Running

I've got an old Garmin FR110 watch. The waterproofing became flaky and it expired when I got caught in a big downpour. But when it dried out, it came vaguely back to life. I tried running with it, but just the sweat from my wrist seemed enough to make it fail again. I am fairly sure it functions OK but it is just the screen connectors that fail, even when just slightly damp. It seems a shame to chuck it away when it seems so close to working... can anyone think they'd be able to make use of it or would anyone be up for repairing it? I will happily post it in your direction if so.

Box Hill Fell Race this morning. Not done this one for a few years.

I'd be up for trying to get it working if still available?

I'm not familiar with the Balke test but given that it's supposed to be max effort for a reasonable amount of time, it's not going to be far off the intensity you can hold for a 5k race, so therefore must be a reasonable predictor. I don't know what variables Garmin uses to estimate VO2 max but I reckon you'd get just as good an estimate from your 5k time. My go-to race time predictor (from other race times) is McMillan, where all my times from 5k to marathon are quite closely aligned.

After last week's cold and low mileage, my training's looking more marathon-shaped again. Good hill rep session Tuesday, 10 miles tempo @ 5:57/m on Thursday, and a course pb at Hilly Fields parkrun this morning. (17:13, only good enough for 3rd behind our club's 14-yr-old wonderkid!) Got my first "quality" LR planned for tomorrow, 20M incl. 10M @ 6m/m, which will bring up 94 miles for the week. Then a lie-down, I think.

@user69121 and @PhilPub thanks both. As with all these type of tests it looks like it's probably at best only a rough guide - I don't think it will make me change my goals for the season.

40:09 for the Vicky Park 10k this morning. Decided to risk it with my sketchy ITB, so far so ok, we'll see tomorrow. Reckon I could have achieved my goal of sub 40 if the Strava man in my ear had been accurate.

Good effort @dbr the :0x times are the worst.

How was Boxhill @5awyr. Must admit I thought it was around new years day.

Big session this morning chasing @philpub and a couple of others from the club: 18 miles with 10 at marathon effort. Despite the efforts of some errant dogs and another red-jacketed, bespectacled runner going the opposite way it went well, at least I got through it.

That plus a parkrun yesterday and a decent mlr al9ng the river on Friday evening has made for a good weekend, assisted by some stunning weather conditions.

yesterdays easy ride was spent mostly on the front of the group and was 4 hours instead of 2 and combined with a weights session on Friday meant this morning was going to be tough from the get go, and after setting off too slow for my 10 miles at MP I was always chasing, and i lost, ended up about 5 seconds off per km, not going to beat myself up but one to give me an extra push in training!

Alright. Waiting for results but I was around 63 and a half minutes so a way down. Set off really quick, was about 5th up the first hill but dropped back when it went downhill and even more on the flat and undulating bits. Need to work on descending, it's been even more off since I had a big fall at Cardington in December.

Just got in from a really slow two hours on the trails. Lovely day for it.

Good stuff folks.

Looking after (amd stretching/strengthening) a tight hip area so shorter gentle runs at mo, today's involved finding new paths locally one of which goes through an unusual gated tunnel under the m60, popping out onto a floodplain golf course.

Started planning my proper schedule for bulk of year too, only 18 weeks to EfM Summer, 4 week break then build again for EfM Winter.

today's involved finding new paths locally one of which goes through an unusual gated tunnel under the m60, popping out onto a floodplain golf course.

exploring new trails and areas is just the best when you find something unexpected :)

This might be a bit of a silly question but I'm into week four of this Martin Yelling marathon plan. The first few weeks have just been 'easy' pace runs but I've basically kept the same pace over the few weeks. Now I've been wondering whether that might have been a bit of an error and I should be pushing it a bit each time?

Went out for my long run on Saturday, put in a mile effort to improve my Strava wanker segment time, but took the rest easy.
Frozen toes the whole way, great winter weather, got jumped on by a very friendly dog, topped 80k over 2 weeks. Then got home and found I've achieved top spot on the segment. Might as well retire from running now. It's the only thing I'll ever "win"! Top of my game and all that.

I seem to be suffering from the same ailment... a very tight right hip, which stopped me running for a while. It's slowly getting better.

I would love to know what strengthening exercises are recommended.

http://www.kinetic-revolution.com 😀
There's the 30 day challenge at the top of the page, but countless other videos on there.

Nope. Easy is easy. At the start of the plan you're just building up strength and getting used to time spent on your feet. If you go off too hard early on you'll be more likely to get injured.
You'll find most of the improvement comes from long slow runs, and they have to be easy enough that you can recover properly inbetween (so that you can do another long, slow run).
Your easy pace will get faster as you progress anyway, but that should be a product of your improving fitness rather than forcing it.

I'm assuming this is your first marathon? If you've done more than 1 then you're already more experienced than me :)

exploring new trails and areas is just the best when you find something unexpected :)

Yeah, was exploring the countryside near Basingstoke at the weekend, saw a couple of deer in the woods, then bobbed into a field and there was a herd of c.35 of them standing around. Not a big deal if you're used to Richmond Park or Scotland, I suppose, but added something to the run.

I would love to know what strengthening exercises are recommended.

Best to seek physio advice specific to your symptoms.

If it's same as mine you'll likely end up doing one leg squats and 'clam shell' stretches as well as other stuff.

Nope. Easy is easy. At the start of the plan you're just building up strength and getting used to time spent on your feet. If you go off too hard early on you'll be more likely to get injured.
You'll find most of the improvement comes from long slow runs, and they have to be easy enough that you can recover properly inbetween (so that you can do another long, slow run).
Your easy pace will get faster as you progress anyway, but that should be a product of your improving fitness rather than forcing it.

+1 .Guessing your doing the first timer plan, not the improvement one.
Endurance fitness takes a long time to come good. Muscles, tendons and bones take a while to adapt and strengthen, so time on feet is still valuable to build a strong and reliable chassis. Its relatively quicker to build up cardio vascular fitness and potentially have a fairly powerful engine that could break a weaker chassis.

If you've reached the end of week 4, uninjured and a little bit fitter then thats the important bit. As you start to work on speedier sessions, your easy paced runs (ones where you can still chat comfortably) will actually become quicker... unless you shackle yourself by purely running to mile split times and needlessly slow down.

If it's same as mine you'll likely end up doing one leg squats and 'clam shell' stretches as well as other stuff.

Yup, 4 weeks out and counting......

Cycling is BORING!

Yup, 4 weeks out and counting......

Ouch. Working on gentle running through mine too, which might be the stupid approach.

Cycling is BORING!

Lfgss Running vest slogan?

Ouch. Working on gentle running through mine too, which might be the stupid approach

As am I. A slow run-commute (~5mi) every other day. The irony being that running slower hurts more, I assume because my knee bends more when the leg is at terminal swing at slower pace...

Not sure if this was posted or not:

“Little Maureen Wilton, 13 years old and 80 pounds, has started a giant controversy by setting the world’s best time for the unofficial women’s marathon…track officials are saying the exertion will harm such a young girl.”

http://www.cbc.ca/sportslongform/entry/how-a-13-year-old-canadian-girl-ran-the-worlds-fastest-marathon

Cheers, and you @user69121, I wrote a long reply but it's disappeared.

I'm doing the improver one at the minute, it just feels like this plodding along is sucking the speed out my legs. But I'm wondering if that's more of a flexibility issue than anything.

Probably just overthinking it, it's taken over my life a lot more than I expected

The training plans on the London marathon website will have lots of occasional runners in mind. Having just looked, the baseline for the improver plan is being able to run 40min continuously, which isnt a particularly big ask.

feels like this plodding along is sucking the speed out my legs.

With a quote like that, I'll reguess that your more than an occasional runner, so your base fittness and speed may be quite a bit higher than most of the target audience.

If you've found the past four weeks easy and your already rested, you could skip week 5 which is there as a rest week and double up with week 6. Or even change up to the Advanced plan. Or mix and match runs from the Improver/Advanced plans to find a halfway house... at the end of the day, they are just guides to add some structure to the training and we are all different