Running

That is all overpriced overdesigned wank

I have £8 tights from decathlon. Nothing to compare them to and only used twice but loved them both times. They're black though.

That is all overpriced overdesigned wank

I've got an Arc'teryx Squamish and its absolutely fantastic. Didn't buy it for running though.

Haha I thought that might be the response

Ok fair enough the Arc'teryx stuff is just overpriced 🙂
(I got one of their Cerium LT Hoody's and it is great -but really fucking expensive for what it is. I do love it, but gotta say it's only marginally better than the Decathlon one which is like 1/6th of the price. Got the shiny Arc'teryx in the end though as it packs small enough to go in my vest, which is super useful, also because to be fair the colours do look amazing).

Arc'teryx stuff is just overpriced

Fair.

I came into a little windfall in 2017 and treated myself to an Arcteryx jacket for ice climbing. It cost me £550.

I totally fell in love with it. Climbed in it every winter since and it has kept me warm on football nights too. It's marvel of textile design, weighing less than 300g and being insulated for cold alpine weather. It is just incredibly well designed.

Anyway, it began to wear out this winter and after a few failed repair attempts I momentarily considered buying a new one.

The same jacket is now £1,500. I have since bought some new seam tape and wader repair adhesive and fixed my old one up!

Edit: After 5 winters and five washes it is still as waterproof as when it was new. If these armpit zip seam repairs hold I'm going to try to get a good few more years out of it.

Thats a good idea apart from the curation of it feels so janky - they're just lumping everything in together. Probably shows that there's a gap in the market for a running review site focussed on 'nice' looking running gear. Maybe I will start it :P

A Sweaty Betty for men.

Yes completely agree! Sign me up, happy to help you build the empire

Sweaty Barry?

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What's a good basic interval programme? At the moment I'm sprinting lamp post to every other lamp post, walk for abit, repeat. I'm sure it's fine for my very basic needs but thought it might be worth looking into something abit more structured. I don't have a running watch etc so that might be on the cards if I need to get one to do it properly.

I just thought I might go for a run. First time ever.
It’s dark and cold outside though so I might start tomorrow instead.
I might walk and jog a bit to the pub

Betty Swallocks?

30 30 is pretty much what you’re doing.

If you go to a football pitch you could always sprint the length, recover the width. Or sprint the long diagonal (hypotenuse ?) walk the short width. And then sprint the long diagonal again. Make sense?

Find a hill. Run up it as far as you can. Walk down. Run up it as far as you can. Walk down. Walk home.

I just tend to do unstructured stuff - run hard and hang on as long as you want/can, ease off, go again at the same/higher/lower intensity, ease off till I can breathe again etc etc. I've never been fast enough for anything targeted and find this kinda stuff fun. Google fartlek training.

Something like 6 x 800m (1/2 mile) or 5 x 1000m if you want slightly longer intervals perhaps.

Use google to map a circular route of that kind of length, the off you go. You just need the most basic stop watch (or phone)

What's a good basic interval programme?

Ideally you'd have a GPS watch that you can programme to tell you what to do, for example, one of my interval sessions is:

• Warm up (jog) until I press the lap button (which about 1km to get to the start of a local loop)
  
• Run 800m at 5k pace, 90s walking recovery
  
• Repeat the above 5 times (don't need walking recovery after the last one)
  
• Cool down (jog) to get back home
  
  

Very little thinking required, just do what the watch says. My watch (Garmin Forerunner) allows me to program in each of the steps including the pace I want to run the intervals, so it beeps at me if I'm way below (or above) my target pace for that interval. It also counts things, which may sound stupid but there are plenty of times where I'm coming up to finish an interval and I've no idea if it is the last one or there's still one more to go after the recovery walk. It beeps, I look at it and it says "recover for 90s" then with 5s to go it gives me a countdown to start running again.

In general, most people are guilty of doing their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow. However, for enthusiastic amateurs there's not really a bad thing with "just doing some running", it's all good training. The only rule to remember is not to increase distance/time too much too quickly (10% week is a good max for this) as that often leads to injury.

Anything where you run faster than you would normally (or cumulatively longer than you normally would at that pace*) aided by some rests/recovery in the middle is good work.

I think I got my overall interval plan from various people on here (philpub mostly I think). It's basically doing one of these sessions a week in rotation (e.g. week 1 do the 800m intervals, week 2 the 1000m intervals, week 3 the 1600m intervals, week 4 just do a recovery run instead):

• 6 x 800m at 5k pace with 90s walking recovery, building up to 10 x 800m
  
• 5 x 1000m at 5k pace with 100s walking recovery, building up to 8 x 1000m
  
• 4 x 1600m at somewhere between 5k and 10k pace with 120s walking recovery, building up to 6 x 1600m
  
  

Obviously your 5k pace will change as you get fitter/faster, so you'll need to have an idea of how this changes over time and adjust your training pace accordingly. I used to do parkrun each week to set my 5k pace as I found it easy to consistently push hard during a timed event - I'd slack off too much if I was just out on my own.

But the general idea is that you start (for the 800m intervals at least) with 6 x 800m at 5k pace with 90s walking recovery. There should be absolutely no problem doing this since 6 x 800m is less than 5k, so doing less than 5k at 5k pace with some walking recovery should be "easy" (although it depends how hard you push yourself for your 5k pace). However (as marked with * above), as you pile on the intervals each week it starts to get hard. By the time you get to 10 x 800m intervals you're effectively running 8k at your 5k pace, that shouldn't be easy at all if your 5k pace is accurate. The first 6 or 7 intervals don't feel too bad but the last couple can be horrid (it's all good training though).

By the time you get to the end of this (e.g. you've built up to the full sets of reps of each distance) you'll have a much better idea about yourself and how you could adapt/change the intervals to suit your running.

Without a GPS watch to measure things for you, and beep at you, it can be tricky, but not impossible. As others have said, you can get around this by finding a local flat loop or out/back course and measuring things online and then using that for your runs. For example, if you've got a local park to run around you may see that from some useful starting point (a bench near a gate) it is ~800m to another bench elsewhere in the park (or even back to the same bench via some loop) by a certain route, so you can use that:

• Warm up by jogging to/in/around the park, etc.
  
• At the first bench you start running at your 5k pace
  
• When you get to the end of the ~800m route you can walk for ~90s, either 45s away and then 45s back, or just amble around for the 90s
  
• When that 90s is up and you're back at the bench, go again.
  
• ...etc
  
  

Does it matter if it's not exactly 800m? No.
Does it matter if you're not exactly hitting your 5k pace for that 800m? Not really, but it should be keeping you honest
Does it matter if the walking recovery period isn't exactly 90s? Of course not

What matters is that it's repeatable and that some of the thought has been take out of the process. If you can time the individual parts (intervals and recovery periods) with some lap function on a watch then that might help keep you honest. If you're 7th interval is taking 60s longer than your first then you're either going out too fast or easing up too much as you tire.

The important thing is the hard efforts interspersed with recovery, and building up to the cumulative time at that pace being more than you could normally handle in one continuous run.

@Greenbank thanks for this! Very helpful advice. I think I was a bit guilty of doing far too short sprints but at max intensity. Sounds like I might benefit from backing off a bit and increasing distance/time of intervals. I can definitely see some sort of watch in my future, even just a basic cheap and cheerful thing for timing would be handy.

I've been using a veeeery basic Forerunner 25 for years and it will do 90% of what you will need, could be picked up for under 30 quid. I do want a 955 though. Need to save some pennies.

Did anyone on here run the Southern XC race in Beckenham Place Park at the weekend? If so, could you share your Strava activity as I'd like to get a proper idea of the course.

Not me, I'm still not even putting weight on my leg

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If you can make sense of that, you are better than me

Thanks. It's local to me for a start, so I know it pretty well. Just looking at that gives me a pretty good idea of where it goes.

If I go on Friday then hopefully some of the residual course wear and tear will be clearly visible still.

Yes I'd have thought so. Up at Hampstead heath they get horses to drag something over the course the day after, I don't know if they do anything similar at BPP though