The off-season: 11 top tips for things to do during enforced rest

After the Great West Run in October, I always planned to let my body have a bit of a rest. In fact, I was basically prepared to give it the rest of October and all of November. Now, admittedly, this wasn't complete rest. Just dropping down to a comfortable three runs a week, totalling about 12-15 miles. Apparently though, my body didn't appreciate the efforts I was going to, and took matters into its own hands. Or more accurately, lungs.

Which left me with more time on my hands than I expected to have. So here are my 11 top tips for things to do during the off-season.*

  1) Book races
Okay, so I might be ill now, but that's no reason not to book out the whole of January, February and March with races right? I joked to a friend yesterday that my "long-term planner" is actually just my race diary. It wasn't actually a joke. I don't race as regularly as many, but I've got three races definitely booked, and another four pencilled in. Just in the first three months of next year. Oops.

  2) Buy winter kit
That first day that you step out the door and think "by jove, it's cold" (or however your mental voice would phrase it) is the time to stock up on winter running gear. I've been pretty good this year, and only picked up a couple of things so far: an extra hi-viz t-shirt, and a compression top that matches my running club vest. Because, you know, I don't want to clash.

  3) Sort running kit drawer
While we're on the topic of the kit, is it really still necessary to have four different vests in the drawer? Now that it's cold I'm surely going to do clothes washing often enough to only need a couple of those right? And where did I hide those gloves away? And what is that?

Okay. I haven't actually sorted it yet. I keep looking at it
and then finding something else to do. Can't think why.

  4) Watch a box-set / complete a video game / read a trilogy
Remember that box-set you got for Christmas, but never managed to watch because you were out running? Now you can watch all 24 episodes! Or that video game you started, but then just sort of... forgot about. Or that trilogy that looks really good, but you're worried that if you don't read them quickly, you'll forget who all the characters are. Seriously, I've completed about 25% of Grand Theft Auto during this "rest", and that isn't a small game.

  5) Volunteer at parkrun
If you can't run... volunteer! I don't think that slogan will catch on. Also, it turns out that if you go and volunteer on a cold day with horizontal driving rain, and a chest infection, you then develop a fever to go with it. I don't recommend the pair, individually or paired up. So, if you're resting due to illness, maybe skip this idea.

  6) Read everybody else's blogs and get jealous
Actually, now that I think about it, this one isn't ideal. I mean, it's great to be able to catch up with what you're all doing and stuff. But seriously people, why don't you all take a couple of weeks off too, just to make sure that I don't get jealous. Thank you.

  7) Write a training plan
New season: new plan. In my case, the new plan is basically the same as the old plan, but with two extra runs added in, and a longer long run. I'm hoping that nobody notices that both of the extra runs have been added on the same day. I'm sure mentioning it won't make it any more obvious. Ho hum.

On the back of an envelope, obviously.

  8) Write your Christmas list
This probably only works if you're reading this roughly when it is published. If you're catching up, or randomly found this on Google and it's February, maybe give it a miss. But otherwise, start scribbling that list down: new trainers, new Garmin, that swanky Nike top with the thumb-holes in the sleeves...

  9) Eat
Because it's a proven fact that the next best thing to running is eating. Try out some new recipes: plenty of those that took too long to consider when you had to factor a run in are now perfectly do-able. Of course, you might need to think about going for slightly less calorific options, but that just adds another challenge into the cooking, and might expand your repertoire! Me - I'm thinking Chocolate Fondant and a couple of new curries. Not together. Probably.

Sadly, this is not one I've made. Hopefully mine will
look this ace though. (credit: Robin, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

  10) Polish and sort medals
So, they've been hung up on the wall for a while now. They could probably do with a dust and polish. Now that I look at them, the display is a little imbalanced too: all the long ones are on one side, which looks a bit odd. But if I move that one over, the colours will clash. This could take a while.

  11) Rest
Oh yeah, I sort of forgot about this one, but I think it's pretty important. Rest. Whether enforced or not, let the body have a bit of a break so that any ongoing niggles can sort themselves out and you'll be fit and raring to go for the next season .. next week .. tomorrow.

So there you go, 11 things to keep you going when you're not running. I'm sure I've missed some important things out though, what do you do to stay occupied and reasonably sane during some down-time from running? Do you just go crazy?

* By "top" I mean, the first ones I thought of. And by "tips" I don't mean suggestions. Actually, they're just "things".

parkrun tourism: Yeovil Montacute

A couple of weeks ago, I headed out for a little more parkrun tourism. It came hot on the heels of a visit to Killerton, and was the last week in a five-week absence from my home parkrun (rest, illness, Killerton, rest, Yeovil). I was quite tempted to just head to my home run after so long away, but this bit of tourism had been planned for a while, so I stuck with the plan.

Location:
This is technically the next closest parkrun to me after Longrun Meadow, although the differing quality of the roads means that it takes more or less the same time to do the 22 mile drive to Yeovil Montacute as it does to drive 28 miles to Killerton. Like Killerton, the Yeovil Montacute run is located in the grounds of a National Trust property. Unlike Killerton, the route goes right past the house, with the east façade (pictured) providing a gorgeous backdrop to the run. Admittedly, despite the size and glamour of the building, my attention was elsewhere while running!

The stunning Montacute House (credit: Mike Searle, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Terrain:

Again, this varied completely from either of Longrun Meadow or Killerton. The route was entirely run on grass, and undulated throughout. The course was reasonably dry when I ran it, but I suspect that some of the ditches that I dropped down into would get quite tasty in the winter months. In fact, the ditch jumps, which Sarah (@mia79gbr) raved about so much in her blog post back in April, were the main reason I wanted to do this course so much. What I did forget reading in her post was that there was a "massive hill in the last kilometre". This did catch me a little by surprise. It shouldn't have done, but it did. Underfoot, the course is most similar to a cross-country course: my trail shoes performed admirably, but a set of XC spikes would probably be the most effective. Once it gets a bit wetter, this isn't a course I'd recommend attempting in normal road shoes, I suspect you'd slip all over the place!

Course:

The route takes in one "little lap" and one "big lap". At the end of the first lap, the little one, you are running directly towards the house, the finish and all the cheering supporters. This provides a similar boost to the traditional lap set-up at Longrun Meadow, although I didn't see a similar boost in pace! The big lap then completes an entire circuit of the grounds.

Summarising, I really enjoyed the run. I ran a slower time than I've achieved at either Killerton or Longrun, although my pacing was pretty awful, so that will have played a part. It is less well-attended than either of those as well, which did make the latter part of the race a little uncompetitive: it was pretty clear that I would finish 17th, no higher and no lower, for the last mile of the run. That said, as with every parkrun I've attended, the support was great from all the volunteers and spectators, and I would love to go back when it's a little bit wetter! Additionally, I'm really glad to have three such completely different courses as my three nearest parkrun events.

Exeter's Great West Run: race report

After completing the challenge of running my first half-marathon earlier this year at Silverstone, I knew I wanted to do an autumn half as well. Realistically, I had three choices: Cardiff, Bristol or the Great West Run. Cardiff and Bristol are both flat, fast courses, while the Great West, being in Exeter, is on the hilly side. I chatted to a few people, and after enjoying a few undulating 10k courses, decided to go for the Great West Run.

Oh my God, why?

Okay, okay, it wasn't actually that bad.

Race vest: ready!

Much as with the Taunton 10k, I didn't have the ideal preparation: two weeks before the race I spent pretty much the entire week off work sick, and the week directly preceding the race was a six-day week, with Friday and Saturday being taken up entirely with a stock-take. I know, woe is me! All that accounted for, I didn't feel too bad on the Sunday morning. I had spent the previous evening preparing my race kit: club kit with number attached, some food, drink and warm clothing, nothing too complicated. A 6:30 alarm was a little earlier than usual for a Sunday, but not too bad – especially as my 1-year-old daughter woke us up at 6:20 teething anyway!

Breakfast: Porridge and a glass of water, and by five past 7 I was heading out of the door. Travel and parking passed without any trouble, and I was glad to have parked in a legal place, as walking back to my car afterwards I passed plenty of cars with fixed penalty notices on them. A short walk got me to the race village, where I met up with a friend from Twitter, Matt (@MattUpston) and discussed some race strategy: he knew the course pretty well, and I was happy to take on all the local knowledge that I could!

Heading over to the start, I met up with Al, who I often run with at parkrun: we tend to finish around the same point. I probably have a slight edge at 5k, but he’d run a 1:38 half-marathon earlier in the year, so I knew if he was in that sort of form I wouldn't have a chance of keeping up! That said, we had decided to head out at around 1:45 pace, i.e. 8-minute-miles, and then see how it felt.

As you can see, we didn't really stick to that plan. The first mile was downhill, so running a quicker time along that wasn't an issue, and actually it felt good. After that we settled into a slightly slower pace, and although it might not meet the official definition of "conversational pace", we did (perhaps stupidly) proceed to have a conversation for more or less the first seven miles of the race. This did get us a few odd looks: apparently chatting is frowned upon at that pace.

Splits courtesy of Strava!

I struggled with the Little Miracles energy drink, which was at seven miles: it was sweet and sickly, and with the lid removed, the hole to drink from was the size of a milk bottle top! I took two gulps, accidentally spilling it all over my top, and then gave up on it. 

There had been a few ups and downs during the first half of the race, but with the exception of a couple of sharp hill at around the three mile mark, they had been pretty friendly. This changed as we approached eight miles. This hill I already knew about: around 150 feet up towards the university. My wife studied at Exeter, so I had plenty of experience of this part of the course, and while that didn't help physically, it was nice to know what I was facing. It was especially nice to know that after reaching the university entrance, the road drops and then climbs again, something that had a few other runners around me cursing.

I think it's fair to say that at this point Al and I both felt we were holding the other back, but amazingly we had managed to hold our pace at around 7:40. Strava suggests this was a "grade adjusted pace" of 7:19 and 7:09, and that might have contributed to my later struggles. Despite being a warm morning, from around this point I started to feel quite cold; the hairs on my arms stood up and I shivered a few times. I knew this was likely due to a fuelling failure of some kind: whether I didn't have enough sugar, water, or just energy I don't know, but it clearly wasn't a good sign. I opted for the not-very-sensible tactic of ignoring the chills and continuing along with Al.

I started to really struggle over the next two miles: I was shocked when I looked at my splits after the race and discovered that they remained around the 7:40 mark. I had been warned that the out-and-back leg along Pinhoe Road was hilly, but I had relegated it to "undulating" in my head. I managed to keep running the whole of the out leg, but as we climbed back up a hill approaching 12 miles, I told Al to head on, and dropped to a walk. After about 20-30 seconds, and spurred on by a passing runner, I started running again, but dropped down to a walk twice more over the next half mile. Another runner, whose top announced him as Paul, also walked bits, and we geed each other along for a while. Amazingly during all of this, I managed to keep Al in sight, and after taking on some water I thought I might be able to chase him back down before the finish. 

I didn't manage it: he kicked on for the final sprint after the 13 mile marker, and although I did similar, I didn't have enough to close him down. For the first time at the end of a race, I threw up within a few steps, but thankfully after sipping at the offered water, I was feeling pretty okay again within a couple of minutes. I obviously looked in a bit of trouble, as one of the marshals at the end hovered over me, asking if I was okay, and if I needed a medic. Thankfully it didn't come to that!

My time was 1:41;52, just five seconds behind Al in the end, and over ten minutes quicker than my only previous half-marathon attempt. I had mixed feelings at the end, the massive PB was obviously great, but I'd been quietly hoping for a sub-1:40 time, which I'd been on track for until those final couple of miles. That said, it was a hilly course, and I'd clearly messed up with my preparation somehow, so I was glad that having ignored my chills, I hadn't ended up in an ambulance. 

I'd like to experiment with gels before my next half, as that might provide a decent alternative to relying on race-provided energy drinks during a race. Similarly, a slightly shorter and less stressful working week leading up to the race would be nice! This morning, looking back, I'm really happy with my time on that course. 

Have you ever had the chills during a race, even when it wasn't cold?

How do you fuel before and during a half marathon?

parkrun tourism: Killerton

Firstly, a question: as a brand name, "parkrun" isn't capitalised. Grammatically this is clearly incorrect, it is a proper noun, and therefore should take a capital letter. However, as a corporate styling, it doesn't. I can cope with that. But, but... what about when it starts the sentence, then what am I meant to do?! Anyway, never mind, I went with the corporate styling, even though it offends my eyes.

Last weekend, I decided to cheat on Longrun Meadow parkrun, and pop down the road to my next closest. This isn't the first dalliance, but previously it has only been on a weekend when I was out of Taunton anyway, and everyone knows the postcode rule, right? But this time was different, I was still at home, I could have easily walked down the river for my usual Saturday morning routine, but I wanted something new, different, exciting! I wanted... Killerton parkrun.

Actually, there's a bit more to the story than that: Killerton were short of volunteers early in the week, and my wife currently isn't running, so given that we'd wanted to try the course out for a while, it seemed an ideal opportunity: she signed up to barcode scan, and I went along to run. Killerton was very, very different to Longrun Meadow, and rather than write a normal "race report" style post, I'd like to compare and contrast:

Willow Cathedral in Longrun Meadow
(credit: shuunyanet, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Location:

Killerton House (credit: Roger Cornfoot)

This is the first, and most striking difference. Longrun Meadow is part of Taunton's flood defences, and consists of paths around flood pools. A number of projects have resulted in the Oak Barn and the Willow Cathedral (pictured), but it is still essentially a flood plain! In contrast, Killerton parkrun takes place in the grounds of a National Trust property, and weaves its way through woodland down onto pasture land at the end. Not that I was doing a great deal of sightseeing during the run! Being a National Trust site did help us navigate to the run, as there were useful brown signs directing us from the motorway, although my car's sat-nav still got some use! The other obvious difference in locations was in their distance from me: Longrun Meadow is a slow twenty minute walk along the river from home. Killerton was a forty minute drive. I know which I'd generally prefer on a Saturday morning, although, with a young daughter, I'm up early enough either way!

Terrain:
As a flood plain, Longrun Meadow is almost entirely flat, and predominantly on lightly-gravelled paths. There might be some sort of technical name for the type of path, but I'm not really a path expert, so if there is, I don't know it. A short section is tarmacked cycle path, while another, dubbed "the muddy bit" is grass in the summer, and a mud-bath in the winter. Killerton on the other hand is an undulating course, though one that drops about 125 feet from start to finish, taking in fields, woodland paths and farm-tracks. The footing is uneven in places, uneven in others, and particularly hazardous with the current generous layers of autumn leaves. Thankfully, some of the gates are left open and guarded by marshals to prevent hazardous prancing over cattle-grids or vaulting over fences. (Though I hear one such manoeuvre might have been involved when the course record was set!)

Course:
Apart from the terrain, the most obvious difference between the runs is perhaps that Longrun Meadow parkrun is run over two laps, while Killerton takes in just one: and in fact as the start and finish are a few hundred metres apart, it could be argued it isn't even a lap! I've always favoured "one lap" events, citing the fact that multiple laps of the same course would be boring, and having to go around everything again would be mentally tougher. To an extent, I stand by that, but on the other hand, taking in two laps of Longrun Meadow means that we run past the finish line, where most of the volunteers, and any supporting family members are, halfway around. Whether you're struggling or not, this gives a nice little boost in the middle of the run. Not just a mental boost either: the speed increase in the graph below is replicated in almost every run I do at Longrun Meadow, and it's completely unintentional.

Not sure your cheering and clapping helps? My pace graph says it does!

At Killerton however, only the marshals provided support around the course, and while that support was welcome and well-received, it can't quite compare!

Volunteers and runners:
What wasn't different? The cheery, friendly nature of every parkrunner and volunteer. Despite being short earlier in the week, I think Killerton ended up slightly over-subscribed with volunteers as people sacrificed a run to help out. I got chatting before the race to a chap who was down visiting family, running his 49th parkrun, but his first at Killerton. We compared notes on our "home" parkruns and moaned about the hill we had to climb to the start. During the run, I did have a small problem with an unaccompanied junior runner, but these things happen, and credit to the Killerton core team, after I mentioned it, they posted a notice about junior runners on their Facebook page later that day. I hung around at the finish line, cheering runners home after I'd finished, and as always it was great to see the smiles as people pushed for the final sprint.

So the conclusion? Different, different, but same! This week, I've got to work on Saturday, but next week I'm cheating on Longrun Meadow again, and am heading out to Yeovil Montacute. I'm sorry Longrun Meadow, but I've had a taste of something different, and now I'm hooked!

Have you cheated on your "home" parkrun?

What differences and similarities did you find?

Do you want to run more different parkruns, or do you prefer to run the same one?

Taunton 10k: race report

I came into the Taunton 10k without too much expectation. I'd only entered the event because my wife was running it, and she'd been forced to miss it due to ongoing chest problems. About a month earlier, I'd smashed my 10k PB, dropping it from 46:40 to 43:44, and in all honesty I felt like that run had been a bit of a flash in the pan. I certainly didn't feel at all confident that I could reproduce it on the undulating course in Taunton. To add to this, I'd done some canoeing on the Friday night, and my legs felt all kinds of awful on Saturday. So it came as something of a surprise when I turned into the final stretch of the race and saw that the timer read 43:32, and I should get a move on. But I jump ahead of myself...

My own training had been a little haphazard for the month between the Battle of Sedgemoor 10k (BoS) and this one. I'd felt really sore for a few days after the BoS, and hadn't got back out running until the following Friday, and then after only a few days of training, I picked up a nasty stomach bug which put me out for another week. That out of the way, I managed to get back into some sort of rhythm with my running, but wasn't feeling as strong as I had before BoS. With a half marathon coming up in mid-October, I was worried about my long runs, and had considered squeezing this 10k into the middle of a longer run, sacrificing a good race time here for some valuable mileage. I managed to get a 10 mile run in the weekend before the race, and decided that gave me confidence enough for the half-marathon, and I could focus on the 10k as it deserved.

Running Forever RC were out in force for this race! *

I completed 5 one-mile reps at the track on Monday, at just slower than my intended race pace, and then went for a relaxed club run on the Wednesday. I skipped my normal Thursday run, and intended to go for a very relaxed parkrun with the buggy on Saturday morning. Canoeing aches scrapped that plan! Sunday morning I still felt pretty sore, but decided that I would go out and try to consolidate with a morale-boosting sub-45 time. Despite being my home 10k, I didn't really know the course very well, having never managed to take part before (but with a couple of DNSs).

The undulations started almost immediately, and my confidence took a bit of a hit: with my sore legs, even the relatively mild inclines were burning, and it was only the first mile! I slotted in behind a couple of guys I knew ran around my pace from parkrun, and just focussed on not letting them get away from me. The first three kilometres went through residential Taunton, before a climb over the motorway and off towards the village of Stoke St Mary, which was roughly halfway around. As always, my pacing could do with some work: my first mile was the quickest of the race: 6:52, but then I settled into a pace just over 7-minute miles.

The support around the whole course was incredible, even through the country lanes there was a surprising number of people out to cheer us along, and being a member of a Taunton running club, Running Forever RC, I gained benefit from the "home support". I won't pretend that I knew even half of the people who cheered me on with cries of "Go Running Forever!", but they all helped. As we rose over the motorway for the second time, I was buoyed by both the knowledge that this would be the last incline, and encouragement from club-mates Nadine and Dave: although the suggestion that I made it look "effortless" might have irked, I was certainly not finding it such!!

Effortless? Effortless?! Okay, I might like a little more relaxed than I felt... *

All that was left was a drop down the other side of the motorway and then a flat run for the line: but I couldn't get too excited, there was still most of a kilometre left! I pushed on, pulling away from a lady that I had passed going up the hill, and soon found myself in no-man's land: I couldn't see any runners ahead of me, and there was no one close behind me. I hate that situation at the end of a race: I like a bit of a personal challenge: to either chase someone down, or to keep ahead of someone, so it was only when I turned that final corner and saw that I was on course for a PB that I had incentive to push on and actually sprint the final twenty or so metres.

I stopped my watch at 43:40, four seconds inside my previous best, and the following day it was confirmed as 43:39. So, despite not really feeling too positive about it before, either mentally or physically, it went pretty well! It has definitely given me a mental boost, knowing that my time at BoS wasn't a one-off. I don't have any 10k races scheduled for a while now, so this PB will hang around for a bit, but I now have confidence that I'm continuing to strengthen and improve as a runner, and hopefully by the next time I race the distance I can take a bit more off again!

In the mean time, I've got Exeter's Great West Run (half marathon) in the middle of October, which is dominating my training for the next couple of weeks, and I'm taking part in a winter 5k series in Street, where I'm hoping to go sub-20 by the last race.

* Photo credits: Lainey Whitworth and Nadine Prouse.

Battle of Sedgemoor 10k: race report

In many ways, my last five months have been spent gearing up for this race. I didn't necessarily have a specific training plan laid out for it, but this was my focus race. During that time, I raced four other 10k events, and set two new PBs, inching my best time down from 47:25 to 47:00 to 46:40. But the Battle of Sedgemoor is known as a PB course, and I had my sights set on a significant new record: sub 45 minutes. Of my three resolutions for 2014, this was the only one I hadn't yet achieved.

Things started badly: a month or so ago I re-sprained my right ankle playing football, and I still haven't completely shaken the niggles off. A fortnight before the race, I hurt my left foot on a tempo run. Neither was particularly major, but between them they caused me to severely drop off my mileage in the couple of weeks before the race. I even considered taking painkillers for the race itself, but decided that I really didn't want to start down that road.

Onto race day: despite being my fifth 10k of the year, this race represented something new for me. This was the first time I would truly be racing as part of my club. Although I had done two other races since joining, there were no other club members at those races, so I was still on my own. This race had a new feel: at 9:30 we were meeting up in Taunton, to head over to Langport in convoy. This meant that at about 9:15 I had to frantically go to the petrol station to make sure I could make it to Langport!

Still, it wasn't that different: park, find race number, pin race number on, idle around, have club photo taken (okay, that was a bit different), wander over for pre-race briefing, head to start line.

So... I have a tree growing out of my head... (Photo: M. Lomax)

At the start line, disaster two struck. (To recap, disaster one was a couple of foot injuries.) Disaster two had the potential to be much, much worse. My Garmin simply would not find any GPS. This was an issue: on the back of my hand I had written pacing notes, but they would mean nothing if it didn't get some satellite signal. It's safe to say I was in a bit of a panic. Thankfully, another member of the club, Andy, was also aiming for 45 minutes, and another wasn't far behind, so I was able to initially judge my pacing off theirs to an extent.

I'd looked at the course profile before the race, and knew that the first mile to mile and a half of the race was a gentle climb. My plan had been to take this gently and then push on, but with no pacing data, I think the first kilometre was at sub 7 minute miles, and the second not much slower. Finally, about 2.5 km into the race, my Garmin started! It was useless as a stopwatch, but it allowed me to keep an eye on my pacing. I was still running with Andy, though typically one or the other of us was a few paces ahead. At the 4 km marker, I asked for a time check: 17:30: about 30 seconds quicker than I needed to be for 45 minutes. And looking at my pacing, I was still running quicker than I needed. I figured I was either doing pretty well, or was about to crash and burn.

At 4.5 km was the first drinks station: I took a plastic cup, just about managed to avoid spilling the whole thing. I then took a tiny sip, more to wet my mouth than actually drink anything, and dunked my hand into the water so I could splash my face. The next drinks station came up far too soon afterwards, at around 6 km, and I opted not to take another drink; a decision apparently shared by more or less everyone around me, as we all arrowed straight through the middle of the offering arms.

It was around this stage that I started to pull away from Andy; I knew that I was still running ahead of my target pace, and I was still a little worried about that, but I felt good, and let myself be dragged along by the other runners around me.

I must admit, I had forgotten about the incline at 7.5 km. I certainly wish the course had forgotten about it too: that hurt. Still, it is a fact that on a course that finishes more or less where it starts, any ups have corresponding downs, and the last kilometre was mostly downs. Although I hadn't had a real time-check since the 4 km mark, I knew my pace had been good since, and I could cruise the last kilometre, but on the other hand, I was still feeling pretty good, so I notched the pace up a little, which brought me close to the chap in front as I approached the finish funnel. Always one for a bit of a fast finish, I pushed to pass him through the funnel: unfortunately the cheering crowd let him know what was happening, and so he sped up. I ended up in a flat sprint; perhaps not the most sensible thing, but brilliant fun! I pipped him to the line (though our times were identical).

In all the excitement, I hadn't actually looked at the finishing clock: having crossed the line and been handed my medal, I'd found a spot in which I didn't think anyone would mind too much if I threw up (I didn't, as it turned out) and then got a cup of water. By the time I glanced back, it showed 44:05. I'd done it!

Looking at this, it's possible that the other chap didn't put quite
as much effort into his finish as I did. (Photo: M. Lomax)

I returned to the finish line in time to see Andy come through in just under 45 minutes, which meant that I didn't have to feel guilty about possibly dragging him along too quickly at the start! From there, our club runners came through regularly, and set a dizzying array of PBs.

As the photo shows, my time was actually sub-44: 43:44 in fact, almost a three minute improvement on my previous 10k best, and significantly quicker than I was aiming for. Maybe running without any pacing information at all for those first 2.5 km, and then only limited information helped me: I've suspected for a while that the mental aspect of "But I can't run that fast!" when I look at my pacing might have been holding me back. Recently Sarah (@littlerunnergal) posted, or at least re-tweeted, something about running "naked", and maybe there is some benefit in it. That said, I'm still planning on taking my Garmin along to my next race.

Shiny medal!

But for now, there are four months of the year left, and I've achieved all of my targets for the year already. Should I relax a bit and just run for the fun of it, or should I set new targets and go about hitting them?

Distance vs. Speed

In what is quite possibly the most eagerly anticipated contest since the 2009 release of Monsters vs. Aliens, I have been considering the pros and cons of trying to run quickly against trying to run further. Although there is an element of general musing about the question, it is also key to planning out my targets for next year. If what I actually want to do is run really quickly, a marathon probably isn't the best plan.

First, a little background: I did my first half-marathon in March this year, and am running my second one in October. Other than that all of my races have been at the 10k distance. Before this year, I'd only passed 10 km a handful of times in training runs - including one 10 mile run which crocked me and stopped me running for the next four months.

Me halfway around my fastest parkrun.

My fastest time is currently from Longrun Meadow parkrun, 21:06. Based on this a few formulas tell me that I should be able to run roughly a 1:37:00 half-marathon. My target time in October is 1:45:00: if I achieve that, the corresponding 5k time would be about 22:50. I understand the differences:

• I've run over 30 parkruns, and do so most weeks, while I've only done the one half-marathon.
• All of my runs are 5 km or more, whereas I've never trained over 13.1 miles.
• The predictions are completely different stages of development: parkrun has honed my 5k PB, I'm still learning about HM pacing.

On Twitter, the majority of the @UKRunChat community are aiming to run further and further: lots are signed up for the Brighton Marathon, which I think is the first (and possibly last) marathon for many, while plenty of others are looking at ultras. This has created a lot of peer pressure (not necessarily negatively) to push myself to run further too. To this end, I pencilled the Robin Hood Marathon into my 2015 calendar, despite the fact that I never really planned on running a marathon quite yet.

The thing is, as I've mentioned before, I love running fast. Running for ages? Not so much. So, I'm coming to the conclusion that for next year at least, I might enjoy my running more if I just continue to focus on shorter distances, with a few half-marathons thrown in. To reflect this, my training would have much more speed-work: threshold runs, intervals, and any "junk mile" runs would involve fartleks. Hill sprints are difficult in Taunton, although there's a few places I can go to run them, it's just a matter of getting there!

All that said, I'm not completely decided yet: is this just an element of laziness or nervousness about stepping up my distances? I think that it's just making sure then when I do step up I'm prepared and confident at the shorter stuff. I figure that marathon runners peak later in life, so while I'm still (sort of) young I can focus on running as fast as I ruddy can. I'm even considering running on a track, perhaps not racing though; I've seen @runmapporun's times, and they scare me!

As you might be able to tell though, I'm still a little unsure about it all: part of me says I can do both, but getting the balance of speed and distance, while maintaining a sensible run/life balance seems a bit too much manage.

What are your goals at the moment: speed, distance, or both?

What advice can you offer me, what has worked for you?