When do you stop trying in a race?

Today was the second race that I have run in the last two weeks when I managed to get a bit despondent about my KM lap times.  Today it was the Welsh 5K Championships and an out and back course with the back bit into the wind.  Of course my KM times worsened by about 15-20 seconds into the wind and I thought I had blown it.  I kept going and to my surprise won a national bronze medal in my age group and beat a runner ranked much higher - only by 2 seconds but I still beat him.  So the obsession with lap times can be a hinderance.  Also it was clear that the lap times being announced by my watch were different to the final uploaded times and not as bad.  So the lessons learnt:

1. Do not treat the watch pace as gospel
2. Run the way you feel
3. Always push on (unless injured) even if you think it is a lost cause

My National Bronze Medal

Running reps on the track

Each year when it is dry enough a group of us use the local school grass running track to do repetition sessions, things like 300s and 400s to get our legs and hearts working faster. These always take it out of me so I must be working hard. But this week someone asked if we could run round the track clockwise rather than the normal anti-clockwise.  That got us talking about why we and everyone else  runs anti-clockwise round a running track.  One suggestion was that it might be that most people right footed and therefore with a stronger right leg it is easier to run round a left hand bend.  There are a lot of theories however, some a bit cranky and others that make more sense.  See here if interested. So we ran a few laps clockwise and all agreed that it felt a bit odd but might be good for us to even out the stresses on our bodies.  Until 1948 Oxford University ran clockwise round their famous Iffley Road track ( now renames as the Sir Roger Bannister track) so it might not be that mad. Mind you at that time the track was one third of a mile too so a bit unconventional.  As I was in Oxford I thought I would visit the track at lunchtime.  Note the runners in the second photo going clockwise!  there were a few doing it.

High Mileage and how to cope with it best

I average around 30-35 km  (18-21 Miles) a week and that seems to stop me from getting injured too often.  Injury seems to be the curse of all ageing runners and for me high mileage seems to cause it most.  However due to running three trails runs in three days with different members of the family I have discovered that it all depends on how fast you run and on what surface.  So having covered 35km in 3 days I am feeling fine - or I was until I did 400m reps last night. So the moral of the story for me is that if you are going to run high mileage do it slowly off road.  I am taking it easy now for a couple of days to let my muscles recover from the reps.


Here is a time lapse video taken when trotting round the Alwen with my daughter on Monday evening showing the route of the Fairy Freckled Cow Trail race.  The images were taken using an Autographer camera on my waist belt.

Running round the Brenig in the sun- 15k

With access to beautiful countryside and hills it seems sensible to make the  most of the great weather.  The aim of this run and all runs should have an aim was threefold:

1. To run a distance over 10K so that I would fine 10K easier than last week when I faded at the end - again
2. To do some hilly trail work in readiness for the Fairy Freckled Cow race round the Alwen 6 July 2014 in the hope that I will get under 50 minutes this time.
3. To try out some equipment - a backpack with Camel-pac water carrier and the Garmin Vibe

So how did it go.  Well slower than I would have hoped but it was hot and I was recovering from a cold.  The trail was fine and showed that normal running shoes Asics Cumulus 13s work just fine.  The water carrier was great but using the Vibe when running is a challenge which I still need to solve.

Here is picture from the Vibe:

And this is a video clip taken with the Garmin Virb of the end of the run.  Quite cool integration of the Map and running data.  I had to hold the camera with my hand hence the instability: