2011 closes with a good result and a good year overall on reflection

I’m not going to go into a full rundown of the new year’s eve 10k that I enter every year, starting and finishing in my village, as I’s already posted it on the Runners World and Concept 2 fora here  http://www.runnersworld.com/community/forums/runner-communities/barefoot-running/maffetone-method and here http://concept2.co.uk/forum/blog.php?u=5638

All I’m going to say here is that the lead up to it has not been the best this year, with time lost to Christmas, and then a minor cold, so I went into it feeling unprepared but well rested so wasn’t expecting much.

It’s a very fast course, pretty flat with about 15m height lost in the first km, then all flat, then regain the 15m in about 250m of the 8^th km with a flat run in and a last 200m on grass/mud.  As usual it was all sold out early, but not all entrants turned up.  The trick here is not to get too far back and start behind loads of slow runners, who think they are quicker than they really are, but not to get too close to the front and get dragged along with the fast boys and suffer later.

I managed top get dragged along into a first mile that was way faster than I was planning, but managed to keep a good pace through the rest of the race and then pull out a decent finish as well.  So when I looked at my watch at the finish, I was absolutely dumbstruck.  Last year’s result, which was a PB then was 45:35 or 7:20 average pace.   This year was 44:14 by my watch, 7:07 average.  That’s a whopping 1 min 21 off the PB in one year.   I was absolutely chuffed and surprised. 

Splits / AHR/ MHR

1) 6:49 / 157 / 166

2) 7:19 / 165 / 169

3) 7:22 / 165 / 169

4) 7:16 / 165 / 168

5) 7:16 / 165 / 169

6) 6:50 / 170 / 174

7) 1:22.4/ 0.24mi / 5:45 pace / 172 / 177

Total - 44:13.8/ 6.24mi / 7:05 / AHR 165 / MHR 177

I really attribute this to the Maffetone method I’ve been following since the beginning of September.  I was worried that a lot of low speed/pace work would leave me unable to deliver when it came to a race, but it didn’t seem to work that way.  I was reasonably comfortable all the way round to be honest, with nothing more than the usual hurting in the last mile and I think I could have even done more if I’d trusted myself not to blow up.  HR was slightly lower at each point than last year, but where I blew last year away was the first and last miles. Definitely going to stick with the Maffetone now.

A good end to the year, with the added bonuses of a PB, another t-shirt and a nice bottle of beer.  Ready to head off to some friends to see in the new year now.

So now a look at 2011 overall

The stats look like this:

2011 calendar year
	erg (metres)	bike (miles)	run (miles)	weights
time	11:30:45	79:13:05	87:22:18
cumulative dist	163627	1498	641.98
sessions	22	69	126	36
average duration	00:31:24	01:08:53	00:41:36
average distance	7,437.59	21.71	5.10
average speed or pace	02:06.6	18.91	08:10

This was 2010

2010 calendar year
	erg (metres)	bike (miles)	run (miles)	weights
time	29:53:13	121:20:59	17:38:20
cumulative dist	433102	2249	142.98
sessions	55	101	35	37
average duration	00:32:36	01:12:05	00:30:14
average distance	7,874.58	22.27	4.09
average speed or pace	02:04.2	18.53	07:24

		total sessions	average per week	total hours	average per week
Jan 10-Dec 10		228	4.385	168:52:32	3:14:51
Jan 11-Dec 11		253	4.846	178:06:07	3:25:30

If you look at the totals, there’s not a lot in it timewise, but obviously the emphasis was very different each year.  The other thing that happened in 2011 was the ITB/Hip trouble I was having at the beginning of the year.  For the first five weeks of the year, I did no running at all, and then I was starting my transition to barefoot/minimalist, so I’d only done 50 miles up until the end of March, with another 600-ish in the last 9 months of the year.

With all that running, something had to give.  I had a pretty good year on the bike overall with new PBs at all three distances in the club TTs, but even so the distance was down overall.  The erging was pretty much relegated to last place with CTCs getting done (www.c2ctc.com) but not a lot else unless I ended up somewhere I didn’t want to run or didn’t fancy a treadmill.

So, the running was slower as an average, but there was a lot mire of it, which I think is at least partly responsible for the success in the 10K this year.

And plans for 2012-01-02

On the bike

• Carry on with the club TTs when I can
• Try a 25 mile TT for fun
• Maybe try a longer ride again this year

Running

• Main thing is an ultra-marathon, likely to be in July as a 70 miler on a 10-mile loop circuit
• Possibly a second ultra
• A couple of smaller races mid year and the usual new year’s eve 10k
• Carry on enjoying my running
• Keep my entries going in for an online 5k racing league.  I used the first half of my 10k for December and did OK in the straight ranking, but not so well on the handicap.  Need to change that.
• Pick up the Barefoot running again and try and get some regularity into it this year.

Erging

• Keep up with the CTCs
• In the second half of the year, pick a PB to knock off.  Haven’t decided yet whether to go for a longer or shorter one.

Otherwise, just keep enjoying it, stay healthy and definitely keep up with the Maffetone training.