Dan’s Journey from Abingdon to London (via Dewsbury & Bradford) – Part 3.

During the week before I ran October’s Abingdon marathon, I was lucky enough to get one of the HPH club places at the London marathon in April 2017. I promised to blog about the training and the build up … Part 1 came just before Abbey Dash, my last race of 2016; Part 2 came just after parkrun on 7th Jan 2017; and this is Part 3!

Can’t believe how fast this year is going!

Training in 2017 started on 3rd Jan and the year is 10 weeks up already! But it is going well … currently averaging 37-38 miles per week, with another 30 miles per week on the bike, coming in at almost 8 hours per week of graft, but with no niggles or over-training symptoms. Cycling mileage has been a bit lower than planned due to doing a reasonable amount of run commutes … about 40% of my mileage coming via this approach.

January was focussed on preparing for the Dewsbury 10K … the business end of the training coming from 4x interval sessions on the canal tow-path and 2 parkruns, plus a 13.1 and 2×15 mile long runs. In the mix was also a VO2max test, due to fact that I signed up as a guinea pig for a marathon fuelling study at Leeds Beckett (you may have seen the advert circulated by Kay in mid Jan). I was 5 years older than the advertised maximum permitted age but sneaked in based on favourable risk factors etc. In this initial max effort test (ouch!) I discovered that my VO2max was 54.2 ml/min/kg and my max HR was 181 bpm, quite a bit higher than I’d managed before! This block of training ended with Dewsbury 10K, which resulted in 41:19, my fastest 10K since 2012, and on a supposedly long course (although I’m still taking that with a large pinch of salt). John Blatherwick very kindly didn’t race that day, so it also meant I snuck in to 2nd spot in the 1st division road race league, despite only managing 6 races. All good … but now I had 12 weeks of marathon training – well, that’s what it said in my last blog! I realised I’d mis-counted and it was only 11 weeks! Gulp!

Since then, in addition to run/bike commuting, I’ve done two 10.7 mile subLT sessions (8.3 miles at 7:25/mi) and have completed 3 (out of 4) of the Leeds Beckett “marathon fuelling tests”. These have all involved a 2 hour run (60% VO2max – about 8:40/mi) followed by a 5K time trial – that comes out at 17 miles for me, so it has been a useful replacement for some of my long runs. Doing 5K at about 7:15-7:20/mi after a 2 hour “warm up” is certainly tougher than I’d manage on my own, so I think these have been beneficial. I’ve also done two 20 mile runs along the canal – one with Chris Jones and a second the week after on my own (while Chris put his feet up in a ski resort)! In general I am eating very little carbohydrate these days anyway, but both these long runs were done early on a Sunday morning after doing a hard parkrun the day before, and avoiding any carbohydrate intake in-between the runs. As discussed in previous blogs, the idea is to address my over-reliance on carbohydrates which I hypothesise is causing my inability to covert my 10K/HM times to 26.2 miles. The latter 20 mile training run came out at 8:36 min/mile, after a 6:36 min/mi parkrun, so I am pretty happy with my ability to fuel these long runs on fat stores. Carbs can certainly play a part in racing though … I not only “carbed up” before Dewsbury, but also the night before the last parkrun and came in at 20:03, my fastest since last summer, despite mahoosive crowds clogging up the last lap and robbing me of a rare sub-20 (500th Woodhouse Moor parkrun). I probably should do another 20 miler next Sunday but I have entered the Bradford 10K in the hope that I can bank some of this fitness with a decent time. That still leaves a 17 mile Beckett treadmill session and one more long 20+ run before taper … so 4 x 17, 2x 20 and perhaps as 22-23. That will have to do.

Can’t believe how fast this year is going!

Dan Donnelly