off season break

Tags

half marathon, mizuno, off-season, running, sponsorship

A lot of time has passed since my last post. In the meantime I took my off-season break and now I’m going back to full training. Originally, I planned to race one more half marathon in mid November but a light injury occurred the week before the race and then I also got sick so I decided to skip the race. My training schedule will be slightly different from previous years so I’ll return to racing in a couple of weeks. There’s an uphill race every other Sunday which will be suitable for a hard training run.
I got some news in sponsorship department. Mizuno will sponsor me with running shoes for the next year.
That’s all for now.

12 seconds

Tags

croatia, half marathon, pb, running, zagreb

Last Sunday I raced half-marathon in Zagreb. My goal was to improve my PB (1.13.50) which was set one year ago in Eindhoven.

I got a bit carried away on the start and went out too fast with the lead group. Splits for first 2k were 3.09 and 3.18. It became obvious I wont be able to hold that pace until the finish line so I let the group go and settled in my own pace, around 3.30 min/km. I was hoping that someone will come by since it’s easier when you have someone around you. A couple of guys went past me in the first 7k but they were holding 3.20′s and that was a bit too fast to stay in their shadow. First 10k were done in 34.14 which was 46s ahead of my PB pace. It became quite hard to hold 3.30′s. The hardest part was between 13k and 18k. We had a bit of a headwind and I lost a lot of time there. Things got a bit better again after the turnaround at 18k. Wind was now blowing in my back and finish line was in sight so I was able to get under 3.30 min/km again. I finished in 10th place with 1.13.38h which is 12s improvement. Not much, but makes me happy.

Duathlon Vrlika

Tags

duathlon, eindhoven, half marathon, national championship, vrlika, zagreb

Last Saturday I took part in Croatian sprint duathlon championships. There were four of us in the lead group and I was setting the pace for the first 4km of the run. During the last kilometer one guy made a big acceleration. Unfortunately I was the only one from our group that couldn’t match the pace and I was left in no mans land.
Leading trio was 15s ahead in T1. Once on the bike I was very close to catching them. So close that I hadn’t put my feet into shoes until half way point. But I lacked that little bit of extra speed and couldn’t close the gap. By T2 they managed to increase the lead by further 15s. Second run was too short to change anything and I finished in 4th place.
This weekend I’ll race half marathon in Zagreb and I hope to improve my PB which was set exactly one year ago in Eindhoven (1.13.50h). Interesting thing is that booth races are held the day after Ironman World Championship in Kona.

Rest of the season

Tags

duathlon, half marathon, running

My triathlon season is over but I still have a couple of races in my schedule. This weekend I’ll race Croatian sprint duathlon championship and after that I’ll have two opportunities to lower my half marathon PB (1.13.50h from Eindhoven last year).

Inspiration

Tags

injurie, running, shin, writing

In my world running and writing seem to be related. The more I run the more writing inspiration I have. Based on frequency of my recent posts you can get a clear picture of my running at the moment.
It all started sometime in December. I was working a lot on flexibility over the winter and seems like I overdid one exercise which caused some uncomfortable pain in groin area. I could still run but the pain influenced my stride which became very asymmetric. This probably caused some lower back pain afterwards. When I finally got rid of back pain I got back into full training too fast and had to deal with some pain in the shin. It didn’t seem too serious and the recovery week was in sight so I decided to ignore the pain for a couple of sessions. This proved to be a big mistake and now, 4 weeks later I’m still not back to running. Let’s hope this works other way around also. If I start writing more maybe I’ll be able to run more.

Training squad

Tags

hill, run, sljeme, training, triathlon, zagreb

Since I work full-time all of my training sessions during the week are done before or after work. It’s hard to convince anyone to get up at 5AM to train with me so I train alone. That’s one more reason to look forward to weekends. During those two days I can train with a group. It’s no wonder so much sportsman (and woman) train in a group environment. Sessions are much more fun and you can push yourself a lot more. So if you don’t have a training squad you know what to do.

For the past two months Saturdays are reserved for hill running. We have a beautiful hill just above Zagreb. It’s highest peak is a little more than 1000 meters above sea level and the nature is beautiful there with thick forest and rich wildlife. This Saturday we finally received a glimpse of winter with about 10cm of snow near the top. It’s common to have 50-100 cm of snow on the hill in this part of the year, but this season has been mild so far (like every other season in the past couple of years). One of my childhood fantasies was to live somewhere in the mountains covered with thick forest and a lot of snow so I must say I enjoyed this training session a little bit more than usual.

Here are some photos from the weekend.

Race season in sight

Tags

cross country, cycling, duathlon, running, triathlon

The race season is approaching. I’ve had the best winter (training wise) so far and I hope that all the hard work will pay off. In about three weeks I’ll compete in Croatian sprint duathlon championship. It’s not one of my A races but it will show me where I’m at in comparison to my rivals. So far I’ve done a few cross country races. Yesterday I competed in Croatian regional cross country championship and placed second with 15:40 for 5k. The course is probably a bit short, but the terrain is surly a bit slower than asphalt or track, so it’s hard to estimate my current condition from that result. The guy that beat me runs 15:05 for track 5k and I finished 12s behind, so that should be a good sign. Maybe all those hours spent training were not waste of time after all .

Besides that I’ve run a couple more cross country races which are held every Thursday. I use them as a good training since it’s easier to push yourself when you have a good company. So far I have 3 wins and a second place on those.

All other training is coming along quite nicely. It’s strange how much outside temperature influences my speed on the bike. I’m always way faster in warmer weather. For instance, this morning I’ve had almost 2 km/h higher average speed on 20-minute tempo intervals compared to last week. The course was identical, there were no wind on booth occasions and the only difference was outside temperature (8C compared to 0C). Let’s hope this will translate in another 6 km/h improvement when it heats up to around 30 C .

On the right path

Tags

bike, bike commuting, cycling, ironman 70.3, running, sunrise, triathlon, triathlon training

After a bit easier, recovery week I’m back in the business. In the next 3-week cycle my running and swimming volumes will reach new heights and there will also be a bit of intensity included to spice things up. As usual, I was a bit unmotivated in the recovery week but as soon as I stepped in the new build cycle I felt full of energy, and eager to do the work.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts swimming is going really well. All those kilometers in chlorinated water are starting to pay off. On Monday I’ve had first harder set. It was 6x100m hard with 30s pause. My splits were 1:15, 1:15, 1:15, 1:14, 1:13, 1:14. I’m happy with that, but it will be much better when I get used to swimming hard again (at least I hope so). After that I had 12×100 easy with 20s pause. I started with 1:22 and ended up at 1:20, not too shabby.

Running is going really well also. I’m much faster then this time last year. I’m slowly integrating some intensity. I’ve been doing strides all the time, but they are getting longer now, and also there are some medium long tempo intervals and some hill work. Most often I run in the early morning, before I go to work. Days are getting longer which is a good thing when you don’t prefer getting up when it’s still dark outside. I love that part of the day, especially in the spring when it’s not too cold and not too hot either. I really enjoy quietness of the dawn, color and light play at sunrise… Also, few days ago it was full moon and it was very low on the horizon so it looked 5 times bigger than usual. Beautiful.

Cycling is still on hold. I’ve been doing only one training on my road bike per week, but I commute daily (regardless of the weather) on my mountain bike. It usually adds up to 80 – 100+ km of commuting per week. After this build cycle I’ll put much more emphasis on my biking in preparation for Ironman 70.3 Austria.

I already feel strong and eager to race.

Regarding Lydiard training you can find good summary on this link. I’ll maybe write more when I read some of his books.

Lydiard training, part 2

Tags

base training, lydiard, running, running mileage, running tips, running volume

I must admit that I haven’t read any of Lydiard’s books. All my knowledge about him and his methods comes from the Internet. That’s why I regret even starting this, but since I already made an introduction post I feel like I have to finish what I started. So, all this is actually my interpretation of somebody else’s interpretation. If you know more about Lydiard and feel that I misunderstood something feel free to correct me. Also, I have a coach so I don’t actually follow Lydiard principles blindly, but I found out there’s a lot of similarities between my training program and those advised by Lydiard.

Lydiard use to divide season in several phases: marathon conditioning (base phase), hill resistance, anaerobic training, coordination training, freshening up phase, continuation of racing.

Marathon conditioning

First part of Lydiard periodization is called marathon conditioning. This phase should last at least 10 weeks. The goal of this phase is to improve your aerobic capacity, by running at aerobic speeds. Trough trial and error Lydiard found out that running around 100 miles per week in this period is optimal. This should be run at high aerobic speed, so it’s not actually long slow distance. Besides this he also advised his athletes to run as many as possible supplementary miles at low speed mainly to enhance recovery (they didn’t count that in weekly mileage). He also found out that he gained better results by varying his day to day training. It’s better to run 10 miles one day and 20 miles the next than to run 15 miles a day.

Training schedule for this part of the year could look something like this:

Monday 10 miles (15km) at 1/2 effort over undulating course
Tuesday 15 miles (25km) at 1/4 effort over reasonably flat
Wednesday 12 miles (20km) at 1/2 effort over hilly course
Thursday 18 miles (30km) at 1/4 effort over reasonably flat
Friday 10 miles (15km) at 3/4 effort over flat course
Saturday 22 miles (35km) at 1/4 effort over reasonably flat
Sunday 15 miles (25km) at 1/4 effort over any type terrain

My toughts

Lydiard obviously targeted this for experienced runners, so if you are a beginner this schedule is obviously not applicable. It would be wise to run for time instead of distance in the beginning. As you gain fitness you’ll become faster at aerobic speeds and it’ll be easier to hit your mileage goals. Running is high impact sport and by rushing things you could injure yourself. Start with volume that seems reasonable and build it up slowly. If you feel that you can’t recover well, back it off a bit.

Don’t be enslaved by numbers. There is no magic number of miles and it’s not much different if you run 99 miles vs 101 miles. Elite marathoners run up to 300 km per week. More is better, but only if you can tolerate that volume. If you can’t recover well more volume will actually slow you down and could lead into injuries and illness.

As you can see from the schedule above, Lydiard used fractions to describe training paces. I found this table on Alan Couzens blog which puts Lydiard effort levels in line with several other models.

Training intensity table (approximation)

As Lydiard said it’s ideal to run as many as possible miles at close to maximum aerobic effort. But what is maximum aerobic effort? There are several methods to approximate this. You could use your HR monitor and cap your heart rate in this period at around 20 beats below your lactate threshold heart rate. You could also use McMillan running calculator to determine your optimal training paces based on your recent results. Or, you can run by feel. It could be very useful later in the season, if you develop feel for various running intensities. In this phase your breathing should be in control, you shouldn’t get yourself out of breath. It’s better to run at higher intensity (but still aerobic) if you can recover properly and repeat the same training the next day. For this phase it’s important to remember that you shouldn’t take anything away from tomorrow’s workout.

What can we take out of this:

• High training volume is crucial to running performance, but you should build that volume slowly over the years.
• It’s better to run at close to maximal aerobic phase, but in the same time monitor your recovery. If you can’t recover well for the next day’s workout, back it off a bit.
• Mix up your training, don’t run same workout every day.
• Don’t bother to much with numbers (no. of miles, training pace…) and enjoy your training.

Lydiard training, part 1

Tags

arthur lydiard, running, running tips

Arthur Lydiard

Since it’s winter time and nothing spectacular is going on I decided to write a couple of posts about training. Firstly, I’ll introduce you to Arthur Lydiard and his training principles.

Arthur Lydiard was born in 1917, in New Zealand. Because of the great depression he left the school at the age of 16 and found a job in a shoe factory. He started running when he was 27 years old. At the time he wasn’t particularly fast. He tough that training methods of the time were to easy on him so he started experimenting to see how fit he can get. In his experiments he run up to 250 miles per week and found out that balanced distance and speedwork leads to improved performance in marathon as well as in shorter, track distances. Lawrie King, one of his training partners won provincial championship in 2 mile race which established Lydiard as a coach. As the time passed his coaching group was growing.

After 10 years of experimenting,  in the mid 1950′s Lydiard completed his training recipe. He now knew how to mix ingredients (base training, hills, speed work…) and how to plan it to reach peak performance at the right time. He knew that his principles work, but without formal education he didn’t know how it all worked. In 1960 Rome Olympic Games he received acknowledgement for his methods when Peter Snell won 800m event, Murray Halberg won 5000m and Barry McGee placed 3rd in marathon. Four years later Snell won double (800 and 1500m) and John Davies won bronze in 1500m.

Lydiard wasn’t trying to hide his methods and he started to train coaches instead of athletes. He spend 8 months in Mexico, and few years after that Alfredo Penaloza placed third in Boston marathon, Pablo Garido run 2:12’52, and Juan Martinez placed 4th in ’68 Mexico Olympic Games in 5000 and 10000m.

After that he spent 19 months in Finland, which led to renaissance in Finnish distance running. Olavi Suomalainen won 1972 Boston marathon, at the 1972 Olympic games Lasse Virinen won gold in 5000 and 10000m, Pekoe Vasala won 1500m and Tapio Kantanen came in third in steeple. When Lydiard arrived in Finland their distance records were 7 years old and few years after he left they owned world records, olympic gold medals and international championship titles.

Lydiard was forced to leave both countries because of  lack of support. He was never fully acknowledged by athletics community. His main premise was that even middle distance athletes (800 and 1500m) should train like they are preparing for the marathon and for experts of the time it didn’t seem logical, given the high anaerobic nature of these events.

In the following posts I’ll write more about Lydiard method and I’ll also throw in my own interpretation of the method.

To be continued…