Any runners on here; advice needed.

Thanks ZZ, not sure of your age ZZ but think you are roughly the same age as me, anything under 2 hours is pretty good going even if you were ready for it, I am chuffed when I can break two hours for a half marathon when I train seriously !

 

Not fun that part! Agree it went on and on...

I managed to miss the 2 mile marker which messed up my pacing a bit.

2 more this year for me, the Watford Autumn 10k in November then the MK Winter Half in December.

 

I was planning on doing the MK winter half but that is now the designated weekend for the Christmas pilgrimage to see the father in law in Sheffield, so I'm doing Bedford the week before. I do have one eye on the MK 20 miler in March though, just to push myself further than doing half marathons.

The Leighton Buzzard half is in a few weeks - that is my favourite race of the year, love it.

 

Thought about doing Bedford as well but 2 halves in a week is pushing it. MK 20 sounds good so will look that up.

Is the dirt half like one of these obstacle courses, or is just off road?

 

Just off road. It goes from Cedars school up the canal to Brickhill, weave through Stockgrove and get caked in mud, then back on the canal at the Globe for the last 3 miles or so back to Cedars.

 

Doing Tring parkrun tmrow morning and have been informed there is a new parkrun in Leighton Buzzard starting next week.

 

Yes around Stockgrove/Rushmere. It's a nice place to run, that will be a good park run.

 

If you are interested in the dirt half then drop me a line - it is sold out but I have a spare place as my missus is away with work that weekend now.

 

Slightly topical but I'm running the London 2 Brighton 100k next May so anybody who's done this in the past I'd be interested to hear some stories.

 

Good luck with that, that is a long long way, I drew the line at Marathons, I know someone who walked it

 

Ultra runners fascinate me. How the hell do you keep going and not give in to the pain? All the very best with it.

 

I did it in my car once. That was bad enough.

 

Got my 5km time down to 22m56s now. Really happy with that especially given where I started earlier in the year.

Did my first 10km the other day too, albeit on the treadmill, and finished it in 48m20s. Will try and go to an organised 10km next spring I think. Will concentrate on training in the meantime.

 

Good times UAE.

I'm sure you know that it seems quite a bit harder outside rather than on the treadmill, so if you have any sort of target for a 10k go for about 5 mins less on a treadmill. Not sure why, though, I read once it was combination of wind resistance and ground resistance, or something.

Nothing better than a quick 10k on a cold crisp, sunny morning, though....!

 

A bloke I go running with won it in 1996 in 6 hours. He said he misjudged one of his feed stations and spent a while hallucinating as he was so dehydrated. He ran ultra's for GB so did 100k's all over the world. I'll see if he has any other advice or stories (although I'll have to listen to him drone on about his glory years!).

Fair play for doing it, that's some target. I'd love to reach that level one day, not competitively mind, just to be able to finish in a decent time.

 

Suppose it could act as motivation!

Yeah, agree re: treadmill. The 5km time was outdoors at a Parkrun so happy that was legit and actually think it's approaching my peak. Not sure there's much I can shave off that time.

The 10km was a bit spontaneous. Started out on the treadmill just intending to do a standard 5km, then felt good so just carried on. Will get around to running it out and about once I can come up with a decent route near me.

 

A quick calculation is that you were running at about 12k an hour for your 10k. That was my normal comfortable running speed at the gym. But then I often found myself regularly running next to this slim young girl who just ran and ran at about 14kph, and could still chat to me. It motivated me to try and match her so I set it for 14.5kph over 30 mins - and more or less died at the first attempt and it made me look a bit stupid rather than "cool". But after just two more 35 minute runs over the next few days it was "the new 12.0kph" it was just so comfortable. It was amazing how my body adjusted, even at my age.

Try it, instead of going for incremental increases go for a biggie of about 10% or 15% and see if it works!

 

I set myself a target of doing six half marathons this year, I've done five and in all honesty could do with a rest as I'm feeling the burn now but I've booked the sixth one for a week on Sunday in Bedford. I like having different targets for what to achieve but I'm not sure what to aim for next year, though I am contemplating the Milton Keynes 20m race which is in March I think. A full marathon still doesn't appeal to me just yet.

 

Good effort. What are the five you've done? Fit the St. Albans half in? I've done it the last 4 years consecutively, should try another one elsewhere really.

 

Milton Keynes
St Albans
Leighton Buzzard dirt half
Dunstable Downs (which was farking difficult)
Northampton.

I enjoyed the St Albans course, but I was running with a mate who didn't train as much as he should have and that took a bit of enjoyment off for me as it slowed me down so I'm definitely going to do it again next year.

 

There's a couple of chaps I know who do that I think, you may know them from football in/around Tring.

One is Colin (for the life of me, can't remember his surname), lives in Houghton Regis but from Tring, he does the 100ks I think, and then the other is Simon Jessop, known him for donkeys years, he tried to do a 100km with Colin recently but got to the 80/85km mark and couldn't go any further.

 

I was not that impressed with St Albans, could have had some nice routes but not a lot of it in St.Albans or around the centre of it

 

Yup I know Simon. They were doing the Ridgeway run. Simon's knee went, quite bad I think as well.

Do you know/heard of Greg Dell? He's the one who's won the 100k races etc.

 

Ah, Greg - blowing his own trumpet, glad to see he hasn't changed haha.

Yeah, he started up the Anchor football team when I (and tom bola actually) used to play with them, not sure if Simon still does - but I play with him on a Thursday occasionally

 

That's him. We restarted the Anchor team last season but folded again in the summer!

 

Oh, how come? You probably know a load of my old mates now then

 

Hi All,

When that Anchor team first started in around 2008 I would have been at my most unfit and heaviest, couldn't have run for more than 5 minutes back then. Some good lads and laughs though. Seems like yesterday.

 

Started running myself recently with the aim of doing a park-run in the near future. My fitness is far from perfect (I do a fair bit of walking around at work and join in with the occasional training session at football). Been doing 3.5k runs for a month or so every Wednesday and am aiming for a sub 17 minute time before progressing to 5k. My previous best was 18.04, but then I went on holiday and have since slacked off. Finally got round to motivating myself to go out yesterday (first run for 3 weeks) and smashed my PB by doing it in 17.40. Gonna really push it next week to try and hit that 17m mark. Poor compared to some of your times but i'm getting there haha.

 

But better than those sitting around doing nothing mate. Keep pushing and you'll be surprised at how fast and far you can go.

 

Good work. Keep it up and as Nascot says, you'll see results get better and better in terms of both distance and time. Park runs are a great place to get going with 5k distance.

 

BUMP Anyone doing Watford half on 7th Feb?

 

Yes hoping to, try and do,it every year, may struggle this year, will do a ten miler late Jan and see if I can cope !

 

Realised how unfit I really am, went for a jog for the first time in about 6 months and couldn't even do 2 miles in 20 or so minutes - hoping to keep at it and get it back down to a respectable time.

 

That's normal, you did well to go more than a mile, take my word for it, it will get easier and better, when you throw up, that is when you have had enough, get a schedule and keep to it no matter what, aim to go for three runs a week, 2 miles each, try and go Monday, Wednesday and friday and have the weekend off or something like that, keep an eye on your times, then go to 2 mile runs and one 3 mile and so on. But don't give up, it will be worth it

 

Dusting off the running shoes after the weekend myself. Was making some good progress last year but kept getting terrible pains in my shins, which added to the general aches and pains of being unfit was putting the brakes on progress. Apart from running on soft surfaces I don't know what to do to sort it.