Wednesday 30 July 2008

Yesterday's 3000m race

Yesterday evening was the annual Otley AC 3000m track handicap ... with a difference this year. Due to new rules drawn up by Leeds Metropolitan University we were only allowed to have five people on the track at any one time.

This meant that we had to scrap our usual handicap format where runners set off at different times with the intention of all finishing together. Instead, the 14 runners were seeded by the handicapper into three separate races of the normal type (ie everyone sets off together).

Ian Fisher won the first race in 9:24 which is actually quite slow but we'll forgive him as he's still recovering from quite a serious thigh injury.

I was second in the second race (won by Lloyd Best in 11:06) with a time of 11:13 - a new pb. I then proceeded to run the 9.3 miles home [I ran to the track too for a total of over 20 miles].

Finished writing a training schedule leading up to the 24 hr race in London (18 October). It includes all the usual suspects: long runs, very long runs, fartlek, tempo runs, cycling, stretching and strength exercises. I'm keeping the eccentric achilles stretches every three days and the achilles massage daily and I've added some wobble board work twice a day. Not forgetting at least one rest day per week.

Cycling and strength exercises are ever increasing in quality and this time my two long runs (on consecutive days) will be followed immediately by a run 60% of the length of the long runs. Leading up to the Hull race it was 50%.

I've also decided to keep the 'crash training' week immediately before tapering as I thought it worked very well.

Oh yes, forgot to mention earlier, yesterdays race was my first ever 300om race.

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