Sub 36 in 10K

[TheEd]

Hi Albert, I shall send you a personal message

TheEd

[Albert83BCN]

Hi there people!

Long time no see, how are you all doing?

I just came back to tell that I'm still training and that yesterday, after a lot of time having not very decent results in races, I got a PB on the half marathon with 1h19'23". Starting this year I started to feel better and last 10K was 37:10, not bad, and from then on I also had the feeling that I was improving a little bit. So yesterday It showed to be!

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/274246964

I'm pretty happy and I just wanted to share with the users that I feel that may had be reading my feedback some time ago and wondered what happened that I suddenly left!

It was an amazing run and most of my team mates at corredors.cat also got pretty decent results!! There's some enjoyable competitiveness kicking recently in our community, people is training a lot!

Just wanted to do a quick update and share with you. Some things changed with starting this year. I finally decided to relax a little bit my self-imposed rules about vegetarianism and reintroduced fish and seafood into my diet, also been testing with dropping grains as I suspect they may not suit me very well (this recently I got pretty sold on the Paleo living style). I guess I may have left my anaemia behind because I feel pretty well this recently but I guess I should do some blood work to be sure. At least I feel well!

My next challenge will be the Marathon. It will be in 4 weeks. I already have a 32K run in my hand and some other 24 to 27 runs so I guess I have most of the work done. Last year I was 1h20' in the 1/2 and got able to debut with 2h56' with pretty good feelings, this year I'm planning to try to beat a sub 2h53', I think it sounds reasonable

Even if I'm training a little bit on my own, I still apply some of the concepts learned here, specially for the relaxed runs. And yesterday when racing also remembered a lot from TheEd's advice "start fast, then settle pace, run relaxed, focus on the last km's as it's the toughest part, and you should be able to pull a fast last km"...

So this it's all for now, hope you're all still training hard for your challenges

[TheEd]

nice going Albert .. most happy to hear that your health is a lot better

at one time you seemed in a bad space as you were trying to push for results when they body was not up to it

wonderful that things are going well and good luck for the 42k

thanks for giving your feedback

:great:

TheEd

[Albert83BCN]

Hi there! Just wanted to give some feedback with great news!

I ran the Barcelona Marathon yesterday with an unexpected result, 2h47'58!! I wanted to aim at 2:52 which I thought It would be a nice improvement over my 2h56 of last year without pushing it too far. But many club mates were aiming at running at 4:00 pace for a 2:48 and I realized that I was going to run pretty alone along all the distance because my goal was uncommon... so I decided to follow them a little bit on the distance. Felt really good well past the first half marathon running well in the aerobic range, with no lactate burning and avg HR 165 which is pretty fine numbers for me so I decided to go all-out and end at that pace. Ran a very smooth and equal-effort race and in the end I was the only one of the pack achieving the sub 4' pace for the distance!

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/285630121

So really happy now! This week I'm focusing a lot on recovery and easy walking and so and then I guess will start training again for the 10K for next spring races.

Hope you're all doing fine here, keep going!

[TheEd]

congrats Albert .. you must be very happy with this result

:great:

TheEd

[Albert83BCN]

Good morning people!

Well, it has been some days now since the Marathon. I waited a full weak to start running again, now I'll be training hard for the 10K again so I thought I'd need at least a small break as it could be very hard for the body to chain the latest weeks of training with the new cycles. So far so good, I feel ok at leg level and also energy wise.

In spite of this, I don't have much time to start training before the good wave of fast 10K's that are coming this spring so after the full week of rest (some fitness and light cycling BTW) I started with last week of the build-up phase and performed a 4K time trial. Went pretty weak with a 14:46 (last year I managed to get a 14:24, quite a difference, I guess I had not the right morning).

Well, It has been some time now not training above lactate threshold paces so I didn't worry about it, just used to estimate my training peaces for the next sessions: 5x2000 @ 3:45, 6x1000 @ 3:35 and 10x400 @ 3:25.

I plan to do a 3 week cycle of the planing again just to get started. It matches perfectly my first 10K race where I'll just try to get sub 37. From there on we will see how things are going but I plan to switch to my usual plan based on the 800/400 repetitions and hard, long runs every 2 weeks. It has worked pretty well for me in the past. This way I'll have some varying trainings.

Yesteday I did the 5x2000 with pretty good results:

Interval 1: 7:40
Interval 2: 7:33
Interval 3: 7:25
Interval 4: 7:27
Interval 5: 7:16

Good heart rates and perceived effort for a session that used to drain me a lot in the past. We started easy and took the pace up at every interval just to make sure we could end strong. In the past I managed to get more competitive timings in this training but also needed to apply so much great effort I'm not sure it was smart. I compared with last one with one year ago after the marathon and I think it's a good starting point, HR has drop a lot since then (which is supposed to be a good thing, I don't think I could run much faster because of it BTW) and recoveries seemed more solid.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/292853138

Well, will keep you informed!

[TheEd]

nice going Albert .. consider having no running on the easy days for now and maybe doing a swim or something similar, so that you get extra rest, just for the first cycle

then if we get through the first cycle with no problems it would be a good sign

what do you think of this?

Cheers

TheEd

[Albert83BCN]

Hi TheEd!

Well, it's a little bit surprising given that the last time the focus was on the 1h recovery runs, hehe.

A little bit late BTW, on Monday I had no time to do the 75' to 90' easy so today I did it instead of the rest day, I switched places. Very easy run, 14.5K in 1:12:50 at 4:59 pace AVG HR 142, felt great, fresh legs and good energy.

Well, I'm pretty busy these days so skipping some easy sessions in place for recovery may come in handy, hehe. So then, just focus on the quality sessions? As for the swimming, nice! I can fit it after the usual fitness sessions, I must say I really suck at swimming, hehe. May I rotate it with some easy indoor cycling also?

One other thing. Recently I added 'easy walks' on the morning, 20-to-30 minutes. It has been a year that I've been working from home and I encountered myself not leaving home from 8-9PM to 5-6PM on the next day. I was concerned about this so now I go out to have some sunlight and get my legs moving a little bit. Seems pretty basic stuff but I feel like it's doing me good!

[TheEd]

Hi Albert, my main concern is what you experienced last year and ways to maybe try avoid a similar thing happening this time round, rather having you feeling more fresh and completing the sessions ready to do more

just a precaution and hopefully something that pays off

TheEd
ps.. yes, the walks sound good .. if you do cycling, please make sure to get the seat height etc right .. and learn to spin correctly, low gear high revolutions so that it does not work the muscles but is actually a proper aerobic (cardio-vascular only) session

[Albert83BCN]

I see, makes perfect sense!

Will do like this, thanks!