fast. That simply didn’t happen and when I looked at the GPS data, I never went any faster than 6:40/mile apart from with the assistance of downhills. The mile down Alum Chine came in at 6:22!

Compare this to the training runs when I was doing back-to-back miles in training at 6:27/mile and there was something missing. I believe it was down to leaving my taper too late. Or more precisely that I barely did one. I’d been running fifty miles per week and then the week before the race was forty-five miles and then I only ran seventeen miles in the days preceding the race. It’s possible I dropped off too sharply but I’m inclined to think my legs never quite perked back up from some of the great training runs I did. I never felt the bounce of fresh legs going up and down the stairs at home.

Realistically legs being under recovered has always been a problem with my training and races. I tend to be a hard worker as I want to get the most out of myself. A few years ago, I used to know I was on the edge because the legs were sore, I got grumpy and couldn’t wait for the taper to begin. But these days it’s much subtler and I’ve gradually scaled back my efforts to account for this. But I simply didn’t scale back early enough this year. I felt I was flying in training and my legs were always feeling great. But the bounce disappeared about two weeks out which is when I started scaling back and I hoped it would return. It didn’t. On reflection, I should simply have gone out and jogged those last two weeks until the legs perked up. Even a three week taper wouldn’t be out of the question.

Quads

I don’t recall my quads ever hurting this much during or after a race. It may well have done but I don’t recall it happening recently – usually it’s my hips that hurt. I like to think this is a sign of how my running form is changing from the form drills I’ve been doing since October. It was the outsides of my legs that hurt all the way up to the glutes and I believe this is a sign I’m getting good hip extension. If I’ve got that right my stride should be lengthening as I push off more powerfully.

While I didn’t get the result I was hoping for I did come out of winter training with my primary goal met – improve endurance. I’m now ready to get back to training for speed as I hope (and expect) to improve my 800m time this summer. First I need a week or so to let the legs fully recover and then I’m going to start looking at hill sprints and other short interval work as a way to pick up the speed.

Update on my 800m training – Feb / Mar 2022

To recap: since my last 800m time trial I’ve spent the winter following the traditional offseason regime of an 800m runner. Building the endurance base while slotting in some fast parkruns to try and build leg strength / speed replicating cross-country racing.

After a couple of months my parkrun time began to drop but it was also clear my top-end speed was limited. This was never a problem for me when I was younger because I used to throw myself into every run, play sports with lots of sprints / jumps and do circuit training. But my thighs have lost 3-4 inches over the past few years by focusing on endurance over speed and I lost over a stone during 2021 (188lbs down to 174lbs).

By end of January, I’d improved my speed for a kilometre interval to 3:42 and moved back towards endurance work in preparation for the Bournemouth Bay Half marathon which takes place this Sunday. The plan was as follows:

  • Monday – 30-min recovery run fasted straight out of bed followed by ten minutes of form drills.
  • Tuesday – session to work on half marathon pace (aiming for 6:45-50/mile).
  • Wednesday – 40-min recovery run plus ten minutes of form drills.
  • Thursday – 1hr easy run around Poole Park – mostly flat.
  • Friday – an hour Steady run around the area – 7+ to 9 miles.
  • Saturday – easy parkrun. As I no longer wanted to work on speed, I only planned to do one all-out parkrun about midway through these last eight weeks just to keep it ticking over.
  • Sunday – while in an ideal world I would have lengthened my standard 11.7 mile long run out past the half marathon distance, I made a choice not to. I’m interested to see whether the last mile or so of the half is a debacle or whether the rest of the training sees me through.

Tuesday

I began February with a couple of 10K-paced interval sessions of 6x1K with 200m jog recovery. These were a follow on from the 5x1K with standing recovery I’d done throughout December and January. By using a shorter jogging recovery, I’d begin to improve the aerobic functioning of the muscle fibres.

 Effort 12 (uphill)34 (uphill)54 (uphill)
1-Feb4:014:124:094:164:174:23
8-Feb3:584:043:584:104:044:10
6x1K with 200m jog recovery intervals

My notes show the first session was “trying to fit in one session too many over the past five days” and when you compare the second week’s numbers there’s a clear improvement.

I’d like to have repeated this session for a few more weeks but I needed to move onto working at half-marathon pace where the aim was to do much longer intervals at a slower pace (4:12 – 4:15 per km or 6:45 – 50 per mile). The jog recoveries were a quarter of the distance covered.

 Effort 123456TotalPace
15-Feb6x1mile6:496:526:526:546:457:0241:146:53
22-Feb4×1½ mile10:0210:0910:0110:1140:236:44
1-Mar3×2 mile13:1613:1913:2840:036:41
8-Mar2×3 mile19:4220:2440:066:40
15-Mar3×2 mile12:5413:0413:1239:126:32
22-Mar4×1½ mile9:559:599:569:5839:486:38

While the first week was tough and I barely got on pace for the efforts, the following weeks saw a phenomenal improvement as the distance lengthened out and the body adapted. A couple of the sessions were run on windier days 7-15mph and, while the course I use was relatively flat and on a figure of 8 loop – running into the wind was sapping.

The standout sessions were the 4th and 5th weeks where the 3-mile efforts were worth 20-21 minute parkruns (back-to-back); and then the following week on the shorter three 2-mile efforts the pace came in at 6:27, 32, 37 avg. The final week was slightly disappointing as I didn’t get close to matching it but I think my legs were struggling after an amazing Steady run on the previous Friday.

Friday

With the 7½ mile Steady run I’d been doing through January now taking 53-55 minutes, I decided to go back to an old 9-mile route from home along Gravel Hill and through Canford Heath that would be more challenging due to a long uphill on miles seven and eight.

Run TimePace per mileFastest mile
11-Feb1:05:547:176:57
18-Feb53:23*7:106:43
25-Feb1:03:387:086:39
4-MarNo steady run  
11-Mar1:04:437:136:40
18-Mar1:02:367:016:35

Notes: 18-Feb run round the shorter 7½ mile route due to Storm Eunice with its 30mph winds that day. The run itself was never too bad. No steady run on 4-Mar as fast parkrun the next day.

The last time I ran this route in April 2020, I set a course record of 1hr08+ so the first run at 1hr06 was a significant improvement. To be running 7min/mile pace by the end of the training block is testament to how this run combined with the Tuesday Threshold session has made a significant improvement to my endurance and stamina.

Saturday

The only fast parkrun came in at 20:48 at Upton House. It was an extremely windy day and my legs were still fatigued from the Tuesday session. So it was only a small five second PB but I’m sure at Poole with fresh legs I’d happily be sub-20.

Sunday

The long run has continued to be early on a Sunday morning usually at 6am and always fasted, straight out of bed.

Having set a course PB on 28-January I was stunned by how badly the following week went. My legs were absolutely gone and barely had any pace. I think it was down to the change in training phase but gradually as the weeks went by the speed quickened up on these despite doing a challenging Friday session each week.

 Run timePace per mileAvg HR
30-Jan1:28:287:35147
6-Feb1:42:098:43139
13-Feb1:39:308:29135
20-Feb1:37:238:20138
27-Feb1:33:077:57144
6-Mar (parkrun on Sat)1:34:158:04137
13-Mar1:32:177:52144
20-Mar1:31:557:51136
27-Mar (10-mile on flat)1:15:327:28—

I finished off the training block with a 10-mile run last Sunday up on the flat past Bournemouth Uni, through Winton and back through Kinson. At 7:28/mile it was the fastest Sunday long run I’ve ever done and a real confidence booster ahead of the half marathon.

Mileage

The weekly mileages during this period have been 47, 51, 52, 50, 52, 51, 50, 47 miles for a total of 400 miles in two months. This has been by running every day of the week and accumulating 6 – 6½ hours training time each week. More often the weekly structure has seen Tuesday totalling 10-miles, Friday 9-miles and Sunday almost 12-miles for 60% of the weekly mileage.

Half marathon on April 3rd

I was really pleased with this block of training as preparation for the half marathon – I think there’s a high probability of breaking my 1hr31 PB if conditions are good. I’m hoping to break the 1hr30 but the legs have felt fatigued and I left my taper late.

Even so, the whole point of the past six months was to build a bigger endurance base during the winter ready for another round of 800m training and I’ve certainly done that. I think I’m at the fittest I’ve ever been, it’s just a case now of proving this with race times.

With this improved aerobic base, I’m hopeful I can now begin to push the speedwork harder. I’d shied away from running efforts too fast previously as that usually undoes my training, resetting my fast-twitch muscle to anaerobic and precipitating an aerobic rebuild.

I’m not quite sure how I will train in April. I need to give myself at least a week of recovery running after the half marathon and I’d like to see where my parkrun time is at. After that, I’m intending to resume 800m training and while I may use JackD’s sessions as the basis of my training, I’m going to tweak them to try and help improve my top-end speed. Building leg speed is becoming a priority and I may even start doing some hill sprints – I’m just nervous about that because when I did them two years ago, everything went backwards!

Anyway, let’s see how the half marathon goes and leave the future until after that.