Ealing Eagles marathon night

Last night I attended a marathon night arranged by my running club, the Ealing Eagles. The night featured 7 runners from the club and a guest speaker, all talking about their wide-ranging marathon experiences and offering tips.

As someone training for my 4^th marathon, I was a bit worried it would be too beginner friendly, but I had stressed unnecessarily. There was some useful advice there for everyone – from absolute beginner to hardened marathoners looking for fast times. I don’t fall into either of those categories but am desperate to run a faster marathon (my current PB is 4:19) and at the end of the night felt I had 3 or 4 bits of key information to take away and try in my marathon preparation.

There were quite a few controversial topics across the speakers. The distance of the long run was a recurring topic, with a couple of the speakers presenting a good case for a 22/23 mile run in the training programme. Overwhelming the consensus was that you needed to hit the 20 mile mark in training, for psychological and physical reasons.

I did find guest speaker Dan Afsar’s statistics on 20 mile races in training really useful, as I had been considering the Finchley 20. With data showing that a good 20 mile race can negatively affect your training programme and your marathon time, it provided food for thought. Dan stressed that it’s important not to go all out if doing a 20 mile race as part of your training so, knowing my inability to restrain myself in race mode, I think I’ll stick to the Reading half marathon now!

Dan’s presentation also revealed to me just how wrong I got my 2012 London marathon race strategy so I’ll be making some real changes to my behaviour on race day to see it makes any difference to my finish time in 2013. I loved the advice about making a marathon a 20 mile run followed by a 10k race and am looking forward to trying to put that into practice.

There was also a lot of useful information about speedwork. My primary New Year’s resolution is to attend intervals sessions every week with the Eagles and last night reiterated the importance of sticking to this resolution if I’m going to get faster. I also noted the advice from fellow Eagle Yan that trying to keep up with faster runners at the club can dramatically improve your race times. I think I might have to make that another resolution for 2013.

The main points I’ll take out of the night and put into practice are:

·         Make one of my long runs a 22 miler

·         Do an intervals/speedwork session every week

·         Train at race pace (for this I am going to have to invest in a Garmin, but it will be worth it). I’ll do this in kilometres, as Yan pointed out it’s easier to correct your pace using kilometre units.

·         And finally, run more with the Eagles (especially those a bit faster than me!)

New year, new goals

So it's 2013. It's not got the same ring to it as 2012, and there's no Olympics to look forward to, but it's a new year nonetheless.

I'm not a great one for resolutions but I find it a lot easier to keep them if I attach them to running. I suppose it's cheating, linking your resolutions to one of your main 'leisure' activities but there are so many days and weeks in a year where that running thing is such a chore, that they can still count as resolutions.

I set myself some challenges for 2012, my 40th year. I did ok as well, setting some significant PBs for myself, in 3 weekends in September. At last I can say I've done a sub 55 10k and, finally, after 6 years of trying I managed a sub 2h half marathon in the Great North Run. In fact, I managed it twice in a fortnight, shaving a few seconds off my time in Ealing two weeks later! So 2012 was definitely my year for half marathons!

For marathons, it wasn't so positive. London was a painful experience for me, with my ITB flaring up just before halfway, and I finished 7 minutes off my PB in 4h 26mins. My attempt to run two marathons in a year was thwarted by Hurricane Sandy, and I had to make do with just a holiday in New York instead of another marathon attempt.

Maybe I'm not meant to do two marathons a year. In which case, I'm going to concentrate fully on London this year. I was lucky enough to win a place this year, and I am going to try and beat my time from last year (and aim to stay fit so that I run 26.2 without the constant nag of a grump ITB). I really want to get as close to 4h 15min as possible, or at least beat my Berlin PB of 4h 19.  My main race tactics are a) avoid getting stuck behind a hula hooper, b) not to run on the right side of the road all the way round, aggravating a weak glute and c) not go off too fast...rookie error!

Whatever I do this year, I want to get faster - which is where my New Year resolution comes in. My resolution is to go to intervals training with the Ealing Eagles every Thursday. Or as many weeks as possible. I'm convinced that a short burst of regular attendance last summer led to my 3 PBs in September, so I'm going to test that theory out by going to intervals sessions as often as possible (sometimes I have to work on an evening) in the run up to London marathon and see if it translates to a faster time.

I'm also going to see if I can hit 1h 55m in a half marathon - my favourite distance. I'm not really going to set any 10 mile or 10k goals this year, other than to try and run more races at those distances.

Finally, my last running challenge/resolution is to try a Parkrun. In the 6 years I've been running, I've never made it to a Parkrun. Hopefully 2013 will be the year I make it to start line.