Stability Through Motion

The London Marathon looms, and everyone gets their running gear out to sit on the sofa and cheer on the millions. I was going to go along and add my own cheers, but the bluebell hunt continues and Sunday looks like it’ll be sunny after all, so the woods have won.

Okay, since the last reappearance of the NIGGLE, I’ve adjusted my training in two ways.

1. I’m only running on alternate days, no back to back running. This has led me to look at the FIRST running schedules from the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training. These are based around three intense running sessions a week plus two or three cross-training sessions. So far so good, although I’m only doing one running session at the suggested (much faster than usual for me) paces, as I’m still checking out my NIGGLE.
   Tuesday was a tempo session with 3 miles at my possible 10k pace. In fact this is last year’s 10k pace as I have no recent races to rely on. Suffice it to say, it feels fast to me – 6:24 per mile or 3:57 per kilometre, therefore 39:30 10k pace. I’ll be extremely happy if I can keep that up for 10k on May 17th in the Oxford 10k race.
2. I’ve been trying to run with a faster cadence. This is probably at the root of all the techniques that abound for trying to change your running style, become more efficient, and reduce injuries. It seems sensible advice, but it’s surprisingly hard to increase your cadence if you’re not running fast. Try counting the number of times one foot hits the ground in a minute. Mine usually hovered around 80 times, but I’m increasing that to the suggested 90. It certainly feels wierd, but I think the principle is that your feet spend less time on the ground. It beats trying to think too hard about running style, which has thrown me in the past in any attempts to alter my style. I have to say I’d always been quite happy with my style, it feels ‘natural’, fairly light, and I haven’t been THAT injury prone. But I’ll try anything to get rid of this year’s little NIGGLE.

As a precursor to the 10k, I’m finally going to race in a 5k event, tomorrow morning in glorious Basingstoke.

This is part of a weekly set of races around the country called Park Runs. They’re always 5ks, they’re free and apparently friendly. We shall see! I can’t predict anything about time because I’ve never raced a 5k. I’m quite scared to tell the truth, because it will probably mean trying harder to run than I’ve ever run before, and probably feeling like throwing up.

Oh, I guess I should fill in here all the other training I do in a week, since it’s currently quite a lot more mixed up than it used to be. Oh for the simple pleasures of January where it was run at one pace six days a week for 8 – 12 miles.

• Monday: rest
• Tuesday: tempo at 10k pace
• Wednesday: cross training, usually 60 mins on the bike at 100rpm with some short speedy bits and sometimes some rowing
• Thursday: for now just a general, off-road hilly 7 miles around Wytham. Eventually this should be an interval session
• Friday: cross-training, same as Weds. There are alternatives, but I’m sticking with biking for now
• Saturday: 10 mile run, easy. Eventually becoming a 10-13 mile run at a faster pace.
• Sunday: more cross-training as I wish

Tags: flm, niggle, racing

This entry was posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.