Running

Is it the right exercise plan though? Achilles pain can be caused by loads of different things.

I think I'm too much of a barrel to fit in that I'm afraid.

My speed cross 4 have finally reached the end of their lives. Thinking of something a bit more foamy like the Hoka Speed Goat 4. Any alternative recommendations?

Mostly for mix of woodland and stoney tracks which might be quite hard over summer.

I've got some speedgoat 4's and they are ok very comfy but heavy i much prefer my pegasus trail 2s. Both have similar grip trail/dirt not mud

No worries. Anyone else interested before I put it on eBay?

Could be keen! How much are you after for it?

The answer to that is I don’t know. I’m happy to try anything at this stage I’ve had this for years

pegasus trail 2

How do you find the grip on them on rocks and stuff like that? All good?

A good read:

https://www.fastrunning.com/fast-10/fast102021/nigel-martin/the-journey-to-a-debut-marathon/32093

Yeah grip is good everything except slippery mud. I'm doing a trail race in a couple of weeks in them. Less on them than your old speedcross I'd imagine but as much grip as the speedgoats. The trail 2's are great on the tarmac to trail sections and perfect for gravel. I got some mudclaws now and had asics and altras for max grip when needed but and whilst they are great in the goop they beat my feet up on hard trails and were horrible on any tarmac sections. The speedgoats don't clear mud well either

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£30 posted (assuming you are UK based) sound reasonable?

Thanks for that. Will give them a go.

I think they're great totally different and much better than the previous peg 36 trails. Just go for a dark colour as the knit upper is impossible to clean. My yellow ones look permanently filthy.

Is it normal to feel constantly hungry in taper?!

Asking for a friend...

Considering entering a HM at the end of Aug (Lee Valley), aiming for a PB sub 1.25. Anyone know of some decent 8-12 week plans I could follow in the lead-up?

Until then, I was hoping to continue building weekly mileage. Currently not huge. For my one weekly faster "session", what do people think I should be focussing on?

Many thanks

I'm just finishing up the 10k 12 week plan that @doubleodavey posted on here and my pace has improved by about 10s p/km across the board and I'm in half marathon PB shape if i were to do one right now. I've really enjoyed it it's varied and has high enough weekly mileage to prepare you for a half and some of the Sunday long runs ended up HM distance on their own. Its tough but its worked for me.

Sounds interesting, thank you - could you link me please? It may not work as I'm trying to be cautious in very slowly introducing speedwork again.

If I'm not in the habit of interval training, I like to ease myself in with a combination of progressive and/or tempo runs. One of my favourite sessions is the mid-week sort-of medium-long run. After an easy mile I'll either gradually increase the pace over a few miles till I'm somewhere around threshold/HM pace by the end (and a mile cool-down) or I'll hit a tempo pace that I'll try to maintain throughout the run. Start off with the progressive run to ease yourself in, and work up to maybe 4-5 miles @ target HM pace. Of course, main caveat is volume of effort/overall run should be related to your current level of training, so no point trying to hammer out 5 miles @ HM pace in a 7 mile run if your long run is currently only 6 miles. But you get the principle.

Speaking of easing back in to interval training, I'm due to be on the track again next Tuesday for the first time since December 2019. Christ! Looking forward to it, but I know there will be some DOMS for a couple of days afterwards. Have done barely anything quicker than 10k pace for over a year; I threw in 3 x km reps during an otherwise very easy run on Saturday. Pleased with the pace (3:16, 3:15, 3:13 off 90 secs rest) but glutes and quads were feeling it for a couple of days afterwards. 6 x 1k next week.

See how you like the look of it. I hadn't been doing any intervals building up to it but was running 50-60k a week injury free in the month beforehand. I wouldn't recommend this for anyone running at least 40k a week beforehand and certainly not to anyone coming back from injury

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Will push hard on my Wednesday 5k. (Current recent best[1] is a 27:56 at 155 avg / 168 max HR). Will aim for a HR avg of 170bpm and max of 180bpm and see if I can creep in around 26:00 which, with a BMI of 31, would be amazing.

20kg overweight, BMI of 31.

Somehow I just did a 5k in 25:19 (only about a minute off my parkrun record back when I was doing a lot more running and was 10kg lighter)

HR was 165 avg and 179 max but it takes ~90s for my HR to get up to speed, it was a fairly steady effort and the last 3 minutes averaged 172bpm, so I pushed about as hard as I wanted to.

Very happy with that. Now I can do a couple of really easy runs and then give blood at the weekend knowing that I can take it easy next week too.

Really got me wondering what I'll be able to do if/when I do lose the excess 20kg.

Thank you, I can definitely rule myself out of that for the moment, looks serious! As I'm still finding my feet post injury I've come up with something steady for the next couple of months, at which point I'll begin a 12 week HM plan in advance of going for the PB at the end of August. See how long I can last without breaking!

Good luck with it 💪

I'm also considering a HM later in the year (October) so have been looking at plans. Runners World have a few on their site that are less intense than the one Retro_bastard linked to. Some for beginners, others for those who run are a bit more experienced.

What’s your current shape and half marathon PB?

Initial reaction of someone saying they are tentative about intervals/running fast and hoping to do a half marathon at what for most people is a fast run throughout don’t quite match.

I’ve always subscribed that the high intensity session should cycle on a 3 week cycle between hills, 800s and a session more focussed on speed endurance so like 2x15min at threshold building up to 20 minutes and then into 3 sets seems to work quite well as then you are hitting a mixture strengths..

That said I’ve been runnning a personal an experiment in low hr running for the last year or so and only started doing higher intensity for the last 10 weeks and it seems to have given some good results in some tests I’ve done, proof of the pudding will be in 2 weeks when I’m doing a marathon, but I seem to have reserves of endurance that I’ve not previously had.. for example I was 20 seconds off a 10k pr on at the weekend at the end of a 30k run last weekend(have to confess that I’ve never raced as 10k outside of a triathlon so it’s a bit of a soft PB...)

If you are the journey back from injury I can certainly confirm by focusing on low hr running, that I was in 1:38 shape this time last year and running ~30k per week and have built to 110 with no injuries...