8 weeks to the Wellington Marathon

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Run Wellington

It’s been 8 weeks since I started my 16 week training plan aiming to complete the Wellington Marathon on 23rd of June 2013. So I’m exactly half way in my training schedule. On Saturday 4th of May I am running the Rotorua Half Marathon. This is essentially a time trial of sorts to see how my training has progressed. Ideally I am hoping that I can run a PB and beat my previous half marathon time of 1:33:54. The Rotorua course is known as being hilly so this might not be the case that I beat my PB. In any case I want to try and maintain even splits for the whole 21.1kms and see where I end up!

Last Sunday I ran one of my first longest runs in the 16 week plan on one of Wellington’s classic training loops. The 34km Makara Loop is the play ground of many a famous Wellington distance runners. Known for its hills and the nice flats passing through Ohariu Valley it’s regarded as a must do loop in Runners Guide to Wellington. So anyways I was joined on this loop by a few of my running buddies from Wellington Scottish Athletics club and Wellington Running Meetup Group. This was a pretty hard run I must say, although previously I had run a similar distance on trails (Rakiura Track) the Makara loop was pretty relentless. It was a steady pace all the way. By about the 28km mark coming through Johnsonville I started questioning myself! “why the hell am I doing this” and the last 5km was the hardest 5km I’ve ever run. Suffice to say I lost my confidence in myself if I’d be ever able to run a full marathon. This some say is what it’s about getting ready for a marathon and hitting the proverbial WALL! So it was first hand experience that even when you feel good at 25km and think ah it’s another 7km to go within a space of few Km’s things can change and change rapidly! I guess I should just take a teaspoon of cement and carry on with the next 8 weeks!

Here is the map & profile of the loop for those who are interested. We started from Karori Park and went over Makara hill towards Johnsonville and back to Karori Park.

MakaraLoop34k

Running with the group kind of helped but was also tough as trying to catchup when you dropped off pace. In any case I’m glad I was able to finish the loop. And I’m determined to run the same loop again at least once before the Marathon.

So in the last 8 weeks I’ve managed to hit 100km weekly mileage twice. Once at the start and also at in the 8th week. So it’s a classic Hard, Easy, Moderate, Hard cycle as you can see from the below training log.

8 Week Training Log

The last 8 weeks in numbers:

Total KM run: 651km
Average Km per Week: 81km
Longest Run: 34km

The next 8 weeks my plan is to incorporate some key conditioning sessions along with some speed and strength workouts to my schedule. Then I’ll start a 2 week taper starting from week 14. The 16 week plan has changed again somewhat based on what I’ve done and it’s going to be updated soon.

Also this is the club cross country season so there are a number of club events that I am interested in doing. I am no where near fast compared to some of the other club runners but I’m going to give some events a go to at least get some experience. All going well I’ll be able to improve my time over distances like 5km and 10km.

If you are training for any running event I would like to share this documentary with you. It’s a two part series and something that will inspire you in your running goals.

If you are training for the Wellington Marathon or any Marathon for that matter leave a comment and share your thoughts! How is your training going?

The Week in London & Energizer Night Run 10k

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Run Wellington

Last Friday (12th April) I left NZ for a work trip to London. This was a very short trip (5 actual days in London) and I made sure that I packed my Running gear with me. Just before heading off on the trip I found out via @leahevansnz on Twitter about the Energizer Night Run which was being held on the Saturday night (13th) in London’s Battersea Park. Basically meant after a 32hours of traveling door to door from Wellington, NZ and within 6 hours of me arriving in London I had a 10km race scheduled! Nothing like an all out run to cure jet lag!

The International flight from Auckland to London via LAX was without any dramas but I was not able to sleep much on both legs. Arrived in London around 2pm local time on Saturday and checked into my hotel near Buckingham Gate near Victoria. Pretty close to the Conference venue where I was attending a conference and speaking at. (I won’t bore you all with my work stuff) So anyways I was feeling pretty tired by the time I got into my room and after a quick shower I decided to have a nap and set my alarm to 6:00pm. I was out for the count! If not for the alarm I would have just slept through. Getting up a little dazed I had to kind of remember where I was and that I had to go run 10k! The event start was at 8:30pm and Battersea Park was about 3kms from where I was. Looked at the weather and it was drizzling with rain and was pretty cold out. I put on my gear and headed out around 7ish. I was feeling pretty tired but a couple of cups of coffee before kind of made it OK. (not my usual choice before a race but I knew I wasn’t not in any way going to run a PB). Took a Taxi to the venue since I didn’t want to try and find my way there and get lost.

The event HQ was inside a great hall where I picked up my registration pack. There was a whole lot of people already there and they had a very efficient team to get your registration pack quickly.

Event Registration for Energizer Night Run

The registration pack contained the racing number bib with some electronic timing thingy already attached to it, safety pins, a T-Shirt, an arm wrist band to gain entry the “after party” and an Energizer LED head lamp!

Energizer Gear Bag

Afterwards you could head into the main hall where all runners were gathering. This was a big hall with a bar and some food stalls as well a DJ! Loads of people were in there getting ready to run! I met up with @leahevansnz at one of the stalls and said a quick hello! Great to see a whole bunch of other Kiwis joining in the run as well.

On the main stage inside the hall the crowd was greeted by Nicola Adams (Gold at Boxing in London 2012).

Warming Up Inside the Hall with Nicola Adams

I headed outside the hall and it was pretty much raining at this time. So it was going to be wet and cold – hmm why did I sign up for this again? Well anyways I made myself to the start so I could get into a reasonable position. The only comment I have about the start was that they started all the runners in one go. Meaning 5km and 10km runners were all together so it was hard to gauge who was racing who. Anyways we were waved off by Nicole Adams and the race began. The first Km was pretty easy and although I was tired the feeling of all other runners around me got me into a good rhythm. Since this was in a park it was somewhat of a loop course where the 10k runners did two loops of the course with some sharp turns inside the park. I passed 5k around 21mins and then ran the last 5k slightly slower and resulting in a final time of 43min:13secs. Not my fastest but not bad after traveling 36hrs.

Energizer Night Run 10km in Battersea Park – London

The event was a lot of fun and well organized. Check out some of the photos on the Energizer Night Run UK facebook page. After the run each runner was given a medal! I was pretty cold and tired by the end. So got back to my hotel pretty quick without waiting for the “after-party” and was asleep before I knew it!

On Monday afternoon I heard the news of what happened at the Boston Marathon. I was immediately concerned about a couple of runners from our Wellington Scottish Athletics club who was running in Boston. (They are safe as they finished before the explosions!) It angered me on many levels like so many others in the running community. I’m not going to write a whole post about it – suffice to say that I was thinking of everyone who are affected by senseless acts like this all over the world and not just Boston. My Tuesday run was special because I felt that whatever the odds we can still keep going. Fellow running blogger super generic girl sums this up nicely on her post.

Rest of the week was pretty much attending the conference and doing work stuff. I managed to do some regular runs early in the morning in the nearby parks of St James, Hyde Park and along the Thames river. On a few occasions I had a few group runs with people from the conference also coming along. Hyde Park is a great place for running with so many options!

I am at Heathrow airport about to board my flight back to NZ. I land on Saturday morning (It’s Thursday here and I lose Friday in the air). Sunday is the first Xterra Trail Run in Wellington! keep running!

Marathon training update weeks 2 to 5

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Run Wellington

I posted about my first week update on the 16 week Marathon training plan that I am currently following a few weeks back! Now I’m well into the program and is at end of week 5. The 16 week Marathon plan has undergone some significant changes since I first published it – the updated version can be found here. This has been due to some valuable feedback from experienced Marathoners and also because of a few *new* events that I have signed up for. First I’ll talk about how the last 4 weeks had gone and then outline the updated plan.

Key highlights:

I do at least 1 or 2 runs of approximately 16km or 22km each week regardless of my long run
I attended the New Zealand Mountain Running camp in week 4 of the plan and ran about 60kms in 4 days with two back to back runs over 2hrs duration
I am recovering faster and can run a 14km run at steady pace
I ran a 5km PB (20:28) at Park Run on week 3
Ran a steady 25km run in just over 2hrs at an average pace of 5min per km

New Events

Rotorua Half Marathon on 4th May – My goal is to use this race to beat my current Half marathon PB of 1:33
Xterra Trail Series – Trail Running Series (4 events) from April to June!
Wellington Scottish Athletics Club Races – TBC

Major Updates to the 16 Week Training Plan (Actually 11 weeks to go)

Added 3 runs of 35kms to the plan leading into the Marathon
Extra Tempo and Interval sessions and Goal Pace runs
Track work 1600m repeats and 800m repeats

Below is the breakdown of the updated plan!

Completed 5weeks Marathon Plan

Note that on Sunday 7th I am running another off-road trail/mountain run of 18km at the Porirua Grand Traverse event. A recap will follow as usual. Head over here to get the latest updated Marathon Plan.

Tongariro Trail Running Camp Easter weekend recap

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Run Wellington

Last weekend (Easter break of 4 days) I signed up to be part of an organised weekend of running in Tongariro National Park. The event was organised by one our club runners Glenn Hughes who has competed in International Mountain Running events representing New Zealand. The biggest draw card for this weekend was that Jonathan Wyatt (six-time world mountain running champion) one of New Zealand’s top athletes of all time was going to be attending the camp! Read his bio here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wyatt He has an impressive list of wins and also is as far as I know the NZ’s fastest half marathon time record holder in 1hrs 02mins 37secs! Talk about being fast! He is very humble about his achievements and to have him at the camp was just inspirational.

Update from Michael via comment 6th April 2013 – “Rod Dixon is the fastest NZ half runner (1:02:12 in 1981) but Jono is the NZ 10km record holder (28:04 in 1996).”

Camp Recap

The camp was held at Discovery Lodge and scheduled from Friday afternoon with a first group starting at 3pm. Unfortunately I was late leaving Wellington and got stuck in Easter holiday traffic going up North along the coast. However I got to camp and went for an easy solo run in Whakapapa Village. There are so many nice trails to explore! In the end I ran along to a place called Silica Rapids on one of the trails. In the evening we had a great dinner and discussed what the rest of the weekend would look like in terms of running.

Whakapapanui Trail

Saturday morning after breakfast we got transported to start of the Whakapapnui trail which leads all the way up to the top ski field in Whakapapa via the Whakapapaiti Hut. (It’s just end of summer here in NZ so no snow). The plan was to follow this trail and regroup at the hut and then climb up to the ski field area. Of the 14 runners I was the slowest in terms of average pace on trails and climbing. Luckily we formed two groups and I was in the ‘slower’ paced group. Somehow on the way (mainly because I was slow :-)) I got a bit side tracked and lost myself and soon realised I took a wrong turn. Nevertheless I was able to back track and re-join the others who were half way down looking for me. We ended up climbing up to the ski area with some great views over the valley below.

From top of Ski Field

Here is what the trail looked like. Around the 10k mark I took a slight side trip 🙂 Total of about 18ks run.

Elevation Profile for Run up to ski field

I was pretty bashed after that run! At the top we enjoyed some great views and coffee from the cafe!

Running Group with Jono Wyatt and others

That evening we ended up in Owhango where some of the runners did a another trail and went to the Owhango pub for dinner and back to base for a well earned rest and sleep!

On Sunday we set off again and decided to do part of the Tongariro Northern circuit. The trail started from Whakapapa Village and to some degree it was a reverse of The Tussock Traverse event I did in January this year. This was an awesome run of about 22ks, not much of climbing and through some great trails! I really enjoyed this day! The trail ended on the Desert road where we got picked up. We then drove to the town of Turangi for lunch/coffee and then on to Tokaanu for some recovery in the famous geo thermal hot pools! Great day!

Whakapapa Village to Desert Road

In the afternoon/evening we all relaxed and shared stories then watched a movie about Kilian Jornet, A Fine Line. Great movie and highly recommended. It was a great weekend and I made some new friends and heard so many great stories about why each of us have chosen running and being in mountains, trails and enjoying life!

Monday morning we did another easy trail around Lake Rotopounamu near National Park and then after breakfast said our good byes and headed back to Wellington!

I am planning to organise another event myself for those who would like to explore some new trails and get out of their comfort zone. This was definitely outside of my comfort zone but I enjoyed every bit of it!

Group getting ready for another run!

Here is a great video featuring Jonathan Wyatt!

Happy trails!

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