Still Running (weakly). Issue 87

PAST – inspiration – “On Monday and Tuesday, after a heavy weekend, I only ran once,” Don Ritchie told me. “Then 14 miles each way to school and back on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I didn’t run on Saturday, because I felt tired. Then I did 31 miles in 3:00:48 on the Sunday.”

Don is probably the greatest ultrarunner of all time – so don’t try that at home! – and here he was rounding into form before winning the 1978 London to Brighton the next week, and setting a 100km world record a month later.

My point is how quickly he completed those long runs – 31 miles (50km) at sub-6-minute miles, 100km world record pace!

PRESENT – perspiration – Interesting that one of my favourite athletes, Laura Muir, is going to be coached by one of my past heroes, Steve Cram. The 31-year-old, who has come 7th, 2nd and 5th in the last three Olympic 1500s, is to be coached by the 64-year-old, who came 8th, 2nd and 4thin his finals (1980-88) at the same distance.

Muir always seems to give everything, her brilliant silver in Tokyo being the shining example of her guts and commitment. And, for those of you spotting the connection between Past, Present and Future this week, she usually covers a half marathon in her 70-minutes weekly long run!

But I do wonder what the outcome of this relationship will be. Cram’s highest profile athlete to date has been Laura Weightman – not a runaway success with just minor European and Commonwealth medals. Even domestically, they will have their work cut out against the Jenny Meadows-Trevor Painter stable, which of course includes Keely Hodgkinson (Olympic 800 gold) and Georgia Bell (1500 bronze in front of Muir.)

FUTURE – suggestion – If you’re running a spring road marathon, then your training, and specifically, your long runs, will be well underway by now. Won’t they?! If you’re doing London, you’ve got 12 weekends to go.

But how do you run your long runs? Do you go off into the hills and run as you feel, perhaps walk up the steepest slopes, stopping for a drink now and again?

Or do you train properly? Do you train in a way that is completely relevant to the event you are targeting?

Let’s say you’ve run about 4:30 for your last road marathon – and your target is to knock a decent chunk off that time. Whilst a jaunt in the hills will make you weary and will add something to your overall endurance, you would be better advised using that time in a way that more closely matches your aim.

So, the best use of your precious training time will be continuous runs on the roads (the same surface as your event) with drinks/gels handed to you (as they will be on the day) over distances that build up from your current longest run to about 22 miles (35km) at a pace that is relevant to your target.

So, by two weeks before your race, you should be covering 22 miles only about 30-45 seconds a mile slower than your target. For our 4:15 (9:40 pace) aspirant, that’s 10:10-10:25 per mile, with the last few miles certainly as fast as any before, if not a bit faster.

Obviously, these are demanding sessions and so demand a professional approach – they are demanding on you, demanding on the relative or friend you cajole into handing you drinks, demanding on your sympathetic family, and demanding on your whole weekend of doing very little before the run, eating, drinking and resting properly for it, and doing even less after it.