Training Log Archive: Badger

Croydon 10k.

Planned this as a pre-Abingdon warm up race, but wasn't expecting to set a great time as there were quite a few hills and twists/turns in the course and I've not raced well at shorter distances previously just before marathons.

But it was a surprisingly good performance - I took the two 1km-long hills fairly steadily (at around 0.5-1.5 km and 5.5-6.5 km) and managed to run really strongly on the corresponding downs, and just felt pretty good throughout holding a good strong tempo pace right to the end.

Final time was an "official" 10km PB by 7 seconds (though I've still done 18 seconds quicker in training). Really pleased with that, especially after the disappointing 10km races I did in July, on an up-and-down course that I'm sure wasn't the quickest, and on something that wasn't a key target race. Hopefully bodes well for the marathon in 2 weeks' time.

Somewhat frustrating that I can pull off a half-decent 10km race performance when I'm not really going for it, but can't do so when I am! But some possible things to learn from this -

(i) I don't need a really flat course to set a good time
(ii) I've actually done more interval sessions during marathon training in the last few months than I did before the 10km races in July - that must have helped
(iii) the early hills forced me not to start too quickly, and the conservative pacing really helped - I was 38 seconds slower at half way today than at the Elmridge 10k in July, and ended up 31 seconds quicker overall
(iv) maybe having a bit less pressure on myself (i.e. not thinking "I must set a PB") helped me run a bit better
(v) sometimes I guess it's just about feeling good on the day, which is hard to predict or get right - but today was a good one.

Race splits - 4:06, 3:51, 3:49, 3:44, 4:03, 4:00, 3:47, 3:43, 3:54, 3:47.

Results - 25th out of 401

Regent's Park

Work to Hyde Park

Hyde Park. Intervals (5 x 600m, off 1:30 recovery) - splits 2:05, 2:07, 2:07, 2:04, 2:06 (average split 2:06, average pace 3:29 m/km).

Short intervals session - did them all faster than I meant to, but it felt very easy.

Bushy Park

Richmond Park - 3 laps of 11.6 km each in 55:39 (4:48/km pace), 53:14 (4:36/km pace) and 51:08 (4:24/km pace).

Great last really long run before Abingdon, 3 weeks out. Did each lap about 6 seconds per km faster than I'd originally planned, but it all felt really good throughout, the pace felt very comfortable even on the relatively fast 3rd lap and the distance felt fine - I feel I could have happily carried on to marathon distance reasonably easily. Ended up nearly 3 minutes quicker than the same run I did 3 weeks before Manchester in March, and it felt much easier (although to be fair I did that run only a few days after a nasty stomach bug), but this was a good confidence booster.

Generally I think my fitness is broadly on a par with where I was 6 months ago for Manchester. The tempo runs haven't been going quite so well which is disappointing and a bit of a cause for concern that the speed endurance isn't quite there, but all the long runs have been great and everything else has been going pretty well - and I don't feel quite as fatigued generally as last time. Abingdon isn't really my main upcoming target - that's the London Marathon next April - and I see this as more of a stepping stone to an attempt at a decent improvement there, and a way of motivating myself to keep up the high mileage throughout the year, so that I'll have a really good consistent base to build from when I start London training in December.

Still, I hope that another sub-3 is on the cards in Abingdon - not quite sure if I'll beat the 2:57 PB, but I'll probably aim to set off at that pace (so 88:30 half way), so quicker than the 90-min first half in Manchester, and then try to maintain the pace in the second half and see what happens as a bit of an experiment. The 3-week taper starts now.