Training Log Archive: Badger

Event: London Street-O Race #6: Putney
 

Putney Street-O

This was taking the place of an "easy 13km" run, and I'd planned to take it fairly steadily. My lack of recent orienteering started showing with some dodgy navigation, a couple of silly wrong turnings, but I got into it properly after about 20 mins or so. My competitive instinct then got the better of me and I gradually sped up, trying to get more and more points (as you do) and ended up doing a proper tempo effort for the last 5 mins or so trying to bag a few more controls and get back in time. Ended up 57 seconds late (worth the sprint finish then), and with a pretty respectable score overall, although could have been a bit better if I'd planned a slightly better route - but then that's usually the case with street-O's.

Results - 5th place

Battersea Park

Intervals (5 x 600m, off 1:30 recovery) - splits 2:09, 2:09, 2:10, 2:09, 2:13 (average split 2:10, average pace 3:37 m/km)

This felt very comfortable, and easier than last week’s intervals with the shorter length (despite the shorter recovery as well) – just found it a bit hard not to go off too quick at the start of each interval and try to hold a consistent pace throughout. Final slower interval had a few turns and less good surface (different route so as to finish in NE corner of park) but felt on a par with the others on effort level.

Richmond Park

Two laps, first in 57 mins (4:55 pace), second in 53 mins (4:37 pace). Somehow managed to pretty much avoid the rain today, although I've never seen the park so waterlogged, quite a few sections of the yellow brick road were under water. Felt pretty good generally, although the big hill on the southern edge on the second lap at 21km was a bit of a killer, and I felt glad by the end that it was a fairly short 'long run' this week.

Hyde Park

Battersea Park

Intervals (5 x 800m, off 2:00 recovery) - splits 2:55, 2:53, 2:54, 2:53, 2:54 (average split 2:54, average pace 3:38 m/km)

Finally with just over 8 weeks to go, the first interval session. Pfitzinger plays down the importance of intervals in marathon build-up (although there's a session pretty much every week now until race day), and none of the planned sessions look to be really tough (5 x 1k and 4 x 1.2k to come look the hardest) and everything at "5k pace", which is a bit slower than Daniel's Running Formula recommends, with recoveries of "50-90% of interval time".

So today that meant targeting around 2:54 for each 800m rep (3:38 m/km pace), and I got that pretty much spot on, very consistent throughout, and all felt good - finished just as strongly as I started and felt I could have carried on for quite a few more.