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[Terry Tibbs]

Good advice that. Or, do what I did and take the rest into work and watch the gannets descend!

[Terry Tibbs]

Good read about the 5k training, charles. A lot of it would apply to longer distances too, I think. Some fairly obvious stuff in there I haven't been doing, e.g. if you know your target pace, drumming that pace into yourself so your body just knows when you're doing it. It's really offputting looking at my watch every 30 sec, then adjusting up a bit, down a bit.

[charlesr]

Not sure of the exact time, but just did a 4.5km city centre race in ~15:45 (according to the person who finished behind me - so this could be all be nonsense). The only thing I remember was the first lap was 3:45 and I did slow on the 2nd and 3rd, so maybe it's about right.

Not really having any idea how fast I should be running it, my race plan was just to overtake as many people as possible. I felt OK with one lap to go, so pinned it. Reckon I could have easily kept that pace up for 5k. Which would bring me home in 17:30

[Terry Tibbs]

Whaaaaaa....

Jealous.

[charlesr]

e.g. if you know your target pace, drumming that pace into yourself so your body just knows when you're doing it. It's really offputting looking at my watch every 30 sec, then adjusting up a bit, down a bit.

Yeah, you really should be able to tell how fast you are going. Once a km should be all you need for adjustment.

I think to achieve this (could be different for others), you need good running form and the ability to hold that form consistently without thinking about it for a few miles. This then leaves you to concentrate on the rhythm and the target speed. Then once those are coming naturally too, you can then work on "how do I feel". I do this last bit a lot. Pretty much once every couple of minutes. How do I feel? Can I pick up the pace a tiny tiny bit next km? Do I need to half my intended miles due to tiredness and do a faster run instead? How long can I keep this up? You can't focus on this stuff properly if all the other bits aren't coming naturally already.

In tonight's race (because it was so fast and different from what I'm used to), my form was all over the place, so I barely had time to think about rhythm, speed and "feel" and instead just had to concentrate on "omg run smoothly, you look like a swift zombie "

[Terry Tibbs]

I have an hour's run today, which is supposed to be an easy-ish one, but I think I might chuck in a couple of 2-3 min faster sections just to practice my form at race pace.

[charlesr]

Assuming your race is 5k, then try more than 5 mins at race pace (if you feel comfortable trying that). You should easily be able to do 20 mins easy, 5-10 mins at race pace and then another 20 mins easy.

Alternatively, you can build up (tempo run) and down again, so start slow and then every 5 mins, kick it up a gear so you run 5 mins at race pace at 30-35 mins into the run and then slow down again. Variety is good Boredom is not.

[Terry Tibbs]

It's actually a 10k I'm training for. For some reason, the plan got me to do a 5k all out time trial on week 6/10. Hence my new record. So, current best 5k is 21:57. Goal for 10k race is < 45min. One month to go. Doable? :-)

[charlesr]

Assuming you have been doing enough general long running to support the extra distance, I'd say you can probably already do 45min. Were you about to die at the end of the 5k? Or could you have carried on at the pace for a little longer (even 500m)?

What does your plan say for the next 2 weeks before the taper?

[Terry Tibbs]

Distance wise I can do 16k quite comfortably, or 18-20k on a good day. The 5k PB was pure pain for the last km. Don't think I could have gone any further at that pace.

As far as the plan goes, it has me doing a couple of hard sessions every week, but quite mixed up, e.g. fast 1min, slow 1min, fast 2 mins, slow 2 mins etc. up to fast 5 mins. Between hard running days there are quite a few 60-90 min runs. It's not very specific about the effort used for these but I'm basically just going at a pace that feels right. Generally, this is around 5k/min, give or take (depending how much my legs are aching).

[charlesr]

If it was me, I'd run some of those 90min runs at around 140bpm and some around 150-160 (so some long runs are fast and some are slow). Don't change your routine this close though!

[charlesr]

I went to CrossFit. I like it. Read all about my fitness assessment here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...1325594&type=1



Note the excellent running form, relaxed shoulders, straight back, supporting core. That was tough!

See below for how non-experienced runners look:

[Terry Tibbs]

^That's one hell of a bowling technique! ;-)

My 60min run went well. I managed 12.3km in that time, and included a 10min section at race pace half way through. What felt good was that I did slow down after that section, but soon recovered back to a relatively decent pace. I also checked my watch casually at the 10k mark and realised I was only a few seconds off my PB for that distance, without really trying.

Feeling a bit more optimistic about < 45 now. :-)

[beecee]

just had my bi-weekly session on crossfit Charles, it can be gruelling, but if taught the proper techniques it is very good.

todays session was:
knee tag with 4 others, basically you try touch each other knees, if you get tagged you do a pressup. (3 mins)
3 sets of
5 pressups
5 air squats
5 tuck jumps.
then 30 sit ups.

that was the warm up
then onto a bit of weights.
10 reps of thrusters (bar only weight of 20kg) x2
5 sets of 3 reps increasing weight , got upto 50kg on my 4th and 5th sets.

then...

4 sets of
20 kettlebell lunges (16kg)
20 hand release, push ups.
20 kettlebell russian swings (16kg)
300m row.

i'm knackered!

[charlesr]

Yeah, sounds really good dude. If I was going to join a gym, it would be a CrossFit. Seems totally relevant to real life.