Rowe Running

Living where we do (West London) there’s plenty going on if you’re an active-sportsperson.  Each and every UK Bank Holiday the local triathlon club hold one of their triathlons.  I entered two of the races in 2007 and waited until today to enter my third race.  Since last year I’ve been swimming more, cycling much more and running less (due to injury and spending more time on the bike).  My plan for today was to push hard in the swim, hard on the bike and hard on the run.  I wasn’t too fussed if I burnt myself out early - I just wanted to push really hard throughout and see what would happen.

Why you ask - well, this is just a ’sharpener’ for a much bigger triathlon that I’m taking part in in two weeks time (more on that in a future post).

I was up at 5:45am, had a big bowl of porridge and then Sharon and I headed off to Hampton Pool for registration.  I wasn’t due to start until around 9am so was able to watch and support a number of our friends who were also taking part.

Swim - I took this pretty steady but strongly.  All the swimmers start off in 15 second intervals (based on estimated swim times) and it’s common for there to be all sorts of bunching and overtaking during the swim.  Thankfully I held my own throughout and had a clear swim.  I exited the pool feeling good and headed into T1 (swim to bike).

T1 - all I needed to do was to get some socks on, bike shoes (velcro straps) on, sunglasses and crash helmet.  Once they’re all done it’s a case of grabbing the bike and running through to the ‘mount point’ out in the street.

Bike - I’d planned to push hard on the bike and push hard I did.  It was a little breezy but no big problem and I was lucky enough to have sailed through the single set of traffic lights on the course (which were green - had they been red you have to stop and wait).

Part way through the course there were some roadworks which forces all riders to dismount, walk/run through the roadworks area and then get back on the bike.  This clearly slows you down - my GPS log shows that it took about 45 seconds to get through this patch - where cycling it would have taken probably about 5 seconds!  Do this twice (both ways) and you’ve lost almost 90 seconds on the bike when comparing the time year on year.

Nobody overtook me on the bike and I overtook at least 5 or 6 people.  I pushed really hard and managed an average speed over the 13.4 miles (21.6km) of 21.8 miles per hour (35km/h) - giving a bike time of 37:04.  From here you have an ‘easy’ (non-timed) ride back to transition 2, which is when the start of the run begins.  My bike in 2007 (minus the road works) was 38:12 - so I’m very happy with this years effort.  In the provisional results I was 21st fastest on the bike.  Last year I was 75th.  A great improvement even if I do say so myself.

T2 - this was pretty quick.  I got the bike onto its rack, slipped on my running shoes (elastic laces so nothing to tie), removed my helmet and glasses and then headed off for the 5km run.

Run - I felt strong (suprisingly after the bike) and just pushed hard.  I love the runs in these races (as it’s my best discipline) as I just seem to catch up and overtake people, which is great for the motivation.  About 1km in I ran past someone who knew me (from this blog) who asked if he could ‘hang onto me’ - with pleasure I thought - although I don’t promise it’ll be easy!!

Just after 2km and 4.5km I ran past my ’support crew’ of Sharon (obviously!), Kirsty, Danny, Heather, Nicola and Stuart who gave out some massive cheers of support which was most appreciated.  Apparently I looked strong whilst running (not that I felt particularly strong that is!).

Before no time at all I’d reached the finished and crossed the line in a total time of 1:06:33, which is 1 minute and 18 seconds faster than this time last year. My run time (including transition from the bike was 20 minutes flat - last year it was 20:08) which was in line with my expectations.

My overall position was 20th (although the results are currently provisional) which is a massive improvement on last years 37th.

Looking back at my blog post from the same race in 2007 I wrote: “My aim for next year is to break into the top 25 or 30 which I believe I’m capable of.”  Well, that’s clearly crossed off of the list :)

A number of photos from the race can be found at Sharon’s photo gallery website.  A couple of ‘official’ photos of me ‘putting some effort in’ can be found at the sportcam.net website (just search for ‘Rowe’).

Blimey!  It’s been a long time since I wrote about anything to do with running.  Mostly because it hasn’t been going what you would call well…

So, I shall perhaps be chronological and start with the Coad Cup.  Last year this was one of my first Ranelagh races and I got well and truly lost!  This year I was thinking I would still get lost - I also wasn’t helped by the fact that my Garmin was apparently fully charged but then it decided it was flat.  Naturally the charger was with David in Denmark…hey ho.  Unfortunately that made me a bit grumpy and my grump wasn’t helped by seeing my fellow group members whizz off into the distance down Queen’s Ride.  I carried on though, being overtaken by people left, right and centre.  I managed to only get a teensy bit lost this time and finished in a time of 50:03, last year I finished in 53:14, though I got more lost last time!  I am pleased I got a course PB though, especially after my running had not been good for quite a few weeks beforehand…including antiobiotics, which really knocked me for six.

Next up for me was the Wedding Day 7k race.  I unfortunately had been bitten at the Tuesday night training session by a vampire flying red ant and for the second time in a few weeks was on antibiotics.  Consequently, given that I had also been at a low ebb for weeks, I was not expecting much from this race.  I set off reasonably well, dragging a fellow Ranelagh woman with me, feeling not too bad.  When we got to Chestnut Avenue, I was overtaken by a newer runner in my training group, which I wasn’t surprised by.  However, as we reached the 5km point, I started to catch her back up again.  At about 6.5km I saw some friends sitting on the grass, being quite vocal, all I could muster was, “I don’t like this anymore”.  It was starting to hurt at this point but I pushed on, less than 5 minutes left to run.  As I came around into the final straight David was shouting for me.  I could see the finishing clock and saw how close I was to last year’s time (which I hadn’t expected at all), so I pushed as hard as I could.  I crossed the line with a 5 second PB and was chuffed to bits.  It doesn’t sound like much I know but after the recent poor form, it was fantastic.  It’s the first time in a long time that there has been a double PB in the Rowe household.  Even better was that when the results were produced we saw that David and I had won one of the “Couple” categories.  We won the category where one is old and one isn’t (I am a Vet, David is a Senior) by ONE second.  How glad was I that I pushed really hard at the end?  However, I don’t know if there is a prize or anything…there were some on the night but some mix-ups too I think.  Who cares really?  We won!  It’s awesome.

Next up I think was the Ratchford Relay.  Again last year I ran this race.  It’s a relay in a team of three runners where your fast runner runs three laps, the middle runner runs two laps and the slow/novice runner runs one lap.  Each lap is a kilometre long and through a bit of a rabbit-hole infested, hillocky, grassy bit, with a couple of tight turns and a bit on an incline to the start/finish line.  My team was pretty awesome and comprised Weibke (fast), me (middle) and Theresa (novice, only started running about 4 months ago).  It transpired that for the first time in a race, my miling pace was less than 8 minutes/mile, which I was chuffed about.  Last year my laps were completed in 5:05 and 5:07, this year I ran them in 4:54 and 4:56.  So only slightly faster but both consistent, which is good.  I would expect to be faster than this really but there’s always next year.  Overall our team finished in third place, which was fabulous.  The first placed team included our friend Heather as their middle runner and the second placed team contained Kirsty as their middle runner, well done ladies!  You ran fantastically.

Finally for this mega-update is my debut as a track and field official!  I went down to the track to watch the Veterans track meeting at St Mary’s, where there are a couple of Open categories too.  One of these is the long jump, in which fellow Ranelagh Kate was hoping to compete.  Unfortunately no-one else wanted to, so we had a quick instruction from Mr Gutch and away we went.  Danny was in charge of raking, Kirsty and I performed the vital task of constructing the foul board with plasticene (along with Kate’s oldest son Johnny) as well as the measuring.  Kate was awesome, jumping 4m 69cms…she did used to be a heptathlete in her younger days though.  Danny tried a jump and managed 3m something…and got sand in his trainers.  So Kirsty and I are now on standby to be Chief Measurers ready for London 2012.  Or perhaps not!

Finally is a more recent race, The Stragglers Club 10k (which David wrote about below).  I didn’t run this last year (I can’t remember why) but thought I would do it as a training run this year.  I was not feeling positive about it and I have to say it was horrid.  The course was difficult underfoot, not helped by the recent bad weather meaning the towpath was slippery, muddy and puddly!  That’s fine really but all in all I didn’t enjoy this at all.  Then coming up to 9kms completed, my neck started to really hurt - I had physio the day before and I think everything is a bit clunky at the moment.  I was overtaken about 500m from the end by Kirsty’s dad, Mike.  I didn’t mind as he was due to celebrate his 70th birthday two days later…consider it a present Mike.  I managed to finish in 59:41, which is bittersweet really.  It’s a very disappointing time for me, 5 minutes slower than my PB but the course is quite tough, it’s renowned for being slowish and my running for the last few months has been, quite frankly, rubbish.  However, what I am pleased about is that I still finished under an hour - it was a big battle to go under an hour for the first time a year ago and now I can get under it even when I am not running well.  See, every cloud has a silver lining.  However, I think that this race has been consigned to the “Races I Don’t Ever Want to Run Again” list…

Sharon and I are second claim members of The Stragglers running club and on Thursday evening it was their annual 10k members only race.  I’ve not run this before (I think I was working away last year) and hadn’t run a 10k since the Bognor Prom race in May.  My recent running has been on form and I entered this with the aim of going at least sub-40 minutes - even though the course isn’t particularly fast.

Now when I say not fast I mean it - much of the race is held on the towpath running beside the Thames and after a downpour of rain in the afternoon there were big puddles everywhere.  For much of the towpath I spent my time dodging the larger of the puddles which clearly slowed me down.

Once again I set off too fast, but soon brought that back under control.  The first 4k I was in a small group of runners but managed to edge ahead and I kept my position for the remainder of the race.  I ran through the 5k mark in about 19:10 and with the second half of the race being mostly on the towpath keeping that pace was going to be tough.  I ran hard, but not quite maximum effort (albeit damn close) and I crossed the finish line in 38:55 - a 2 second personal best over this distance.  My overall position was 16th out of 94.  For info the winner finished in 33:47.  Full results are available at the Sport Systems website.

I’m very pleased with this (as I should be) and look forward to running 10k over a more favourable course.

Many (serious) runners keep some sort of running log, containing details of all of their runs - often including some or all of the following pieces of information - distance covered, time taken, how it felt, heart rate (if you wear an HRM), weather, etc. etc.

One of the best things about taking time completing your running log is that you can look back at it and see how things have (or have not) worked over time.  Perhaps if training for a half marathon race you can look back at the kind of training you have done in the past - decide what worked and what didn’t and try and tailor your training to make things better.  There’s no point just writing down your training if you’re never going to look back at it and try and get something back from it.

So, Tuesday night was training night at Ranelagh Harriers.  Fortunately I’ve been able to make it to training for the past few weeks and I really wanted to go this evening as a great session was planned - one that is known as “Killingley Loops”.  A great hill session devised by club member Phil Killingley - a rather quick runner (winner of the Ranelagh Half Marathon in 2006 with a time of 70:30, and in the 2008 London Marathon finished a rather respectable 55th overall with a time of 2:29:45).

Anyway, where I am I going with this…  The session consists of a number of ‘loops’ (just inside Richmond Park near to Petersham Gate), starting with a tough uphill, a less-tough flat (and bumpy) part and then a fast downhill to complete the lap.  You then get 90 seconds recovery and then get to do it all over again (and again, and again)!

I’ve run this session now three times, in August 2007 (4 loops), September 2007 (5 loops) and then again tonight, in August 2008 (5 loops).  Each loop is about 1.17 miles.

Looking back at my logs in August last year for 4 loops my average time was 8 minutes 11.  A month later over 5 loops I averaged 8:23 (understandably a touch slower although my time on one lap was slower as it was getting quite dark I recall!).  This evenings session, including a moment when I managed to slip and fall on wet ground my average over 5 loops was 7 minutes 52.  It was a really tough session - the ground was wet in places, the wind was blowing but I had a good run.  Looking at the overhead image of the route, one (very important) thing that it doesn’t show is the hills we were running around.  Trust me, its not an easy course.

Being able to look back at your training logs to see that you’re making improvements makes the hard work worthwhile.  Finally, for anyone wondering, I’ve been using this training log for the past couple of years, but my split times and the map came from my Garmin 305 GPS, which is all stored using Ascent software.

Sharon and I visited my parents this weekend so couldn’t go to Bushy Park for the weekly time trial (yes, we’re obsessed!) so instead chose to drive the 25 miles from their house to Hove, which is just west of Brighton, for the Brighton and Hove Time Trial (BHTT).  We’ve only run the Richmond Park Time Trial a few times so this was a new time trial for us, and a thoroughly enjoyable one.

It is a multi-lap course with a few little undulations so certainly not what I would call flat.  There was also a bit of a breeze today but it wasn’t too much of a problem.

As the starting gun went about 15 people raced off ahead of me.  After about 200 metres there were 5 in front of me and over the next few km’s I brought that down to 3 in front.  I ran hard and finished 4th overall (out of 88) with a time of 18:18 - my best 5k time since October 2007 - and with it being on a non-flat course this must put in a good stead for getting close to my PB soon at Bushy Park.

Sharon had a reasonable run and was happy not to have finished last (as if that would happen!).

After the race Sharon and I went to the cafe - which is about a 30 second walk from the finish and had a hot drink and a chat with some of the locals.

The BHTT is run over a great course, with excellent organisation and is an event that I certainly plan to do again some time in the future.  If you’re ever near Brighton on a Saturday morning you can’t do much better than to go along and take part.