11-03-2012, 06:45 PM
Hello everybody!
First of all, congratulations for maintaining this awesome community. I've been reading the articles here every now and then and also reading the forum and I have more or less followed once the sub 35 plan (but adapting the intervals to my 36:46 PB by that moment) and I liked it so now I would like to give it a deeper look.
But first, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Albert, I'm 29 and from Barcelona, Spain and my English skills are somewhat poor. So first of all I'd like to apologize if I ever write any bad sounding expression
At 23, not having doing any sport since primary school and being in very bad shape, I joined the gym and after some months of hard train I started to enjoy it a lot and got a liking on body-building training and life style. By then, as I knew it was important to do some cardio to reduce body fat and look good, I started doing either static cycle or running treadmill twice or three times a week. One day I don't remember, almost 4 yers back from now, I decided to try going running outdoors.
I liked it, so I started to train outdoors more often and a year after or so I joined a 10 km race and I finished it in 42+ minutes. A month later I wanted to enter another race to try to improve my time. I started to get more serious on running and I researched a little bit on the net (the same I was already doing for my strength programs) and I tried some running plans and before I realized it I encountered myself training more towards improving my running times than lifting weights in the gym.
Then I discovered some kind of annual running league here in Barcelona consisting in the 5 best 10K races of a total of 7 and some time later I joined another annual league with a huge 100 races calendar (best 14 races count). It has been 2 years and a little bit more since then and following a quite demanding plan I found on the net I managed to get down to 37:11 on 10K by Spring 2011.
I was very happy training hard for it and improving times every 2 months but by that time I kind of hit a plateau for some time. So I made up my mind and performed an even more demanding version, building more extensive mileages, etc. of that plan and finally managed to get sub 37 by September 2011.
Having reached my goal, a part of me told me I needed a rest period, but the league have races every week (I have been running an average of 2 races a month, sometimes 3 in a row and other times 1 in a month) and you know, running may get you very hyped up and I wanted to get in so many races... so I tried a little bit of you 10K plan just to have a change and experiment a little. With this I tried to extend my peek condition and kept running I and I got even more PB by October and run almost all my races in sub 37 and near sub 36 so I was in some kind of an athletic dream for a popular runner as me
By November I made up my mind of trying to attack my PB at half-marathon (had 1h22'51", only 3 done and all of them in Spring 2011) so after finally having an off-period of 2 weeks and a build-up of 2 more I stared a new plan again. The idea was to achieve 1h19, and I thought it should be feasible given my current 10K times. Here I started to feel a little bit out of shape, returning to 37' on 10K on some races. But then, in 31st December, being 4 weeks or so into the plan I got my current PB on 10K of 35'24"! A night race, felt quite well before the race, etc. I should say "the race of my life"
But starting this year things have gone quite bad. I ran a half-marathon a month before my goal race and I expected to get a sub 1h22 quite easilly given that I had been training for a 1h19 but I ran it in 1h23 high and with total effort and from fast to slow with very bad feeling the overall race, and a lot of lactic acid just from the first kms.
On February I ran another 10K in 37'37", quite bad given the times I had been doing on a solid basis on Fall 2011. But for the day of the planned 21k race I managed to get 1h20'11" with very good feelings and a controlled pace, quite near the 1h19 goal so I became more or less happy with the result.
I have some marathoner friends and I liked the idea to give it a try so having into account that I have had solid training for some time now with quite a number of long runs and between 60-90Km a week I decided to enrol into the "Marató de Barcelona" which will take place next 25th March. I'd like to run it in just under 3h, even being the first one I think that is a reasonable goal.
Today I raced in a 10Km, the last race before the Marathon, this next and following week I will take it easy since most work should have been done by now. I wanted to pull a good result to kick-in some new motivation but I have got quite frustrated since I ran it in 38:24, a very bad result keeping into account that just 2 months ago I ran my PB :/
Must say today's race profile was not very favourable, far from flat but I have run similar races with at least a high 36 or low 37 so I think that should be not an excuse. I really think that I'm going backwards instead of forwards recently.
Truth be said, I'm a member of a well-known local athletics online community here in Spain so I could seek advice there (more or less I already share my trainings and thoughts there and I also contribute to maintain that site since I'm a software engineer) but the fact is that I liked the plans here and got very impressed by the good advice that TheEd has been giving to some of the other users so I thought I could register here also and share my experiences with the plans here. It would be awesome also if I could have a little bit of advice from you This will be a good way for me to try to improve a little bit my English also.
So the plan is to run the Marathon, have a little recovery period (I'd like to do a good recovery but a month after the Marathon there are 3 races for me that are quite important :S) and try to start all over again, to reach again at least my sub 37 status and of course I'd like to perform a sub 36 again
Some more data from me? I'm 172cm tall, 63 kg weight right now (I've been in 60-61 on my best races so I suspect too many sweets recently killed my performance) but I put on weight quite easily, I've always to be watching my diet. I'm also a vegetarian (not for health but for personal believes).
Ok, that's all for now, someone got up to here before falling asleep?
First of all, congratulations for maintaining this awesome community. I've been reading the articles here every now and then and also reading the forum and I have more or less followed once the sub 35 plan (but adapting the intervals to my 36:46 PB by that moment) and I liked it so now I would like to give it a deeper look.
But first, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Albert, I'm 29 and from Barcelona, Spain and my English skills are somewhat poor. So first of all I'd like to apologize if I ever write any bad sounding expression
At 23, not having doing any sport since primary school and being in very bad shape, I joined the gym and after some months of hard train I started to enjoy it a lot and got a liking on body-building training and life style. By then, as I knew it was important to do some cardio to reduce body fat and look good, I started doing either static cycle or running treadmill twice or three times a week. One day I don't remember, almost 4 yers back from now, I decided to try going running outdoors.
I liked it, so I started to train outdoors more often and a year after or so I joined a 10 km race and I finished it in 42+ minutes. A month later I wanted to enter another race to try to improve my time. I started to get more serious on running and I researched a little bit on the net (the same I was already doing for my strength programs) and I tried some running plans and before I realized it I encountered myself training more towards improving my running times than lifting weights in the gym.
Then I discovered some kind of annual running league here in Barcelona consisting in the 5 best 10K races of a total of 7 and some time later I joined another annual league with a huge 100 races calendar (best 14 races count). It has been 2 years and a little bit more since then and following a quite demanding plan I found on the net I managed to get down to 37:11 on 10K by Spring 2011.
I was very happy training hard for it and improving times every 2 months but by that time I kind of hit a plateau for some time. So I made up my mind and performed an even more demanding version, building more extensive mileages, etc. of that plan and finally managed to get sub 37 by September 2011.
Having reached my goal, a part of me told me I needed a rest period, but the league have races every week (I have been running an average of 2 races a month, sometimes 3 in a row and other times 1 in a month) and you know, running may get you very hyped up and I wanted to get in so many races... so I tried a little bit of you 10K plan just to have a change and experiment a little. With this I tried to extend my peek condition and kept running I and I got even more PB by October and run almost all my races in sub 37 and near sub 36 so I was in some kind of an athletic dream for a popular runner as me
By November I made up my mind of trying to attack my PB at half-marathon (had 1h22'51", only 3 done and all of them in Spring 2011) so after finally having an off-period of 2 weeks and a build-up of 2 more I stared a new plan again. The idea was to achieve 1h19, and I thought it should be feasible given my current 10K times. Here I started to feel a little bit out of shape, returning to 37' on 10K on some races. But then, in 31st December, being 4 weeks or so into the plan I got my current PB on 10K of 35'24"! A night race, felt quite well before the race, etc. I should say "the race of my life"
But starting this year things have gone quite bad. I ran a half-marathon a month before my goal race and I expected to get a sub 1h22 quite easilly given that I had been training for a 1h19 but I ran it in 1h23 high and with total effort and from fast to slow with very bad feeling the overall race, and a lot of lactic acid just from the first kms.
On February I ran another 10K in 37'37", quite bad given the times I had been doing on a solid basis on Fall 2011. But for the day of the planned 21k race I managed to get 1h20'11" with very good feelings and a controlled pace, quite near the 1h19 goal so I became more or less happy with the result.
I have some marathoner friends and I liked the idea to give it a try so having into account that I have had solid training for some time now with quite a number of long runs and between 60-90Km a week I decided to enrol into the "Marató de Barcelona" which will take place next 25th March. I'd like to run it in just under 3h, even being the first one I think that is a reasonable goal.
Today I raced in a 10Km, the last race before the Marathon, this next and following week I will take it easy since most work should have been done by now. I wanted to pull a good result to kick-in some new motivation but I have got quite frustrated since I ran it in 38:24, a very bad result keeping into account that just 2 months ago I ran my PB :/
Must say today's race profile was not very favourable, far from flat but I have run similar races with at least a high 36 or low 37 so I think that should be not an excuse. I really think that I'm going backwards instead of forwards recently.
Truth be said, I'm a member of a well-known local athletics online community here in Spain so I could seek advice there (more or less I already share my trainings and thoughts there and I also contribute to maintain that site since I'm a software engineer) but the fact is that I liked the plans here and got very impressed by the good advice that TheEd has been giving to some of the other users so I thought I could register here also and share my experiences with the plans here. It would be awesome also if I could have a little bit of advice from you
This will be a good way for me to try to improve a little bit my English also.So the plan is to run the Marathon, have a little recovery period (I'd like to do a good recovery but a month after the Marathon there are 3 races for me that are quite important :S) and try to start all over again, to reach again at least my sub 37 status and of course I'd like to perform a sub 36 again
Some more data from me? I'm 172cm tall, 63 kg weight right now (I've been in 60-61 on my best races so I suspect too many sweets recently killed my performance) but I put on weight quite easily, I've always to be watching my diet. I'm also a vegetarian (not for health but for personal believes).
Ok, that's all for now, someone got up to here before falling asleep?
).