Running

cool, good luck with the training then, I'm in need to putting the meat on the bones of my plan at the moment, my main desire is a reliable sub 3 pacer, and just to switch off for the first 18 miles sitting behind them and get ready to dig in for the last 8.2 an sprint round them on the line!

rough plan at the moment is to stick to current tri training till the end of December, in which I run roughly 30 miles per week, then switch to a ~3 month running only training plan leading up to London building run mileage from there, including hopefully PB'ing at both Wokingham and Reading, then pace-making for 20 miles at the Kingston breakfast run and trying target pace at one of the other 20 mile prep races (probably Bramley) and not going over 20 miles this time, but hitting that distance a few times, to get the legs comfortable doing that.

Good plan. I'm hoping to refer a club mate for sub-3 pacing (2 x 2:29 marathons this year, I'm a little envious!) but otherwise the other regular pacers I know have been very reliable the last couple of years I've done it. Re: the 20 mile race, how much of it are you planning on running at target pace? IMO the whole distance is too much cos even if you recover OK for VMLM itself it can tire you out too much for the rest of your training. Max I've done is 15 miles (3 laps of 4 at Finchley 20), that was hard enough and a good indicator I think.

I've also planned a more running-focused routine compared to last time and just this week kick-started that routine by increasing my running doubles from 2 to 4 x/week (Monday through to Thursday). I think the introduction of 2 x doubles last year improved my fitness significantly, so I'm hoping to get a similar effect from another step up, and that weekly mileage totals I previously thought a bit daunting will be manageable...

First draft:

Key sessions are:

(a) Sunday long runs: A mix of time-on-feet and more intense long runs incorporating race pace (MP)
(b) Thursday "tempo" sessions: Either continuous tempo runs working around MP or "threshold intervals" (typically mile reps with short recoveries). Battersea Park refers to a training group I'm intending to do some of these sessions with.
(c) Tuesday interval sessions on the track: I'll do whatever standard session is on (typically 8k of reps between 400m - 1 mile, or the odd hill rep session) but with an additional 2/3 miles @ MP as a warm-up. I'll try to keep a lid on the effort for the reps, as this is just a weekly opportunity to run quicker than race pace; Thursday is more of a key session.

Paddock Wood HM is my main target warm-up race. I've raced HM three weeks out, the last couple of times, so it's a good indicator comparison for marathon form. I've got a few cross country races but I'll train through these and treat them as hard (!) training runs. Bath HM is semi-training through, will be a good marker for Paddock Wood.

TL;DR - Shit loads of running to do, looking forward to the taper already. :)

100+ mile weeks! Makes me want to have a taper just reading it. Though I'm also seriously impressed and quite envious at your drive and determination.

Did it in North Berwick a couple of years ago, good fun, though most of the Scots are soft lads - straight in and out in 5 mins. Was in off Portobello Beach last night - really nice set-up there, sea swim and proper showers to come back to, but picked up a bit of a stomach bug (either there of Khushi's afterwards).

Anker are good for powerbanks. Something like the PowerCore+ mini

Got one of these in the end. Anyone understand enough electrics to know if I plugged Petzl Nao battery into powerbank would it:

1) charge it
2) explode it
3) produce mini petzl-anker killer robots

???

1 then 3

also if anything goes wrong with anker stuff just email them and they'll send you a brand new one no questions asked.

i may have emailed them last week when my powerbank+ display lights wouldn't come on only to realise the cable was fucked and it had run out of charge after the second one had been posted. I now have two powerbank+...

to be fair though while great products they can stop working seemingly at random. have had 2 other replacements in the past for usb hubs

Good to know, ta.

London runners. I'm travelling Brentford -> Lee Valley Velopark Tues. Was going to be on bike but realise I can use time to get a 1hr steady run in.

Best to run first hour B-City or City -> LVP? Which would be more enjoyable off road and not need much Nav thinking?

I've run a bit of Thames path city bound before - does it go all way central?

Thinking 2nd bit better as I'm not sweating on tube/train/bus for 2nd part of journey.

Used to run in Xodus, too heavy for racing in. Good comfy all round trail shoe though.

Southville RC. Ran with them when I was Bris based, lovely club.

I went out and did the Sheffield Great Urban Fell Race last night. It's part of a winter night time running series that's organised up here.

With a free route around designated checkpoints, this race comes in at around 15k with 450m of climbing and about 15% off road. I was fairly pleased to knock 14 minutes off last year's time and get round in 1h34m but slightly annoyed I hadn't gotten inside an hour and a half. However, the fastest runner managed to get round in 1h06m. The mind boggles at that really. I'm struggling to work out where I'm going to find another 15 minutes to challenge for the top of the V40 table but 28 minutes? WTF?

Ah well, next month's race is 7.3k of spiral hill reps so I guess that's my training plan sorted out for the next three weeks.

Nice one!

What are spiral hill reps?

Imagine two parallel roads that go up a hill. Running between them are several short connecting roads, kind of like a ladder.

At the bottom of the hill you run a connecting road and onto one of main uphill roads and then run the following pattern;
Up two connecting roads
across to the other uphill road
down one connecting road
across to the other uphill road

Repeat until you get to the top of the hill and then return to the start.

And just for fun, the two uphill roads are on different elevations so the connecting roads are also up hill or down hill.

This is the map

seldom killer dropping the rad sessions for the legstrong. ace stuff.
youre timing question? lose 20 years age....

still running and that, maprunning mainly. Stickler sunday. Dorset 3 peaks. plenty climbing. total grassroots.

keep it up

youre timing question? lose 20 years age....

You say that but unfortunately it isn't true. Check the results out

Apparently being over 40 is only good for a fucking measly 31 seconds or, in relateable terms, the end of the road from the start/finish point. Shit the fucking bed.

hey , interesting, I know you can take the bantz youve been 'on here' long enough.
so,
without knowing shit about this race, I a) went out with a girl in Sheffield for a while. b) have done some daft fell races. Sheffield is hilly.
how much hurtling downhill was on that 450 climb race?
if its like fell runs Ive done age IS irrelevant, when youre fearlessly twatting it downhill double the speed of a 'normal' runner
could that be it?

Yeah, Sheffield does have the hills and none of the ones on this race are easy all the way to the top. The guys at the top of the results are serious, dyed in the wool fell runners so as jonny come lately to the game, less than 1.5x their time isn't too bad, especially as navigation is pretty important. The two guys who came in behind me had actually dropped me at about 2/3 the way round but ended up getting lost on one of the off road sections and haemorrhaged time getting back on track.

It's a circuit so 450 up means 450 down. TBF, I'm OK at descending but not brilliant. Over the next three weeks I'm splitting the hill reps into two types of session. On half I'll be storming the climbs and relaxing on the descents and on the other half I'll be gentle on the climbing and battering the descents.

On the Spirals run last year I did 48m10s so my target for this year is to put it under 40m.

That spirals session/race looks v.complicated, enjoy!

People have been known to get lost on it which is kind of funny because the furthest parts of the course are barely a kilometer from the start/finish. Luckily for me I'm local to the route and know the roads well enough now.

Hats off to you for getting round! If I didn't get lost working out the route I'd probably injure myself on the way down. Can't run downhill for toffee.

...That being said, I tried out my new Inov-8 XTalon 190 yesterday and they're very confidence-inspiring. They'll serve a very niche purpose of being my cross-country shoes when the course is too stony for spikes, but I also trialed a training session that I'm now intending to repeat a few times for marathon training. Measured out a 5k hilly/undulating off-road loop close to home, over Oxleas Wood, ran it continuously three times, made up to 14 miles with w/u + c/d (983 ft elevation). Pace was "steady" whilst trying out the new shoes, but I think this would make an excellent marathon pace (or more accurately marathon effort due to terrain) session as an alternative to similar sessions I'll do on tarmac. Plus there's the Southern XC champs at Parliament Hill in January, which is itself 15k, so it'll be good to get used to running hard off-road over that distance.

Any Cambridge running types on here? Are there any good running shops there? Looking for shoes and bags mainly.

Got the Snowdonia marathon tomorrow. Did my training last weekend and did my back in, so probably going to be painful. Hoping the views will at least be good - did a run there a few years ago and didn't see more than 10 feet ahead of me the whole time.

Southern XC champs at Parliament Hill in January

Ooh, that's my back garden - may have to join a club so I can come and play.

Do it! We (Kent AC) are always open to new members, although in the interests of objectivity I'd suggest Highgate might be your nearest club by the sounds of it. 9 miles of mud. There's nothing like it. Ugh!