Ross Running...

The plan is to blog every parkrun PB, and today was a parkrun PB 😁.  Yay!!!  My last blog was a 5k PB on the gym treadmill, but this is a parkrun PB, so much more valid!!  It was odd, as the day was quite hot, I felt very slow first thing in the morning, and I thought I had no chance of beating my 23:33 PB.  When I jogged the 3km to Frenchfield, where the parkrun is held, I felt sluggish.  That jog usually takes about 16 minutes, but today was 18 minutes, and I couldn't go faster.  I was definitely below par, but wanted to do another parkrun, even if slowly.  Because I knew I would be slow getting to Frenchfield, I had left the house a little earlier, so even with an 18m jog, I had a bit longer before the race.  Maybe the extra rest, or the slower jog to the start made the difference.  Or maybe it was because the sun went behind a big cloud just before the race, so conditions were, in fact, perfect!  Whatever the reason, I managed a par...

I mentioned that I would ping whenever I beat my parkrun PB, and today was parkrun day and lovely weather!!  But I have done the training plan on the gym treadmills all week, and today's plan included 5k!!  So I decided to do this instead of parkrun, as doing a bit of a longer run makes sense for half marathon training, and I would also be doing a 5k!!  One thing though, when I'm going fast on the treadmill I cheat by holding on 😁.  So the PB today is unrealistic.  It's on a motorised treadmill, and holding on, so not real!!  But for me, it was fast!!  The plan was 7 minutes of walking and an hour of running.  20 minutes gentle running with 4 very short fartlek sprints, and 20 minutes gentle running at the end.  But, in between this, it was a 5k run at max pace, with 2m walking before and 5m walking after.  An excellent session!!  I found it very, very hard, but I loved it!!!  And the 5k was done in 20:17 which is very quick f...

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I did a new parkrun PB on my first parkrun of the year.  It was 24:05 on the flat Penrith course,  I am certainly going to concentrate on getting my distance up for the forthcoming half marathon, but when the weather is good I will try and do the Penrith parkrun.  5k on the flat is a nice distance.  It's an easy 3k jog from the rental place to the start, and I like having done an 'official' race.  Your time is, I guess, recorded for ever after a parkrun, so that's kinda good.  And it gives an easy way of measuring speed over a short distance over the weeks/months/years.  So a cool thing to try and do most weeks.  Today was another Penrith parkrun and another PB, so I figured I will blog every time I set a PB!!  Ok, that is every week right now, but I somehow don't think that will last 😁.  Good to get a PB today, and I hope to get a couple more PBs in the next few weeks!  But if I can get my PB ...

The marathon was two and a half week ago, and I have been concentrating on doing some running but no long distances.  My knee, since the marathon, has clearly been a worry, and I am always, these days, a little worried about my calf.  I have had some knee pain, but I have taken it easy, and slowly built up my running to something decent.  I wasn't doing any long runs, so I have been mainly concentrating on getting a decent 5k and then, when knee ok, upping the distance to 10k and then, of course, hopefully beyond that.  Over the last week or ten days it's all started to feel a bit better, so on Saturday, I did my first parkrun since before the start of marathon training in early December.  I wasn't very quick, 24:05 on the very flat Penrith parkrun course.  But it's my new parkrun PB, so I am very happy!  I finished 91st, so I should clearly be looking to improve!!!  Great fun though!!  Aside from that I have also started doing the Eden Runne...

Thought I would ping a quick note to say how my recovery is going from that painful marathon.  It's Wednesday morning just now, so I guess I've had nearly three days of recovery and I have certainly taken it easy!!  Journey back from Manchester was a pain cos my car broke down on the M6, but the AA towed me, so all good 😁.  Due to my knee suffering a bit on Sunday I wasn't going to try running for a week or more, but due to lovely spring weather I thought I should get on my bike instead.  I haven't done that yet, but I intend to do that today for a bit, and maybe a longer cycle tomorrow.  I had some shopping to do yesterday and my knee hurt quite a lot on the walk there and back.  Probably an hour or two walking in total, and not huge pain, but significant.  So the cycling idea sounds sensible.  This morning I had another short walk of maybe 30m or so, and for most of it there was no pain at all - I figured I'd recovered!  But in the last 10...

The day of the Manchester Marathon, April 16th, had arrived!!  I am writing this in the early hours of the next morning, as post-marathon I wasn't in a great state for writing anything 😁.  I was running the marathon with my friend Kevin who lives in Manchester.  He did it last year in 3:26, but his training this year had been blighted by injury so he was happy to run it with me at what would obviously be a much slower pace.  It was great running the whole thing with a friend!!  I drove to Kevin's late Saturday afternoon, and then we got up around 7:30 on the Sunday to leave the house at around 8:15 for a 10:20 marathon start.  The whole event was quite well organised, with the only downside being the trams being very busy.  I wore a waist wallet so carried my phone and some gels, and wore an old jumper of Kevin's that was put into the clothes collection at the start.  Pretty much everyone was doing that, and I believe all the old clothes go to ch...

Saturday is typically long run day, but with just eight days to go before the marathon, today was a long but not very long run day.  It was planned to be two hours, and I am very pleased to realise that two hours no longer counts as a very long run!!  Long, yes, but not very long!!  It was the same plan as last week as far as expected power was concerned, but just with some time taken off.  But because of this being an hour less than last week, I figured I could try and go a little faster.  I was way off the power targets last week, and I still didn't hit them all today, but I was closer!!  If I ignore the easy running at the start and end, this run was 85m at a planned power of  236-245w and 20m at a planned power of 262-268w.  Clearly the first bit is a much easier power to maintain, but for quite a long time.  But the second bit is the phase where I get nowhere near the planned power!  262-268w is very hard and a lot of power for me!!...