2012 in Review: The Year I Ran!

I can sum up 2012 simply with the following two sentences:

On 25 February I ran a personal best 45:44 for 10 km at the Deloitte Pretoria Race.

On 8 December I ran a personal best 37:34 for 10 km at the Great Run Challenge Series Race

An improvement of over eight minutes in 9 ½ months that I just never saw coming. Of course quite a bit happened in between, lots of training, joy, struggles, and heck even a marathon, but the story needs to go back at least 6 months.

              

Thanks to my borderline OCD when it comes to logging workouts and the memory bank that is Facebook Timeline, the sheer haphazardness of my 2011 became apparent. I thought I had put in a decent shift at least in the second half of the year when I made the commitment to run after supporting at Comrades, but just 345 km and swathes of empty weeks told their own story. Two 10 km races and PB of 48:00 was something to work off, but 2012 became a make or break year. Even in my school years of forced participation running was always a hit or miss affair and my adherence to training was always mediocre.

At the start of 2012, the buzzword was surely consistency. A consequence of consistency would be that I would run a lot more, but to get there I would need realistic but challenging goals to guide me. When I set my goals for 2012, I had already embarked on the first week of a half marathon training program so that was my starting point. My PB of 48:00 for 10 km predicted a half marathon time a shade slower than 1:45 but to push myself I set the target to 1:40. My goals for the year were set as follows

• ·         Half Marathon: sub 1:40
• ·         10km: sub 45:00
• ·         Finish a marathon

These goals, particularly the final one would really test my limits. Despite running sub 50:00 for the 10 km I had yet to finish the distance without resorting to a run/walk strategy for the second half of a race. Added to that was the fact that I had never run further than 10 km in a race or in training.

The quest got off to a spectacular start! I had a 10 km ‘fitness barometer’ race scheduled at the end of the first week of my 10 week half marathon program. Off-training over the festive period had turned into a long hiatus and by mid-February I had put in a solitary awful 7 km. So the race, the aforementioned Deloitte Pretoria Race, would give me an idea of how ambitious/crazy I was being. Despite once again having to employ a run/walk strategy I was surprised to run that big PB that set the ball rolling.

The half marathon training program introduced me to elements of a complete program that I may have neglected in the past. It incorporated a lot of easy running, something I was rubbish at, interval training, fartleks, still my favourite the tempo run and the introduction of long runs. My first ‘long’ run was 10km at 5:45 pace and it was an absolute blast. Even time wise, I had never run that long before and it was a confidence booster. The long run was extended week on week. While the tempo run was me in my element, there’s something about running comfortably hard, the track sessions were destroying me. I ended up doing most of my speed as fartleks on the road instead.

Throughout the course of the program I felt myself getting stronger though not necessarily faster. In March I ran another 10 km on a hilly course and ran outside my PB but a respectable 46:20. But I had a break through moment in early April when I did a 10 km tempo/time trial. I ran through the whole way and matched the 46:20 I had run, and for the first time didn’t feel shattered at the end. I spent the following week in Cape Town and had a second moment, my 16 km long run, done along the beach front in Muizenberg and it was the first time that I really felt like I had made progress and would get through a half marathon. I never once felt tired, didn’t need to stop for water and even my gel. I saw the most gorgeous sunrise and had waves crashing beneath for much of the run. I returned to Benoni, with the first inkling that I could and would succeed with the half marathon.

I had picked the Wally Hayward race to end my 10 week program on but my debut half marathon actually came earlier. Staying in Benoni, the Slow Mag marathon took place two weeks earlier and my rubber arm was gently twisted and I decided to do the race as a long run. I had planned to run 19km that day anyway so an extra 2 km did not seem like a big deal. The first  5 km was innocently done at marginally faster than training pace ~5:15/km but by 10km my average pace was under 5:00/km as I got into the spirit of the event and decided to race it anyway. It was the third wow moment of the year. I finished off the race in 1:38:42, well within my 1:40 target and actually ran sub 45:00 for the 10-20 km portion. I had never felt that strong before in a race! Two and half weeks later, I crushed that PB further running 1:35:01 at Wally Hayward. Wally was almost a perfect race, with each 5 km split faster than the preceding one. And the famed sting in the tail did not break me.

Goal #1 achieved.

While still giddy and on the PB train, I entered a 10 km race just 4 days after Wally Hayward, knowing that in both the two half marathons I had run, I had broken the 45 min mark in the 10-20 km portion. The route for the Jackie Mekler race was fast with some hills, and I was still fatigued from the half marathons but I really dug in deep and smashed my 10 km PB and the 45 minute barrier, running 42:38.

Goal #2 achieved.

This left me with 26 weeks to my target marathon. I picked, despite reservations from a number of people, the Soweto Marathon. I won’t rehash all of the details as I posted enough about it; suffice to say it was a tough endeavour. I needed to go through it though. This year was about commitment and pushing myself. Marathons and the training are not for the faint hearted and I learnt going through one particularly tough episode where I almost quit. Oddly at the end of that week, I ran a PB for 10 km, 39:04 at the Wanderers Challenge! While PBs fell all round, I ran 17:49 for 5 km, I cracked sub 40 10 km and sub 90 for the half twice for both distances, just being able to go out and run for 3 hours was something I never thought I would be able to do. The marathon itself was a chastening experience but I’m glad I gave it a good go and I’m proud of my 3:38:10 finish.

I finished a marathon dammit!

Goal #3 achieved.

That is not where it ends of course and I have already looked forward to 2013 and there are bigger better plans in the pipeline, the subject of another blog post.

But before jumping ahead, there were still 8 weeks left after Soweto Marathon and while I had promised myself some time off, I really couldn’t stay away and managed all of 4 days of no running and within two weeks I was lining up at the start line of a race, the Kolonnade Retail Park 10 km which resulted in a 38:22 PB! Three weeks later that PB would prove to be short lived as I improved that further by running 37:34 at the Great Run Challenge Series II race at Weskoppies. My final race of the year was the Old Year's Race on 29 December where I managed my third fastest 10 km time, 38:24, in incredibly testing conditions, with the temperature at the start being a body melting 32°C despite the 17:00 start. 

What the last 8 weeks of the year revealed to me, and a hint of what’s in store for 2013, was how much I really enjoyed racing short and fast. And while getting to the end of a 42.2 km race is the standout moment of the year for me, I’m really proud of my 10 km running. Throughout the year I improved my time for the distance from 2011 by over 10 minutes or more than 20%!

As I said at the beginning part of running consistently would have the knock on effect of me simply running more. My tally for the year stands at 2079 km, a weekly average of 40 km with a peak of 82 km, a monthly average of 173 km with a peak of 262 km. The marathon aside my longest run was 33km and 3:11 for time on the road. Racing was also a big feature of my year, collecting 21 medals, a fair chunk of them silver medals. 

The 2012 Medal Bounty!

The standout points for the year for me are as follow:

• A 17:49 5km PB
• 1:25:28 PB for the half marathon
• 37:34 PB for 10km, five sub 40 runs and 6 PBs
• Finishing a marathon!

After such an overwhelmingly successful and consistent 2012, here’s to an even better, more focused and even more specific 2013!

Almost the Perfect 10!

Post-marathon running has been all about chilling out and letting my legs do what they enjoy. That means (relatively) low mileage and high intensity. My biggest week thus far has been 54km, the longest run mo more than 15km and my average run is in the region of 8-9km. Looking at my dailymile profile another major change is the average pace of my runs which has has dropped from ~5:00/km at the peak of my marathon training phase to under 4:30/km. It's still hard work but honestly I love it! This is just so different from the (relatively) slow high volume training I did for over three months. I'm rarely out for more than 40 minutes, I work up a sweat and I feel energised after each workout.

Last week was a revelatory week for me, that wonderful feeling when you work through something in training, and struggle a bit but come race day, the moment to deliver, everything clicks.

One kilometre at a time

This past Tuesday so the return of my favourite track workout, 1km repeats. I don't know what it is about the session but 5 x 2.5 laps of a standard 400m track is the sort of workout that challenges my resolve yet remains completely and always attainable. It takes me a while to get inot 400m reps while mile reps are just too long, 800m comes close, but 1km hits the sweet spot. Right now I'm not too fazed by what pace I do them in. I'm concentrating on even effort and good form. I find it hard to work off a pace target right now because I haven't reached any kind of peak or plateau phase. I also respond well to speed training so find that week on week, my comfort level can shift dramatically.

1km Interval	Time	Recovery (600m)
1	03:30.8	02:46.1
2	03:23.4	02:38.3
3	03:22.4	02:50.3
4	03:22.7	03:01.6
5	03:23.7	-
Average	03:24.6	02:49.1

The first interval was just me getting into the swing of things but I felt good so decided to push a bit harder on the next four. I was really happy with my consistency, and that was I able to hit 81/82s laps without straining too much. The fourth and fifth intervals were tough but I maintain the pace. This session really hit home how much I have improved this year. Early in May I did a session of 1km repeats, where I couldn't even do the 5th and I was hitting around 3:53-3:56. Seven months later I have managed to average 3:25 for the same session off shorter rest, less than 3 minutes compared to 5 minutes then

Special Blocks

I have this morbid fascination with elite athletes and their training, where even though I know I will never train like them I don't think it hurts to apply some of their principles to my own training. The best in the business are Kenyans, so I have been looking to them for some inspiration. Something I came across was doing special blocks to simulate the demands of a race without sabotaging your training by doing the whole event. The principle is more applicable to marathon training but I tried it with my 10km training. 

Thursday is my double up day, I usually do a hard session in the morning and a recovery run in the afternoon. Last week I instead did my tempo as usual in the morning and ran my 5.2km run as a hard effort. In the morning I did 5km of hard running at target race pace and added to the afternoon effort made up ~10km at race pace.

The morning session was tougher than I expected, a combination of the warm weather, the monotony of lap running and the fact that I did it on grass. My 5km effort was in 18:46, 3:45/km, bang on target! The afternoon session was better, out on the road, and I hit 5km in 18:33 before easing back to the end. So my combined 10k m effort was 37:19.

The trick of course is to put those sessions together come 29 December.

Race Day: Great Challenge Series 10km

I'm working off a 3 week cycle, repeated twice, with the goal at the end of the six weeks to hit around 37:30 for 10km. So I did the Kolonnade 10km 3 weeks ago to see where I was post-marathon, and the Great Challenge 10km fell neatly into my three week cycle. I had heard the course was fast but tough, like Tom Jenkins a flat course with one steep climb thrown into the mix.

To be honest while I was hoping to break my 38:22 PB from Kolonnade, I wasn't expecting to run much faster, my goal was to be between 3:48 to 3:50 pace, good for 38:00 to 38:20. And of course that tough but fast description really had me scratching my head, but as you can see from the course profile it is actually completely accurate:

That's what a tough but fast course looks like!

Unlike the past two races where I ended up bogged in the pack. I positioned myself in the second row at the start and got off to a good start. The pace at the beginning was hot! I found myself around some speedy looking runners but I was feeling comfortable. Another than the short climb at the beginning it was plain sailing but I was worried about the pace and tried to settle down. I was through 2km in 7:00, and 3km in 10:35 and then calmed down a bit to go through 4km in 14:23! 

Then we climbed. And we climbed. And we climbed. It was a solid kilometre and suddenly I was through 5km in 19:04 after a 4:41 split. There was still a bit more mild climbing to the turnaround point, before the descent. You generally think you can make up time but even though I cruised back down the hill, my little legs can only turn so fast, and my return split for the 7th km was a 3:28 according to the Garmin, not much time gained back! 

I didn't pay too much attention to my splits as I hurtled back down the monster hill, but I hit 8km in 29:54, which would have been a PB for the distance, and as my thighs started to burn I just focused as I did during the speed sessions before in just maintaining good form and effort. Even a couple of 4:00/km splits would get me through and I pushed hard, but wishing for the end! And as I ran past the timekeepers and stopped my clock I was alarmed to see the time!

Madness!!!

37:46!!!!!

I was really blown away by the time. I know I am in the best shape of my life, I can feel it in training but I wasn't expecting to run a time like this just three weeks in, and only five weeks out from that first marathon. The special blocks was tough and I was still thinking three weeks down the line to get into the 37s.

My dad always tells me that if the last two kilometres are not challenging then I haven't raced hard enough, so I know I really gave it everything. Additionally I managed to negative split the race, 19:04 and 18:42, so it was well paced too despite me thinking I had gone out too hard!

Breaking into the 37s also took my cumulative tally of improvements over 10km to more than 10 minutes for the calendar year. The tally now stands at 10:14 or 21% improvement. I know this rate is unsustainable and in fact since breaking into sun 40s, I have dropped two minutes over 6 months, while the previous three months saw me drop more than 3 minutes. Minutes will become seconds will become parity but I hope to carry on into 2013 still chipping away.

So looking forward, the goal for the Cid to Cid Old Year's 10km on 29 December is still 37:30 (3:45/km or 16km/hour) as my A goal. If things go well on the day I would love to try for a sub 6:00/mile pace, which is 37:11 or faster as a B goal. Otherwise just another PB to end what has really been an awesome year!

EDIT: Official results are finally out for the Great Run 10km, 37:34 for 23rd place!

Speed Thrills: Just missing a PB and hitting the track hard

EDIT: It turns out that the Kolonnade Retail Park 10km went much better than I thought and my official time was 38:22 for 27th place out of 1672 finishers

Over the last 3-4 months, I just forgot how much I love running fast. Now of course fast is relative, on a single tracl repeat I would struggle to keep up with Mary Keitany while she is scorching her way to a sub 2:20 marathon, but for me it's blinding fast, and it's thrilling! I haven't done a true speed workout since mid August. as session of 6 X 800 at 90s per lap. My body sent out alarm signals after that workout, and to get through marathon training I dropped the fast stuff and instead supplemented my endurance runs with session of long marathon pace repeats that eventually became one continuous running. Looking back those were long arduous sessions. There was no rush just work, work, work. That's not to say I didn't enjoy them, but going round at 1:44-1:48 per lap for 5-10 laps worth per repeat is a different kind of beast to even 90s laps.

After my harrowing but amazing experience doing my first marathon I was concerned for my speed. Leading up to the marathon I had run my 10km PB of 39:04 and them lowered my half marathon PB to 1:25:28, but those races came 10 and 5 weeks before the marathon respectively. With no speed work, the only reminder that I still had anything approaching a fifth gear were a couple of ~5km time trials where I was able to hit 3:40/km splits admittedly on elevation conjusive to fast times...i.e dowhill! I had convinced myself I would have to start again.

Post-marathon, I endeavoured to take 2 weeks off but I couldn't stay away and ended up following Hal Hidgons recovery plan, well the first two weeks of it. It involves gradually easing back in and to be honest the first couple of runs hurt a lot. By week 2 though I managed a 6km tempo and the aforementioned time trial, and my legs were suddenly remembering something they used to do long before marathon training had become the routine.

The feeling the way back slowly after the marathon comeback race

I decided to enter a 10km on 17th November that promised a flat, fast and easy route. This being a Gauteng race in Pretoria, I was skeptical of that description but I really wanted to get out anyway. The race was at the Kolonnade Retail Park in Montana, Pretoria North, a bit out of the way but some careful planning, pre-entering and leaving reasonably meant it was a stress free morning and I even managed to warm up properly. Making my way to the start I was relieved to see that it looked as if walkers and runners had a separate start. A relief, I thought.

I positioned myself close to the start balloon, which I hoped would help me get away fine. While I wasn't planning to race I hate getting caught up in the pack early. Bizarrely, the runners were filling in from the front, so my position in close proximity to the start quickly became in not so proximity to the start. This meant that getting away was difficult once the gun went, 6 minutes later than the scheduled start. Then the separate start for runners and walker proved to be ineffectual as the merge was literally immediate meaning there was another bottleneck as soon as the merge took place. Grrr.

This is my pace graph from my Garmin

Ridiculous

I din;t actually start running until around 50s on my watch. Playing around with the player view on Garmin Connect it was not surprising to discover that I covered just 50m in the first 48s and 100m up to 57s when thankfully I was now at full speed.

From that point on it was just bliss. I ran a perfect race, dismissing immediately an fears I had about marathon running obliterating my raw speed. The read out from the Garmin is delight. Other than the first kilometre and the 9th kilometre, every split was below 4:00 and just one slower than 3:50. In reality I am actually in better 10km shape than I've ever been. Taking out that horrific start, I was rocking along at 3:50/km for almost 10km, and with my own loose maths, would have knocked out something in the region of 38:30. The course was 90% flat with about 60m eleveation but having just run a marathon two weeks before I will take that! My unofficial time was 39:16 just 12s short of my PB and in the race conditions and my own physical condition I think it is still a really good time and something for me to build on going forward.

To Tempo and To Interval

Whilst I have already chose my next marathon (Slow Mag, 14 April 2013) and have a rough skeleton of a shorter (12 weeks) but higher mileage program (90km/week peak and and an average of 72km/week), I have decided to keep myself busy by running fast in the forthcoming 9 weeks, starting with a goal to break my 10km PB. My goal is aggressive  sub 38:00 and ideally a 90s PB which would put me in the 37:30 range. I genuinely believe I have the leg speed to do it but I need to seriously worked on my pace stamina and also just need to be brave on race day! My training now is 6 weeks long and involves 3 weeks of stamina based efforts, 2 weeks of speed and a week to mini taper to the Old Years race in Pretoria on 29 December, a flat fast course with a sting in the tail

To work on that stamina means running my favourite workout, tempos! Tempos were staple of my running diet for the first half of the year and I believe were the primary contributor to my initial wave of PBs. They gave way to more endurance but now I can devote one weekly run to this workout. I plan to start off at 20miutes and build up to 35 minutes of tempo pace running by the end of my program. The tempos will be supplemented with cruise intervals later on as I do raw speed training. My first tempo this week was a ~7km run (7.4km it ended up as) with a 5km portion at  tempo pace. My tempo zone is 3:50-4:00 and I nailed the 5km in 19:30 (3:54 pace), right in the zone and pretty much even pace/

Today, I did a session of short track intervals, 10 x 400m, looking for control, good form and most of all consistency.While I keep thinking I have done speed work, in reality until today, I could count the number of genuine interval sessions I had done in the past 10 months on my two hands, and none of them were particularly high intensity or high volume. While I have slowly been warming up to running laps, and will extol the virtues of the task to anyone who asks, I am not overly enthusiastic about the monotony and have rather done fartleks on the road instead.

So I wasn't really sure what to aim for but since my 10km best case target pace is 3:45 I wanted a string of sub 90s 400m to get these creaky legs turning again. And since it was early on in training I didn't want to push too hard hittin 5km pace and faster.  This is how it went in raw numerical detail.

Interval	Time	Pace (/km)	Recovery (300m)
1	86	03:35	86
2	84	03:30	86
3	83	03:27	91
4	83	03:27	92
5	83	03:27	96
6	82	03:25	90
7	82	03:26	90
8	82	03:25	92
9	81	03:23	95
10	76	03:11	93
Average	82.2	03:25	91.1

To be honest I was really surprised with that outcome, both the pace and the relative comfort with which I managed them. Somewhere in the middle of intervals 7 and 8 I doubted I would get through but by the 9th I was good again. And the 76s was on a whim, I just decided to push a little bit harder and see what would happen. What really makes me happy is that other than the two outliers the first and the last, that is some pretty consistent running, and I didn't struggle too much as the session progressed. Later on this will be bumped to 12 x 400 and I'm not even remotely worried anymore. While I knew I would I would enjoy the tempo, I was expecting some serious burn. 

Coming up I will do some 800s and 1000s before revisiting the 400s again in week 4, then closing off with 1000s in week 5 and low volume 800s in the final week, all hopefully at this pace of 3 around 3:25-3:35, corresponding to 3km-5km pace for my target 10km time. Week 4 and 5 will also see  me doing mile repeats at cruise interval pace so closer to 8km pace just to maintain some stamina.

I have once check point, a 10km race on 8 December where I should be comfortable running at or just faster than my current PB pace of 3:54. I'm not going for any fireworks just yet and will in fact be doing that race at the top end of my tempo zone.

So post-marathon running is off to a joyful and fast start and I hope to keep it up!

City2City Half Marathon: The PB run continues

Following the Irene Spring Race last weekend things didn't go according to plan. Follwoing months of tough guy bravado over my health and my running load my body finally succumbed. Running in the rain at the race probably didn't help either. I was booked off with respiratory tract infection and ultimately got some much needed rest, in bed for two days.

That rest served me well. Having entered the Bonitas City2City Half Marathon, I was keen to do the event.  All of the races I have done so far, Wally Hayward excepeted, have been undoubtedly local events, and City2City definitely has a big race vibe to it. It's not in the league of Comrades or Two Oceans but definitely feels more similar to those events than anything else I have run.

To recap then this was the challenge that I  and 2100 odd half marathon runners, 3500 if you include the 10km runners who shared the first 9km with us faced:

City2City Half Marathon course and profile

After collecting my race pack and goodie bag on Saturday morning, I drove the first 12km to get a sense of the challenge. I've run in the area before while doing the Nike+ Centurion Run Club so I was familiar with the general terrain, as out 5.3km route climbs up to Glover Avenue albeit one block up. I knew the first half was tough but after driving it I was expecting particularly that stretch between 4km and 6km to be a stinker that needs to be respected.

Sunday morning was an early start. I was up by 4 am, and had my usual morning fuel, 100ml yoghurt, a banana and a cup of coffee. Thankfully it would appear my stress induced bowel movements are now a thing of the past. My mother and brother were also running, doing the 10km, and we were off by 4:55 to head to the venue. I was worried about parking and traffic and I was overly cautious as we parked and at the start by 5:30. This gave me plenty of time to warm up and mingle and be ready for the 6:30 start.

The first km was a bit of a disaster as I somehow contrived to start then pause the Garmin, so I was getting pace information but no time or distance. I only figured this out as I checked my time at the first kilometre. So I then had to rely on ~20km of timing data, and adding on a predicted 4:00 for that first kilometre.

My goal was to respect the first half and finish strong but a discussion with a fellow runner on Twitter planted a seed that took route from that first kilometre. Since the second half is easier why not be aggresive in the first half anyway since I'm less likely to pay as the downhill trend would be more forgiving than a standard route?

And that's pretty much how it went. I hovered around 4:00/km pace throughout. My exact splits are difficult to guage of course but some reverse maths, has my first kilometre at 3:53, so I estimate that I went through 5km in 20 flat, 10km, in 40:30, 11km in 44:30, 15km in 1:00:50 and 20km in 1:20:55. Attacking the first half meant that I didn't negative split the race but I doubt if I had gone through 11km in 47:00 like I had planned to, I would have managed much quicker than 40:00 for that last stretch. My aggressive first half was still sensible in the end and gave me a time that I didn't think was possible at the start. As I rounded the final bend at the Centurion Rugby Club to see the clock just ticking to 1:25:20, I was over the moon.

At the finish...PB!!!

I crossed the line officially in 1:25:28. This was an improvement of 2:40 over last weekends time, and a crazy 9:33 from my Wally Hayward time on 1 May, and a further13:14 over my debut half marathon at Slow Mag, which was as recently as 15 April. It was another silver medal to add to the collection, and 77th overall out of 2159 finishers in such a big race is such a confidence booster.

This is likely my last half marathon of the year. Going through my calendar I have already run 16 official races  this year, not counting my one visit to Ebotse Park Run, and 10 of them have resulted in a PB of sorts, excluding first time attempts at a distance. The half marathon was an important component of my running goals for 2012. I did the half marathon, after not quite mastering the 10km, to get out of my comfort zone. I had remarkably enough never finished a 10km without walking, befreo towing the start at Slow Mag. So while for most club athletes a half marathon is not a big deal it was a defining point for me to prove that I could have the discipline to start a program and stick with it right to its conclusion. My goal was to run sub 1:40 and to be sat here now, 29 seconds away from a sub 1:25 half marathon is the stuff of dreams. A sub 90 was on my 2 year/end of 2013 roadmap, and now I'm going to have rewrite my plans for next year from scratch!

The half marathon is undoubtedly my favourite distance to race now, challenging enough but also forgiving enough to allow some tactical flexibility. And the City2City half marathon replaces the Wally Hayward as the most enjoyable race I have done. Tough, enjoyable and rewarding with a time beyond what I had expected.

Humbled and Rewarded

The last three weeks have really hit home just how tough marathon training is, and should be. For fours weeks I had been coasting. I was doing my quality sessions, hitting my targets, I ran under 40min for 10km for the first time and followed that up with my longest ever run of 26km. So comfortable was that run, that I turned into a progression run, hitting my target marathon pace for the last 3 or 4 km. I headed into week 5 full of confidence.

Then reality hit. The following speed session was a 6X800m at 10km pace, and unlike the 1km repeats I had done the week before it just never felt comfortable. My hill circuit on Thursday, despite doing the 8km double lap around WITS in a personal record, felt forced. My rest day on Friday didn't allay the fatigue and my weekend double, despite cutting back my long run to 18km was hell.

This is what fatigue felt like.

I then had a long chat with my father/coach, from both those perspectives, and we charted the way forward. While it is expected that marathon training should be tough, he was worried that in the excitement of improving and getting better and stronger I was beginning to push over my limits. I was beginning to actually dread pushing myself, and with a tube up 10km  coming up that was not a good sign. We agreed on a mini-taper/TLC week to freshen up for the 10km and then to focus on some marathon specific training. Basically, I was doing a lot of speedwork, at 5 or 10km pace, and a lot of hills. The key now was to prep my body for the rigours of marathon training and to abandon raw speed and strength. I'm not going to lose the speed and strength I've gained in the next weeks, and it's a good opportunity to 'fix' the gains such that I can translate that to my goal of running a good début marathon.

On the morning of 26 August, heading out to run the Wanderers Challenge 10km in Melrose, I was filled with some trepidation. Not only was I nursing this fatigue, I was developed a sore throat and I had struggled to sleep. At least with Spring on the horizon the weather was better. And this time, having pre-entered, there no registration queues to negotiate.

My goal was to once again start easy, check out the course, maintain and finish strong. I like to do it as 3-4-3 effort, 3 km steady, 4km at target pace, 3km strong finish. I did a 3-4-3 but not quite as planned. The start was fast, with some nice downhill. I passed 1km in around 4:05 but with the slopes my pace picked up, the first 3km was covered in 11:45.

The next section was tougher, involving a bit of climbing and gentler downhills. The course was undulating, just the sort I hate and while I slowed down, I was consistently on 4min/km pace. I went through 5km in approximately 19:45 and remember at 7km my time was at 27:46. It was difficulty to accelerate. At Zwartkop 4 weeks earlier, I found that I was able to gradually crank up the pace due to the flattish nature of the course by here my pacing was all over the place.

A sub 40 was definitely still on the cards as was a PB but the 8th kilometre hurt. My slowest by far and the longest toughest climb. I passed the 8km at around 31:55. I knew it was predominantly downhill from here, but in less that stellar condition I was feeling weak. A random guy caught up to me and shouted at me,"C'mon we're on for sub 40". It was the boost I needed and I stuck to him. He was flying down the hill and I followed.  He left me towards the finish but those last two km secured a new PB. Officially through the finish at 39:04, 3:54/km pace and 25s improvement over 4 weeks on a much tougher course.

My goal had been a minute off my 10km time in each of June, July and August, and my 10km  time has dropped 42:38 down to 39:04. This will be my last 10km race for a while, so it's a good time to reflect on the great year I've had at this distance. On New Year's day my 10km PB was a decent 48:00. I set myself the goal, one of three, of running sub 45 before the year is our. That time has been lowered 4 times in 6 attempts, in sequence, 45:44, 42:38, 39:39 and now 39:04, and you can throw in a 10.5 km race in 42:24 in there as well. So two thirds of my 10km races under the end of year target and a third under 40 min. To say I'm chuffed is an understatement.

This week has been largely uneventful. I have limited myself to one long interval session and an easy run. This weekend it's back to the grindstone, with a 25-28km long run leading to my first ever 32km. Then it's the hilly City2City Half Marathon, the final checkpoint before heading down the road to Soweto.

12 months to a sub 40:00 10km?

Progression of 10km and 5km times over the past year or so

Well not quite!

The last 12 months have been great, and I have been really pleased with the progress I have made, particularly in 2012 with a more focused and structured approach to training. The last six months of 2011 when really just foundational, getting some miles and setting some benchmarks. This year has been about taking big strides, really massive ones.

Improving my 10km has been a big feature of my first year as a commited runner, starting way back in August last year when I ran the Vodacom Country Challenge in 51:19. I knew I would get faster, but how much faster was what I didn't know.

This past weekend I got to find out. Post Wally Hayward, even though I have bee technically just base building, the increasing intensity of my training has meant that my times have been tumbling both in what I can sustain in training and come race day. Thus with the promise and flat fast route at the Hope Starts in Hatfield event, I knew that my PB of 42:38 was barring some disaster was going to tumble. It was not a case of if, but by how much!

The venue was The Fields shopping centre in the heart of Hatfield. I love shopping mall races. Most of the shops open their doors early to take advantaged of of the hundreds of runners and of course after the race, breakfast is there on offer. But I have  a theory with the races. The constraint of having a fixed start and end point perhaps affects the distance measurement. Nothing worse that expecting weary runners to walk a long way back to the start. At an earlier event at the Jakaranda Shopping Centere in early May, I ran a sedate 64, having done is a training, but curiously my official time was a somewhat quicker 61:10. I didn't think much of it then but after Saturday's race I have an idea as to where that discrepancy may have come from.

I have been training hard and to be honest I am a bit tired but I gave this event everything. Almost too much. I set off at a very unsustainable pace, hitting the first km mark in 3:40, with 2km and 3km coming up on a downhill, that pace never relented and I went through 3km in 11:10. With that being 37:13 pace I was literally laughing at myself knowing that I was never going to keep that up. I consoled myself with that I was banking time. Something I always swear I am never going to do.

At this point we had gone past Loftus Versveld, that mighty rugby stadium, and were nowing climbing to had back towards Hatfield. This climb as shallow as it was put the brakes on that early pace as I slowed to a little of 4:00min/km pace. Four kilometres disappeared at  15:15, and went through 5km in 19:25. This is where things got a little fishy. The finish had been clearly marked at the mall and with both 5km and 10km following the same route, this point was still quite a long way from the end. Hmmm. I minded my own business as we split from the 5km runners.

The second loop was a little different around the stadium but with the same downhill portion, 4:05 pace reverted back to sub 4 min pace and I cruised through to 8km in 31:10 and then hit the 9km point in 35:10. With a little under 5min to get to 40:00 and 1km to go, a PB and a sub 40 was surely in the bag. In the first lap I had seen a 10 painted on the road close to the finish. At the start, a few of the faster looking runners, talking about running 32s were saying how they had the route was closer to 10.6km. Indeed I went past that curious 10 in 39:30! My legs were starting to give in and the end was not in sight. Clock ticked over 40, the 41 and I did the unthinkable and walked for about 10 seconds out of exasperation. Then got my legs ticking over again and finished in 42:08 on my clock but with an official time of 42:24.

So two possibilities exist here. The route was 10km and the boards were placed incorrectly. But each and every one?!?!?!? Or more likely the route was long, the boards were correct and the need to finish at the mall meant adding on an extra 5-600 metres was unavoidable. My footpod usually measures short, but in my lighter Zoom Elite's which allow me to keep up short, high frequency strides was in sync with the boards. It had me through 5km in 19:30 and 10km in 39:20, and measured a final distance of 10.67, somewhat in line with the rumblings of 10.6 km at the start. The official distance as it turns out was 10.5km.

I really felt good on the day, and felt fast and having been doing my tempos at around 4 min/km pace, I felt that with the route and with the weather that I could run a sub 40 10km. Unfortunately I will  not know at least until the next race at the end of July. My priorities are shifting now though as it is now 18 weeks to the Soweto Marathon. Breaking 40 minutes for 10km is no longer the priority and now if it happens it does.

One thing I did take out of this race was adhering to a pre race pacing plan. Already aiming for  faster than 4 min/km was beyond my PB which was at 4:16 pace. Of course having done a 5km at 3:34 pace and a 15km at 4:07 pace were signs that I am faster than 4:16 pace. However going out at 3:43 pace over the first three kms was suicidal. I could have perhaps managed 3:50 pace if I was a bit more conservative but in the end I managed around 3:57 pace which was still a huge improvement. That gives me a solid based to work off for marathon training. My goal was to get faster. Adding speed is potentially more difficult that adding endurance as opposed to get fit for long distance then trying to get faster. So getting the speed in the bank before getting ready for the long haul was always the challenge. And to have potentially taken 3:00 off a 10km time I achieved 8 weeks ago is just great.

The PB run continues...

This morning I'm still beaming from another uplifting race weekend. After my 15km two weeks ago, I posted about the S-curve and were I felt I was in the scheme, and also the impending plateau when I'll have to start working a lot harder for just a few seconds gain. Right now though I need to just keep on training and just riding the crest of this crazy wave I'm on until it's loses steam.

To be honest, I haven't necessarily felt any faster since that 15km. I put in two quality speed sessions since then. On the  12th, I use what is possibly the only useful bit of flat on WITS main campus to do short intervals. It's approximately 300m. I did six repeats aiming for 60 seconds and I did them all in  59-61 seconds, jogging back to the start as recovery. This past week I was on leave so I took the opportunity after dropping my son off at school to do some quality. On Monday, I submitted my entry for the Runner's World 1km Challenge, doing that in 3:22. It surprised me actually how difficult one all out kilometre is but considering in February doing an 800m in 3:05 was too much for me it's a lot of progress. On Tuesday morning I hit the track, and did 5 X 400m aiming for 80s, and once again I was consistent doing one at 79, one at 82 and the remainder on the money. I finished off the session with an 800m and managed 2:44. On Thursday I headed back to Centurion for the Nike+ Run Club aiming to really let fly now that I know the course. I covered the ~3.5km loop in 13:14, 3:46, which I was chuffed with considering that at times when navigating the mall bits it's almost an almost course and there is some human traffic to contend with.

All that fast stuff did mean that I was a little jaded come Saturday morning when it was time for the Take 5 Team Relay at the Waterkloof Airbase. And when it started to drizzle on the way there I was feeling a bit gloomy. The rain cleared away and even though there was a chill in the air it was pleasant. And with the route being the flattest that I have ever witnessed at a race fast times were there for the taking. My only concern was the changeover area which as I guessed would get cluttered but thankfully I was doing the first leg so it wasn't going to be too bad.

The race was scheduled for an 8am start, another boon as the extreme chill of the morning was almost certainly gone. This was only my third 5km and I'm still none the wiser as to how to approach the distance. It's almost certainly too short to have a strategy but equally go out too fast or too slow and there are consequences. A 10km makes sense, steady for 4km, hit optimum pace to 7km then give it horns to the finish!

Once the gun went, there was the obligatory battling with walkers and joggers who had pushed to the front. By the time we got off the grass and onto the tar thankfully we had cleared them. There were some serious looking athletes and those pesky juniors that have endless pace, and I got sucked into that early pace. Then came the first panic. My watch hit 4:00 and there was no sign of the 1 km mark. But already I was breathing quite heavily. At 8 minutes so 2 km mark. My  Nike+ foot sensor is optimized for my easy training pace of around 4:55-5:00 min/km so it under measures at race pace so that was no use. The water point was coming up and that was supposed to be halfway but I check the time, 9:57 as I pass through. Now I'm getting tired and double my time is 19:54, surely not.

I soldiered on but the one glimmer of hope was that I still hadn't lost sight of the lead bike. It was starting to get further and further away but after 12 minutes I could see it at a bend in the corner of my eye. At 15 minutes I see the Sportsman's Warehouse balloons for the changeover point and I can here the announcer calling the team numbers. So close. As I'm about to hit the grass with the finish in sight, my clock hits 17:00. Another 'surely not' moment. I stride to the finish, I can hear my dad cheer me on, see my wife pull out of the change over area, hand her the baton and stop my clock.

17:49!

No freaking way!!!!! My first instinct is not to celebrate but to question the route. It must be short surely, must be. I play this silly game in my head until the end of the race. My father ran the last leg. He was recovering from a cold so didn't go all out but planned to hit 4:00 min/km and then finish strong. His experienced legs can dial a pace almost at will and sure enough he finished in 19:30, with no qualms about the distance.

So an new PB. I'm still over the moon. A 1:36 improvement and managing 3:34 pace over 5km is something I would not have imagined in February, never mind June last year. I think it might have just been once of those days, 1) weather was perfect 2) it was as flat as a pancake 3) the pace was hot at the start and I got into the mix and just hung on.

Of course I have been doing a lot of hard training and it's giving back now. My average for the last 7 weeks since the week of Wally Hayward and Jackie Melker has been 46km, with weekly totals ranging from 41 km to 51 km. That has been a mix of speedwork (intervals and tempo sessions) on Tuesday, hills on Thursday and 12-16 km long runs on Sunday. So while for me it has been conditioning and preparing my body for the rigours of the marathon training that is still to come, another way to look at it is that I have been doing an intensive 8 week 10km program like the sort you would find on Runner's World. Indeed I'm doing a 10km race on Saturday and this is now the 8th week since that double header week.

I'm looking forward to Saturday's race and like the last two races I'm going to give it my all and just let the legs go. Then I have another two weeks before I start focussing on the marathon from the 16th July.

Let the good times roll!!!!

The plateau will come. I know it will. I am expecting it too. I am of the opinion that running improvements follow a classic S-curve model:

When we start training at the base of the curve, improvements are slow, everything is tough. I spent a good 6-7 months in this phase after lacing up my shoes in June last year. It's also the easiest time to get despondent and throw in the towel, as I almost did in  December when workouts were actually getting more and more difficult.

Then something happens. It could be a breakthrough race, nailing that brutal interval session, or in my case a long tempo run. I remember the moment clearly. It was the morning of the 3rd April just before catching a flight to Cape Town and I went out and did a 10km tempo run. I did it in 46:40, nothing remarkable, except it was only a minute slower than my 10km PB at the time and that included warm up and cool down. When I was going for it, I was in a groove, just nailing the pace kilometre after kilometre, and it all felt so easy! Less than two weeks later I would do my first half marathon in 1:38:42, well inside my 'best case scenario' of 1:40 that I had set myself. And two weeks later I brought that down to 1:35:01. Four days later I had lowered my 10km time to 42:38. Two weeks later I broke 20 minutes for 5km and ran 19:25. I was now clearly in the exponential phase.

I haven't raced since that 5km and was looking forward to doing my first race in three weeks and also my first 15km race. I was supposed to do the Moreleta Plaza 16km on the 26th May but I felt a bit fatigued from overdoing it in training and wisely rested. The end results is I felt fresh this past weekend and my legs were raring to go! 

Fifteen kilometre is an odd distance. Most prediction tools jump in classic distance, 1 mile, 2 mile, 5 km, 8 km, 10 km, 21,1 km and 42.2 km. I'm a bit of a pedant and like to have some sort of strategy when running races, something I have developed since that first half marathon. I find it relaxes me to have a plan, but also the plan is not fixed and has early escape clauses to take into account weather and surprising route elements. With the route expected to be somewhat flat I used my 5km time, got a prediction for 10km and 21.1km and went for something roughly in the middle and rounding up I got an expected pace of 4:10/km, so roughly tempo pace then. I segmented the race into thirds planning to run 21:15, 20:50 and 20:25 splits for a 62:30. It was I felt a touch on the ambitious side but my motto at the moment is a rather brash go big or go home. I will pay for that someday!

On Friday, a surprise happened with the weather taking a distinct turn for the worse! The temperatures plummeted and at 7:30 start time on Saturday predictions were 2 degrees Celsius. Nasty. Thankfully the race venue, Silver Oaks Crossing, was not very far from home, a 10 minute drive so at least we didn't have to be up at  an ungodly time of the morning. I got a compression vest from my father to wear under my racing vest, got some gloves, but decided to stick with my poly shorts. When I stripped off my tracksuit at the venue I was almost regretting that decision, but after a 10 minute warm up I was feeling just about okay.

The race went well even if my pacing strategy was ripped apart pretty early on. The first km was in around 4:12 and I settled into a pace that was quite a bit quicker but comfortable, a red herring perhaps? I went through 3km in 12:00 and 5km in around 20:10. I knew the pace was a bit hot and did try and slow myself down. I got sucked into other peoples races though. There was a group of three guys that would pass me on the flats but I would pass them on any climb. The end result was that I went through 10km in 40:26, 4:03 min/km pace. I knew I would pay for it somehow later! Hey it would have be a huge 10km PB, 2:12 min, if the race stopped there but there was another 5km to go.

Sure enough I did pay for the early pace. I got sucked into another race as a guy came past me after that and he was a bit chatty. I went along with him and then we started to climb. I had read fairly flat about the race, but there was some climbing up to about 14km, long climbs broken up by short teasing straights. So predictably my pace dropped. I went past 14km in around 57:50 so my pace had dropped to 4:20 min/km. I finished strong though, putting in a sub-4 min final km to finish in 1:01:40 on my watch. That was a quite a bit quicker than what I set out to run, and with some smarter running could have flirted with running under 61 minutes. But I'm not going to complain about finishing a 15km at 4:06 pace.

In the grander scheme of things, I am still in that exponential phase of the s-curve. While I wait for the plateau there are still some fast times ahead I hope. For the rest of June I have a 5km on the 23rd and a shot at a the 10km on the 30th. At both races I'm going for good PBs. The route at the 5km race, the Take 5 team relay, is also fairly flat (though I'm getting skeptical with 'fairly flat' as a route description) and the organisers do promise a fast course, so flirting with a sub 19:00 5km or 3:47 pace is a target. The 10km race in Hatfield is a new event, but Hatfield is one the flatter areas of Pretoria so if anything I want to match the 40:26 I manged through 10km this weekend, and I'm going whisper it but a 39:XX is on the cards if I pace myself well.

On the road to Soweto, getting my speed up is the mission and so far so goo. Let the good times roll!!

Going short and fast

I noticed that a lot of programs for speedwork often include intervals done at 5km pace. That's all good and well except I don't have a 5km pace so to speak. I just punch in whatever recent race I have done in a training pace calculator to estimate. I tried to do a 5km sometime last year in December, but despite going through 4km in 16:40 odd and slowing but not all that much, ended up going through the finish in just under 27 minutes. Probably not 5km then. I was running with my brother and he was in fantastic shape then, running 21 for 5km, and finished 30s ahead of me and he was equally baffled.

So with the coaches permission, I switched my easy 10km today to a 5km time trial. My wife was doing the 10km at the Mazda Run in Silverton, and my brother and I entered the 5km fun run. It was bitterly cold. I ran in a long sleeved vest for the first in many months and it never warmed up enough to strip off.

The route was nice and flat. We set out 10 minutes after the 10/21.1s and thankfully didn't follow their bulkier tougher route. I set off briskly. I must say I'm fonder of the longer stuff as I have time to lock into a comfortable pace. Even with the 10km, I find that within that second kilometre I really need to be locked into my pace otherwise I'm fighting to make up time and I tire myself out. I went through the 1km in 3:48, and though I pulled it back a bit by 3km I was comfortably under 4min/km, going though in 11:41 and oddly in second place. I was never going to catch the junior up ahead but I kept him in my sights and hit the end in 19:25. I was hoping for a 20:xx but to finish in in under 20 at 3:53 pace was awesome. I'm also pleased that I was in control of my pace throughout. I nevet felt exhausted at any point and always felt like I had something in the tank. Clearly doing those hills at WITS is helping!

So the PB fairy tale continues, and I'm just enjoying the ride at the moment. I still don't think I'm a fast runner so to speak, I've enjoyed running half marathons more than the shorter stuff, but I'll do two or three more 5kms over the next few weeks just to build confidence and to keep my legs turning!

And long may the PB run continue!