According to my garmin app I should be changing my trainers every 400 miles which even at my modest rate would mean changing them just under twice a year. That'd get pricy quickly.

Nipped out yesterday for a quick (for me) blast, just over 5k in 30 minutes. Keeping up the pace towards the end was hard work - when I checked the numbers, I'd spent the last 2k over my theoretical maximum heart rate so not sure how much I trust those numbers. Either way, back to easy runs for a bit.

Guess the HR was just a theory then...

Yeah, yeah, I know if I'm going to look at the numbers I should actually get tested to see what they should be but it still intrigues me :)

My youngest (7 year old) wants to go running with me tomorrow so going to to the local park run, a dead flat 5k up and down the rail trail I often run on. His always wants to run to school but his usual style is to fall forward at a hectic pace for 20 seconds, dawdle for a bit and then rinse and repeat. I'm going to try and get him to go at a steadier pace for a minute, walk for two minutes and repeat and see how he does.

Good luck with that...you've met 7 year olds right


I did my usual in/out to work today. No lights, no water/wind proof kit. Almost felt like spring.

I’m not that hopeful to be fair but he asked so I’ll give it a go. It gets him away from the telly for an hour’s walk if nothing else.

That went pretty much as expected. Sprint / walk intervals for a km, "can we go back now?", then the same back. The added bonus was that the route is an out and back so the fastest runners were getting in as we were finishing so he pretty much sprinted the last 100m to get "sixth" :).

Local orienteering race. Haven’t raced in the area before so had no idea what to expect! 6.5km, 330m vert, 20 controls. Was a great mix of technical controls and fast trail running between sectors.

Didn’t do my best (daughter up all night vomiting) but still appears that I’ve come top 10 and possible win in the V40 category.

EDIT: 1st V40, 6th overall.

Park run with youngest this morning - 2k of alternating jogging and walking combined with the last 500m or so with me running while carrying an extra 28kg to the refrain, "run faster".

That was followed in the afternoon by an easyish 10.1k in an hour and a quarter around Stone. Do cream cakes count as good recovery food? I inhaled one afterwards :)

Horrible week for me.

Monday usual rest day, feet up, nice easy day at work. Then child began biblical levels of coughing which induced vomiting. Did not sleep well.

Tuesday ran in, felt tired but got in with it. About half way through the day...start feeling iffy. Long story short, run home turned int run-vom-walk-bushes for a poo-walk and so forth. Got home, in bed by 1700, got out of bed at 0700 the next day.

No running until Friday, did 30mins, felt OK, but tired still.

Raced today, orienteering, had zero pop, found it hard to concentrate on map reading and not falling on my ass. Oddly, came 3rd - mistake I made cost me the win without a doubt. Still was first V40 so that is good. Have done well in the Spring series overall, hopefully recovery and some more speed work will come to fruition when the regional races start to kick off.

5.4 miles trail run today. 540ft of ascent and lots of squishy mud that I needed to walk. Got worried at the start the the trails weren't starting on the route I'd made but they soon came and stayed.

Hopefully soon I may be at half marathon distance

I nipped out at lunch time for a steady 5.7k or so after a week of not running (not counting the 2k of jog/walk done with son#2 on Saturday). I'm not sure if I needed a week off but after two weeks of struggling to keep my HR down and just getting slower and slower it was much easier this time round. The only real difference I can think of is that I wore headphones for the first time in a while so maybe that just helped with keeping a steady rhythm.

Another steady 5.3k at lunchtime in the sun after the snow flurries of this morning. I got back just in time since it's snowing again now. I'm looking forward to a longer run at the weekend instead of squeezing them in at lunchtimes.

Pretty much been sick for two weeks now. Have rode a bit, but running has been non existent. DId a nice 7km hike with family today. Chuffing cold, but good to be out!

JK orienteering festival weekend. Today was the sprint event at Swansea University.

3.6km for me, 18 controls with a mix of urban and parkland. Made some big mistakes and paid for it.

20min and change. Can’t run super hard at the moment, hernia is being a git, but it gets operated on the 26th so I’m just running on through it.

Jk Middle distance today…. Or it should have been, but I made so many errors it turned into a long!

65 mins to do 7.8km with 20 controls. Should have been closer to 6.5 but I managed to cock up so bad I added about a km. ran to a control in the wrong order, so had to do a massive back track.

Actual longs are tomorrow. Area should technically suit me… we shall see.

JK Longs at Pwll Du today. 13.5km in 126 min , 26 controls, brutal. Lost 14 places due to an error. Unimpressed, but otherwise I was on it.

Relays tomorrow. Should be comical!

I dropped my eldest off at his playgroup and having an hour and a half to kill I set off on what was intended to be a long (for me) easy run, my first for about a month. I think the WRT must have just sapped all the energy out of my legs because I just felt dead legged after a couple of km and so ended up using all the shortcuts back to the car and only covered 5km in 31 minutes. Tired now.

After a few weeks of little lunchtime runs I managed a longer one today after I dropped my son off at his playgroup. I went left instead of right from my usual car park and just went exploring with a vague plan of looping around until I hit the canal. I discovered that it’s quite a bit hillier in that direction and managed to miss a turning so ended up running a L shape rather than a loop. 9.3k in a slow and steady hour and six minutes with 110m of elevation. I even managed to get two new veloviewer squares because I’ve not been that way with a GPS before.

I'm back!

British sprint orienteering championships at the weekend. Two different university areas in Leeds.

Saturday was the relays, team I was on came 7th, not bad as we were mostly all injured! Main thing is we made no mistakes, unlike many other teams.

Sunday was the sprint champs themselves, I've never raced one of these and the idea of 31 controls in 4km was a bit baffling. Lots of thinking, lots of fast and flat running. It took me a few controls to get into the map (lack of map time these past 7 weeks probably caused that) but then I got going. Ran well enough, but not fast enough to get into the A final. Not that I'd expected it! Two hours rest, then back out into a different part of the uni - complex nav from the start and it didn't let up. Made a few mistakes, but came in second in the B final. Happy enough.

First weekend running after surgery, only second and third actual runs in 7 weeks! I feel like I've been run over today but it was really good to be back racing again. Now I just need to train, lose the fat I've built up, and hopefully have a decent Autumn season. I suspect the summer is a write off as such.

L1010148-Edit.jpg by Greg.May, on Flickr

L1010103-Edit.jpg by Greg.May, on Flickr

Right... Not sure if this is a good way to ensure I'm on form to gwt a blue badge or maybe even a black this year. But, I've atarted running again. Instead of focusing on distance - so as to reduce any likelihood of injury - I'm keeping it short but fast.

Today was a quick run to get some wallpaper paste. Managed a few bouts of 7 mins per mile before slowing down to a walk to catch my breath and allow the lactate to sort itself...

1.9 miles with 138ft elevation and a pace of 11.21 mins per mile

Input welcome if anyone wishes but obviously my main training will be 50 or 70 miler mtb rides

Don't worry about running fast. Just run.

GregMay wrote: ↑Tue Jul 05, 2022 9:37 pm Don't worry about running fast. Just run.

Thanks Greg. I'm trying to counter the fact that they'll all be short runs by ensuring that they've at least got some pace. But I'm sure you're gonna educate me into why this is a daft idea (and I'm all ears and totally appreciate it ).

The vast percentage of my runs are 5-6k at a similar pace to yours (ie around 7 minutes / km) due to time constraints. I've been very much up and down with speed and available time but I've definitely noticed that when I get a solid block of running 3 times a week at a slow pace I get better overall results than running intermittently at a higher pace. These days I know that can translate to a 6 minute pace 5k or a 7 minute pace 10k without pushing myself massively.

PaulB2 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 06, 2022 11:55 am The vast percentage of my runs are 5-6k at a similar pace to yours (ie around 7 minutes / km) due to time constraints. I've been very much up and down with speed and available time but I've definitely noticed that when I get a solid block of running 3 times a week at a slow pace I get better overall results than running intermittently at a higher pace. These days I know that can translate to a 6 minute pace 5k or a 7 minute pace 10k without pushing myself massively.

Thanks Paul. Maybe that's what I'll have to do then as Greg suggested. Mainly I'm just trying to get some strength into my lungs for the BB200 hence the reason for trying to go out fast. But I appreciate training is alot more complex than simply going out for a fast run

Not todays but while I was on holiday with largely no internet - 5k around Black Rock Sands in Porthmadog. Tide was way out so it looks like half my run was in the sea on Strava - the littlest things keep me amused anyway