April - It's now or never!

Hello all,

At the end of March I'd finished at a level where I'd completed a number of 10km runs, got my body use to the distance again, but not necessarily got my body the best foundation for it. I had however got the distance sorted so what was left to focus on was the time!

I'm no expert runner, but in my experience I've found decreasing your time harder than increasing your distance. With this in my mind, I knew I had to increase the number of runs from the previous month, whilst also looking at reducing the time. I've noticed two important things with my running

1) From my experience, I've not found it possible to treat every run as a potential PB (Personal Best). Achieving a PB puts a lot of strain on your body, and causes a certain amount of damage, which is not always healed by the time you go for your next run.

2) Performing a none PB doesn't leave me exhausted or really challenge my heart, and so whilst the general health benefits are undeniable, the effect on reducing my time significantly is!

What I needed was a balance between the two, so I came up with what I termed "Managed Uncomfortableness" runs (MU). These are runs that I'd only attempt when I was feeling good, where I'd push myself much harder either by sprinting certain sections, or just raisng the pace throughout. In reality, I'd be in pain for about 3/4 of the course... needless to say I didn't look forward to them :(

My aim for this month was to achieve ten 10km runs... and here are the results:

10km
01/04 - 50:56
02/04 - 53:17 - At this point I'd done three back to back 10km runs including the previous month!
05/04 - 46:39 - MU - new course PB
08/04 - 47:48

6.2km
09/04 - 27:32 - This was supposed to be a 10km run. However, just as I was getting near the 3 km mark, my left leg did not feel right. I decided to abandon the 10km and do a gentle 6.2km instead.

10km
14/04 - 48:41 - I left it a little to make sure my leg had healed properly... as the month went on I'd come to suspect that I'd not left it quiet long enough though!
18/04 - 46:06 - MU - new course PB
23/04 - 48:56
25/04 - 48:01
28/05 - 44:50 - MU - new course PB - new 10km PB

After the last run, I woke up on Saturday with an ever so slight strain to my left calf. Nothing major, but to be safe I layed off the running on the Saturday and Sunday. Looking back it had been a really good month. I'd failed to meet my target of ten 10km runs, but I had done ten runs, and it was only a worry of injury that had prevented me from making the final run, and it’s a choice I'd make again. I'd achieved three new PB's in this month, including a new 10km PB for any course. This was great as my training course was harder than the Manchester 10km due to the gradients of some of the hills (Old Jackson lane being my arch enemy!). The total distance run just this month was 96.2km, which is equivalent to running from Stockport to Nottingham... though it took me a month, and I didn't do it all at once!!!

As May got underway, I was left thinking that maybe I was just one month to slow to getting a truly great time for me. I’d already achieved my aim of beating last years time (albeit in a training run), and I'd certainly hope I could get under 44 mins on the Manchester 10km now, but could I get under 43? That would be a tough challenge when you take traffic into account on the Manchester run, but it was something to aim for... though I'd not achieved any of my monthly aims so far!

Andy