Forums >Racing>2023 The Waltons: Racing & Training Thread
My week:
Monday 40 miinutes easy on th treadmill
Tuesday 30 minutes easy treadmill
Wednesday am 7 with intervals pm strength training
Thirsday 6.7 easy on the treadmill
Friday am 30 minutes easy on the tradmill pm strength training
Saturday rest
Sunday am 5 with intervals pm strength training
Lots of treadmill this past week due to either storms or smoke. Heck, some days we had both. This has to be getting us out of the drought, I saw one map showing my area got 4-6 inches of rain on Tuesday (just that day).
Fred – great idea with the medals hanging down – that looks really cool. Thank you for sharing the picture. Hope the 4mile race went well!
Steve – great report, bummer on the time. I am sure you have a massive PR in you. The question I was wondering the entire time: was is THE Nathan Jones you passed?
Mark – great race and I am sure you will be either winning the next one, or you will need an excuse. That technical terrain is really a disadvantage for someone who usually runs the same bridge, the same track every single week. Once your body has adjusted to it, you will be the Jim Walmsley of NZ. PS: I think I bet you in overall km this week – I think that has only happened once before!!!
Watson – great race report, really enjoyed the read. That woman, 6k out from the finish, that was me earlier this year on my very first marathon too. So painful…and yet still so far…pure misery. Congrats on the sock voucher!
Darkwave – bummer cannot get the mixes onto spotify. How do you listen to those? Youtube Music?
Half – gosh what a rainy season. Do you watch TV on the treadmill?
My week was ok. I broke 20k for the first time since May. I am healthy and starting to run farther. Everything is good for now. I am drinking a lot more – this has definitely helped with keeping my paces.
Weekly for period: From: 06/26/2023 To 07/02/2023
Weekly Grid
Date
Name
mi
km
Duration
Avg/mi
Avg/km
Elevation Gain in ft
06/26
Not the brightest idea of all, to run in 28°C!
10.89
17.52
01:40:07
09:12
05:43
374
06/27
River Run
6.33
10.19
01:02:27
09:52
06:08
171
06/28
Easy Morning Fun
7.80
12.54
01:22:07
10:32
06:33
377
06/29
Longer lunch fun
12.44
20.02
02:04:27
10:00
06:13
554
06/30
The avoid the rain Run
5.42
8.71
00:54:46
10:06
06:17
112
07/02
Evening sun
4.98
8.01
00:54:37
10:58
06:49
433
Totals: Time: 07:58:31 - Statute: 47.85 mi - Metric: 77.00 km
HM: 1:47 (9/20) I FM: 3:53:11 (9/23)
2024 Goals: run a FM & HM + stay healthy!
Hot Weather Complainer
Mick - Yep, it was THE Nathan Jones, the one who has done really well in ultras and who Mark beat by 4 seconds in the Christchurch Half 2019. So when fully fit he's battling at Mark's level, not being passed in the last 800 metres of a 5km by me.
Unless THE Nathan Jones is the one me and watson played cricket with/against. Or the one who used to captain Melbourne Football Club.
Great to hear you're healthy and going for longer distances now.
Half Crazy - Great discipline to keep it going on the treadmill during the smokey period.
Fred - That sounds pretty brutal and would definitely have me questioning my life choices!
darkwave - Echoing the comment to Half Crazy, well done getting it done despite less than ideal conditions.
5km: 18:34 11/23 │ 10km: 39:10 8/23 │ HM: 1:26:48 9/23 │ M: 3:34:49 6/23
2024 Races:
Motorway Half Marathon February 25, 2024 1:29:55
Christchurch Half-Marathon April 21, 2024 1:27:34
Selwyn Marathon June 2, 2024
Dunedin Half Marathon September 15, 2024
Steve, nice job on the 5k. I find cold tricky, almost easier to overdress and be a bit warm.
JamesD, Even a little smoke seems to bother me running, somoving to the treadmill seems like a wise idea.
Mark, that race sounds tough. I find that on trails where you have some really technical parts that require lots of concentration, when you get on flatter/smoother/non-cliff, it's easy to let your mind wander and miss something on the ground that trips you. I'm pretty sure all my falls on trails have been on flat sections aside from the one slip trying to go up a BMX hill in the snow.
Watson, wow, 23 bibs! Tough when the race doesn't go as you hoped.
Fred, are the runners from England and Ireland visiting NY and come to your Park Run? Hope the coyote gets caught. I imagine that makes for some fun discussions on the neighborhood sites.
MJ, I have a holder for my phone and usually watch videos on youtube. I could move the treadmill out to face the TVs, but I can never get it to work right. DH built a custom entertainment center with multiple TVs and switches, so just getting the big one on never seems to work for me. Nice way to start ramping up miles.
Mother of Cats
Darkwave - as a fellow who has tight, sore calves, do you have any tips? For me it's massage gun mainly. Although I'm adding back in some general stretching (short yoga session, plus some dedicated hip stretches) which should help. Yesterday I've added in calf raises on the Smith Machine which may or may not help.
So....I don't regularly have tight calves; they just pop up from time to time. I do think that when they are aggravated, if you do TOO much to them, it just makes things worse. When mine are tight, I like to ice right after the workout, and then go to sleep with some very gentle compression (just a long non-compression sock that covers the calf would work) plus a heating pad set on low. The idea is just to keep the circulation up. Doing that, plus a few minutes of working on any specific knots once a day, seems to do the trick for me.
Fred - enjoy the 4M. As much as you can.
Half-Crazy - apparently the smoke is coming back again???
Mick - if you're referring to what I listen to on my treadmill? Most stuff is just on Youtube. The Zoltar Subterranean mixes are on MixCloud.
Everyone's gotta running blog; I'm the only one with a POOL-RUNNING blog.
And...if you want a running Instagram where all the pictures are of cats, I've got you covered.
Darkwave, ugh, really? I hadn't seen that. I guess most of the forecasts today have been so focused on the storms coming that the smoke isn't mentioned.
Supposedly code orange tomorrow afternoon in NOVA, possibly worsening that evening.
Just checked, looks like yellow for Baltimore, although I guess that could change. Right now we've got yet another downpiur where I can barelt see the house behind me, so should wash some crap out of the air.
Waltons ThreadLord
Cranford Firecracker 4-Miler, 7/4/23
Today was my 6th running of the race; 3 times before Covid and 3 times since. The course is fast (today's winner ran 20:35.4) but the July weather usually gets to me and today was no different. It was 77º (25C) with a dew point of 74º (23C), but fortunately the skies were mostly overcast.
The first mile is the easiest, run on a wide road with plenty of room and even the 90º turn is broad. I was feeling decent despite the heat and ran a 7:53 mile. Pretty much at the 1-mile mark the road begins going slightly uphill and continues to do so for 0.9 miles, getting progressively steeper (though it's never really a hill, it's just uphill enough that I notice it's harder to maintain my pace). The sun started breaking through the clouds during this stretch, making it that much harder. We got to the turn at the end of the uphill to a flat section where I hoped I'd be able to pick my pace back up, but it didn't happen and I finished mile 2 in 8:16. The clouds came back to mask the sun, mercifully, but I was done in terms of being able to run around an 8:00 pace and mile 3 clicked off in 8:54. During the last mile I was just trying to hang on, though glad to see I was generally able to keep around an 9:00 pace when I feared I might fall back into "easy" pace of 10:00 - 11:00. I ran through the finish chute with no kick to finish my last mile in 9:06, and finished the race with 34:17.4, which was good enough for 296th of 1,078 OA and 8th of 48 in my AG, which made me happy. My son managed to PR with a 29:38.3, placing 125 OA and 16/45 for males 14-19 (not bad for a 16 year old running with 18 and 19 year olds).
Here's why I keep doing this race. The event itself is a lot of fun. Today's field was over 1,000 runners for the first time since Covid. There's a kids mile before the main event, so the park is full of families and everyone is having a good time. After the first two miles, the race moves into residential neighborhoods and there are groups of people clustered all along the route cheering on the runners. Many people set up their own water stops to supplement those offered by the race. The fire department puts sprinkler heads on a couple of hydrants for runners who want some cooling off during the run and there are also homeowners standing along the course with garden hoses ready to spray down anyone who gives them the signal. And then there's the last quarter mile in the park, past crowds of people and a finish chute that's full of cheering, encouraging spectators. I may never run a PR here thanks to the warmth, but I always have a good time.
5k 23:48.45 (3/22); 4M 31:26 (2/22); 5M 38:55 (11/23); 10k 49:24 (10/22); 10M 1:29:33 (2/24); Half 1:48:32 (10/22); Marathon 4:29:58 (11/23)Upcoming races: Running is Back 10k, 5/12; Greta's Run 5k, 5/19
Well done Fred. I got to the end of the first paragraph wondering why you'd do this race each year, and then you answered it for me. It sounds like a nice experience but maybe you need a more conservative start to make it a fun experience?
Steve - are you sure it wasn't the former Auckland triathlete Nathan Jones? I haven't seem him on Strava in sometime so his whereabouts could be anyone's guess.
MJ - congrats on a good week!! Haha my routes from home are somewhat limited by the fact that there are really only two directions I can go from my house and both of them require around 4km or so of running before any other options open up!
Kathi - funny you mention that, I didn't see anyone bail on the rocks fortunately but it was carnage on the mud!
Fred - sounds like a really fun event despite the conditions. I think that is part of what I'm enjoying about the Xterra series - loads of families do the shorter course options which are around 5-6km. I'll be taking my 6 year old next year, she'll absolutely love it (the more mud the better). I also remember doing Kerikeri HM a few years ago which is typically mid-November when its starting to warm up, they had a run-through mist tent around 2/3rds of the way through which was brilliant!
3,000m: 9:07.7 (Nov-21) | 5,000m: 15:39 (Dec-19) | 10,000m: 32:34 (Mar-20)
10km: 33:15 (Sep-19) | HM: 1:09:41 (May-21)* | FM: 2:41:41 (Oct-20)
* Net downhill course
Last race: Waterfront HM, 7 Apr, 1:15:48
Up next: Runway5, 4 May
"CONSISTENCY IS KING"
Thanks, Steve. I think you're on the right track, but rather I may need to be more conservative in the second mile, accepting that the switch from flat and (slight) downhill first mile to the uphill second mile is going to slow me and not fighting to hard to keep up the first mile's pace in the second mile, then taking the energy I saved in mile 2 and using it for the second half.
Mark - Yes, sometimes races don't have to be fast to be fun if the event is well run and has a good atmosphere. I hope you have a great time next year with your 6-year-old.
Marathon training officially started today for me, with the first run of the Hansons advanced plan. 6 miles of easy effort on some hills. 122 days until the race.
4 months should give you a decent run at it, Fred. If I was to ever come out of marathon retirement, it would only be for a really big race like the NYC marathon.
Yay for Marathon Training start day!! Good luck, Fred - enjoy it!
50+ age-group PBs: Half Perish 1:24:24 (June '23 Road Race) - 10km 37:52 (2022 Local Road Champs) - Track 5km 18:49 (Aug '22) - Perish Run 3:17:42
2024 Goals: Boston Perish Run Sub 3:15 - Road/Track 10km Sub 37:30 - 5km Sub 18:20