Training Log Archive: Badger

Surrey Half Marathon (Woking). A bit disappointing to miss my PB by 15 seconds (set this time last year in Kingston) but I think I should be pretty pleased with this all things considered. It felt like a bit of a slower course than Kingston (around 100m climb here compared with 25m, which I certainly felt) and the weather wasn't great with hard driving rain for the first 20 mins, although at least it cleared up after that (and no wind at all thankfully). And considering how knackered I've been feeling recently with all the recent mileage, without too much of a taper, I think this was a pretty good performance.

I managed fairly consistent pacing throughout - slowed a bit in the middle, and was thinking I would gradually fade away, but I picked it up again well in the final 20 mins, a good sign of the endurance I've been building up. I certainly noticed all the small hills - nothing major (around 5 or 6 inclines of 10-20m) but I felt myself slowing down noticeably on each of these - I still can't run up hills! - although I generally sped up a bit on the downs that followed. So the splits look pretty even, with the slower ones corresponding with the hills, and it was good to still be running fairly strongly at the end, even if I couldn't quite get the speed up to get under 82 mins (3:53/k pace) which had been my hopeful target.

Difficult to know where this leaves me in terms of a marathon target time, as I'd planned this race to give me an idea of where to pitch things. Not a direct comparison of course, but the Vdot race equivalents say this HM time equates to 2:52:30 (but then my PB last year equated to 2:51:58 and I followed that up with a 2:57 in April) - but then I only ran 83:22 in the HM I did last September (which equates to 2:54:05, which is pretty much what I ran in Abingdon in October). I'm currently thinking sub-2:50 in London is going to be a touch too optimistic (this equates to an 81:20 HM) - but then if I'd targeted this as the main race and tapered properly then maybe I'd have got close to that. Will have to consider this carefully in the coming weeks as I decide what pace to set off at in London, but I'm currently thinking 2:52 is perhaps a more realistic target (would still be a 2-minute PB improvement) and there's a risk that setting off at 2:50 pace could end in disaster. We'll see...

Mile splits - 6:09, 14, 17, 18, 16, 27, 21, 22, 22, 25, 22, 11, 18 (+0:34 to finish).
5km splits - 19:24 (3:53/km), 19:33 (3:55/km), 19:54 (3:59/km), 19:30 (3:54/km), +4:13 to finish (3:52/km)

Results - 76th out of 3,669

"Rest" day means trying to run a 5-year old's birthday party with 30 screaming children. Combined with not much of a taper, I'm not sure how refreshed I feel going into tomorrow's HM race! I'll give it a good shot, but must remember it's the marathon in 6 weeks' time that really counts.

Vauxhall Bridge loop

Work to Hyde Park

Battersea Park. Intervals (5 x 600m, off 1:30 recovery) - splits 2:05, 2:03, 2:08, 2:04, 2:04 (average split 2:05, average pace 3:28 m/km).
Short intervals session ahead of the Surrey Half Marathon on Sunday. It felt quite hard work with a bit of a wind around (in more than one sense), but managed a decent fast pace - though the legs felt pretty tired on the warm down back to the office. Next few days will be a mini-taper with slightly reduced mileage ahead of Sunday's race.

Chelsea Bridge loop

Bushy Park/Richmond Park/Thames path/Bushy Park. Longest ever training run (by both time and distance) - I got up to 37.5km for the longest run for last year's two marathons, but decided to go a bit longer this time, with a steady progression pace aiming for just over 3 hours (15% over target MP), so longer by time than planned for the marathon. As with my previous longest runs it felt really great throughout, cruising round comfortably and always in control - the pace felt very slow to start with and I only felt like I needed to put some effort in during the final hour. But then this is the kind of training run I love, banging out the long miles at a fairly easy pace - give me a 3-hour steady run over a much shorter hard tempo or interval session any day!