The FastDay Forum

Good morning I'm up and ready for my parkrun, good luck everyone

Aldi are having a Running event (shopping) next Thursday, I need a waterproof jacket and theirs looks ok on their website and is £19.99, so worth a look.
Question for you experienced runners - what is a Compression Layer, and do I need one?

[carieoates]

@SianSdont wait, go and have a look now, they have them in mine already, and yes they look great. Might get a pink one.

Grrrr carrie, I've just got back from parkrun IN THE SAME TOWN AS MY NEAREST ALDI !

33:32

Well done Andrea

My time was 28:32 one second slower than my PB, I was wearing a pink tutu, size Age 7-8 which I'm sure added drag

(Quick edit not JUST a pink tutu)

Which is your parkrun - do they do photos? This is a must see!

Well done both! Will search for the pink tutu pix online...

I had a miserable attempt which I abandoned just before halfway - both hips really sore, not helped by 4 hours driving last night, little sleep and no appreciable exercise all week. Bah humbug... Only the second parkrun I have had to abandon, and for the same reason. Must get out on my bike this week before the weather turns again...

Andrea - Sian runs Maidstone!

There are many pics of people in pink netting on the Maidstone parkrun flickr, none of them are me so far

Bad luck, Pete - hope the hips feel better soon.
I can feel myself stiffening up - lots of stretching needed.

Oh Pete, hope you're feeling better soon - you look after yourself, d'you hear?

I'd a much better run this week, 29:06, knocking 2 minutes off last week's effort. My tricks were;

1. Go to training sessions, even if i'ts raining
2. No booze the night before
3. Take a dog to help pull you up the hills

Next Saturday is my birthday, and I'm doing the GR8 Dundrum Run. 8 miles of road, field, and beach running. Bring it on!

That sounds hard work MC! I won't be able to attend next Saturday - have to work - but will do a similar run myself.
I am not hugely worried about time, but what is the best way to get better. OH says that if you increase the distance the speed comes of its own accord, but I notice some people seem to use interval type training - what do peeps here think?

Speaking as someone who enjoys running but finds it an effort - not a natural born runner by any means: I have found interval training has been more effective at increasing my speed and endurance than logging lots of junk miles at a plod. Likewise, doing cross training - military style circuits in my case, has really increased the power in my legs.

However, don't get the wrong impression. I'm still not FAST, merely FASTER

Andrea - winsome is probably correct for your situation, if you want to run faster then practice fast running over shorter distances. Grinding out loads of miles at the same pace is a hard way to improve speed even though the fast marathon runners do have to do over a hundred miles a week...

I found that when I started doing parkrun (which appeared right at the end of my running career, unfortunately!) the 5k distance was shorter than I had ever trained over so I was not fast enough. I started doing interval runs on Wednesday lunchtimes whilst at work - 1 mile warmup, 6 x 45 seconds hard up a medium hill, jog recovery in between, 1 mile warm down. Within a month I set my PB which I not got close to ever since!
Last summer, OH and I used the running track marked in our local park for 400 meters intervals with 1 minute rests in between, initially 1 slow, 4 fast, 1 slow but building up to 6 fast laps. A lap tended to be 1 min 40 sec for me. This felt awful almost every time we did it but it paid dividends in our June/July results at parkrun and was the only other time I ran - I biked to get endurance training, or walked to maintain mobility in my hips as jogging is the worst thing for me nowadays.
Neither of us is under 60 but it felt surprisingly liberating to be pretending to be real runners going flat-out!

There's plenty of training advice for all sorts on the net, might be worth looking around a bit and show hubby what the experts say...

Edit to add you only go really fast once a week - the rest of the time is slow long distance or medium speed medium distance - you are supposed to mix it up a bit!

Gosh Pete, with your hips and my dodgy knees we are not a very good advert for a lifetime of running! The best, and worse, thing about Parkrun is that I have hardly ever run such short racing distances and I simply do not have the pace to run well yet. It'll come though. Intervals are definitely the way forwards in that respect.
Not sure about MC's tip No.2 though. Surely that can't be good for you on a Friday!

Simon, I know lots of people with dodgy knees and hips, but few of them are even remotely fit and active, and most have a lot of other issues as a result of a sedentary lifestyle. If you're going to have the pain, you might as well have the gain