Journey to My First Marathon – Part 2

On 12th April 2015 I took part in Brighton Marathon, my first ever marathon event. In this series of four posts I will be talking about my marathon build-up, training, performance and what I learnt along the way.

In the first post I looked at how I selected Brighton Marathon and other build-up races and how I selected and customised my training plan.

In this post I'm going to cover my build-up to training, the execution of my training plan and the nutrition strategy that I adopted to take me through training.

Build Up

Unfortunately I picked up a tendonitis injury in my foot that put me out of action for much of September (too much running on the beach!). I knew that my training plan was starting in the second week of December and that it suggested I should be running 70km (45 miles) per week before I started it.

October and November were thus spent slowly increasing the number and length of runs starting at around 30km (20 miles) per week. I did all these runs very slowly at a pace of around 5:30/km (8:50/mile) so that heart rate was always kept well in the aerobic zone (130-141 bpm). It was tough to stick to, what for me, is a fairly slow pace, but I think building a strong aerobic base and allowing the foot to heal properly set me in really good stead for the training that came after.

By the end of November I was comfortably running 7 or 8 times (mainly to and from work) and covering around 70km each week. I was also maintaining one swim session per week. I was ready to start training in earnest...

Following the plan

The plan worked out really well. I managed to stay healthy and free of any major injury. This allowed me to train consistently for the whole 18 weeks. In fact, I didn't miss a single session which I think really helped with being in top form. I also managed to keep a 100% score on Jantastic as well!

Luckily the only small niggle that I picked up was a tight achilles on my left leg. This was primarily linked to very tight calf muscles in my left leg. As long as I kept these well stretched and mobile then the achilles didn't really hamper my training.

There's no doubt that the plan was tough. In particular the presence of a medium-long run (16-19km / 10-12 miles) each week in addition to a long run meant that most sessions were done on fairly tired legs. Also, most beginner marathon plans I've seen tend to build up to just one or two very long runs (27km/17 mile+) at the end, while the P&D plan had me doing 9 very long runs over the 18 weeks of the plan.

I did find that about half way through the 18 weeks I had to change the plan slightly. On four days each week I was running to work as a session and then doing a short (3.5km) recovery run home again. As the main runs got longer and harder I decided that this was resulting in too much running. So, I dropped the second runs on Monday and Friday and cycled to work instead on those days. This certainly aided recovery and freshness and I don't think I could have completed the plan as successfully without making this change.

Focus of the plan

The P&D plans don't focus very much on speed work, assuming that the speed is already there and that you just want to increase endurance and the ability to maintain that speed over a longer period of time. This was just fine for me, although I did find that as my fitness improved my threshold pace was also getting faster as well.

The other thing that the plan is quite light on is actual marathon pace work. I think there were only about three or four sessions that had any marathon pace elements scheduled and even these were only partial sections of a longer run. The core plan was primarily about long and medium slow runs, general aerobic conditioning, lactate threshold runs and then, towards the end, some VO2 max work as well. I'll touch on this further in the final post where I review what I've learnt.

Pacing and heart rate

The P&D plan structures all of its sessions based on heart rate zones: starting with a heart rate reserve (max HR – resting HR) and then defining training zones based on that reserve. These work out as follows (with my max HR as 186 and resting HR at 56):

• Recovery: less than 70% of reserve + resting HR = below 147 bpm
• General Aerobic: 62% to 75% of reserve + resting HR = 136 to 153 bpm
• Medium/Long Run: 65% to 78% of reserve + resting HR = 140 to 157 bpm
• Marathon Pace: 73% to 84% of reserve + resting HR = 150 to 165 bpm
• Lactate Threshold: 77% to 88% of reserve + resting HR = 156 to 170 bpm
• VO2 Max: 91% to 94% of reserve + resting HR = 174 to 178 bpm

I pretty much stuck to these zones for all my training on the plan. On a typical day these heart rates translated to roughly the following paces:

• Recovery: 5:30/km (8:35/mile)
• General Aerobic: about 5:15/km (8:17/mile)
• Medium/Long Run: about 5:08/km (8:00/mile)
• Marathon Pace: about 4:24/km (7:05/mile)
• Lactate Threshold: about 4:05/km (6:35/mile)
• VO2 Max: about 3:50/km (6:10/mile)

Lactate Threshold pace in particular improved from about 4:10/km at the start of the training to 3:58/km that I maintained at Reading Half Marathon.

Mental Discipline

It was however surprisingly difficult to maintain the required heart rate zones and paces. On a good day it was really tempting to go a bit faster. On a bad day it was a real challenge summing up enough pace to get into the required heart rate zone. On a really bad day, trying to keep in the heart rate zone and a good pace at the same time was almost impossible. Still, the end results seem to have been good so it was certainly worth the hard work that this involved.

I also think that the mental concentration required to maintain both pace and heart rate was excellent preparation for race conditions. As it's impossible to run and continually look at a watch, I developed a very good feel for both how fast I was travelling and my current level of exertion. Add to that being able to concentrate on these aspects of running this for long periods of time and you have most of the mental skills in place for a longer duration race like a marathon.

Equipment

With all of my training taking place within defined heart rate zones, having the right equipment was essential. First off, every single run involved use of a heart rate monitor chest strap. I'm quite lucky that I don't suffer any discomfort from these, but getting one that is really comfortable makes a big difference. Secondly a really decent GPS running watch that supports heart rate zone training is also a very worthwhile investment.

The first few weeks of training were carried out with my trusty iPhone running the iSmoothRun App and my Pebble smartwatch for display purposes. Fortunately I was the recipient of a Suunto Ambit3 watch for Christmas and this made the rest of the training programme a much more enjoyable experience. Just running without a slab of glass strapped round your arm was a huge win. I tend to run without any music, so needing nothing other than a watch and the HRM strap was great.

Shoes

I used a number of different shoes during training. Most of my general and longer runs were done in Saucony Echelon 3. These are a great neutral shoe with a reasonable amount of cushioning. I also did plenty of other runs in my Saucony Peregrine 4 trail shoes, especially when my off-road routes started to get a bit wet and muddy. All of my faster sessions were carried out in Saucony Kinvara 4, swapping to a pair of Kinvara 5 towards the end as these are a very lightweight shoe that are great for going fast in! I used the Kinvara 5 for all my races as well, including the marathon.

Nutrition

Back at the beginning of 2014 I swapped from a typical UK diet to more of a paleo style diet. This involved reducing carbohydrate intake, increasing protein intake and swapping to less processed and sugary foods that are high in natural fats. In particular my meals changed to:

• Breakfast: cereal and fruit juice became half a grapefruit, salad, poached eggs, avocado and water.
• Morning snack: remained as cheese and a cracker
• Lunch: sandwiches and a low-fat yoghurt became roasted veg, sweet potato, smoked mackerel and a full-fat yoghurt.
• Afternoon snack: fruit, dates, peanut/almond butter and oat cakes replaced biscuits or cake.
• Dinner: normal meals but mostly eliminating high-carb items like pasta, pizza, bread and potatoes.
• Evening snack: milk and dark chocolate.
• Drinks: black tea, coffee and significantly more water (I was already teetotal).

Supplements

The only supplement that I take is Zinc Matrix, which I have found really helps with keeping hormone levels in balance and aids recovery while sleeping. Since taking these tablets before bed I've certainly noticed better quality sleep and waking up much fresher in the morning. Other than the Zinc Matrix, all my other nutrition needs are taken care of by a healthy diet.

Impact on health and performance

I credit a change in diet to significant improvements in my running ability. I've found it much easier to keep my weight under control and maintain a very lean physique. I certainly didn't find myself lacking for energy during any part of the training.

The fact that I didn't have any illness throughout the training period is probably also down to eating very healthily. There also appears to be a strong link between eating sufficient protein and quality fats and the body's ability to recover and repair injury. Again, I think my diet definitely helped keep me injury free and able to put the maximum into my training.

Fuelling for training runs

The vast majority of my training runs all took place first thing in the morning, even the long runs. For a General Aerobic, Lactate Threshold or VO2 Max session I would generally get up, have a glass of water and then head straight out. For my long and medium-long runs I'd typically get up and have half a grapefruit and perhaps a banana with my water. Breakfast would be consumed after returning from the run.

I firmly believe that doing most of my training in a largely fasted state combined with changing my diet has significantly improved my fat burning ability and allows me to run quite efficiently without needing to injest large amounts of carbohydrates. I'll revisit this assumption in the next parts of this series when I look at my race preparation and performance.

As most of my runs were done very early and on cold, dark mornings I found very little need to drink much during training. It was only really on the long 28km (16 mile) plus runs that I bothered with any water. Even for those all I did was place a couple of small bottles of water on my route at the 1/3 and 2/3 distances. A few sips was generally enough in most cases.

On my long runs I also consumed energy gels following the same pattern that I intended to adopt during the marathon. I've never really been a big fan of the maltodextrin based gels and they certainly don't work well with my paleo style diet. Instead I've switched over to 33Shake chia seed based gels. These are much more natural and provide a much slower release of energy as opposed to the massive sugar hit of normal gels.

During long runs I would generally consume gels at 8k, 16k and 24k and this was sufficient to see me to the end of the run. Included in the post-long-run breakfast I also had a 33Shake All In One Shake as part of my refuel and recovery routine. I found their nutrition worked really well and was very compatible with my dietary needs.

Getting Ready to Race

With the training plan going well and a healthy diet in place it was time to start preparing for the big race. This will be the subject of the next post in this series.

Journey to My First Marathon – Part 1

On 12th April 2015 I took part in Brighton Marathon, my first ever marathon event. In this series of four posts I will be talking about my marathon build-up, training, performance and what I learnt along the way.

In this first post I'm going to look at how I selected Brighton Marathon and other build-up races and how I selected and customised my training plan.

Race Selection

After a successful Reading Half Marathon in 2014 I decided that I wanted to attempt a marathon in 2015. Looking around for a spring event of a decent size and convenient date I narrowed down the choice to either London or Brighton. Not wanting to chance my marathon debut on a ballot, and the fact that we like visiting Brighton, made it a fairly easy decision.

Also, based on my 2014 Reading Half time of 1:30:01 I was also fairly confident to predict a marathon time of about 3:10:00 which, if achieved, would get me a good-for-age entry into London for 2016 anyway.

So, at the end of May 2014 I booked my place for Brighton. At the same time I also booked a hotel for a family long-weekend holiday (Friday to Monday). My logic at the time was that I didn't want to chance travelling down on the Saturday and missing the race number collection and I wasn't sure what state I would be in on the Sunday afternoon to drive home again. As it was, I would have been fine on both counts, but it was nice to have a family weekend away!

Build-Up Races

With my main race for 2015 booked, I then decided to look around for a half marathon in the weeks before. The aim being to use this race to test my fitness and practice race strategy. My default selection was to do Reading as this is my local race and a race I've always enjoyed previously.

However, when the date for Reading was released I discovered that it was only three weeks before Brighton. A few questions on some forums and the suggestion was that this wasn't my best option, the main reasons being:

• With the race being right before the taper there would be little time to adjust training or strategy before the marathon date.
• If I was carrying any niggles and aggravated them during the race, three weeks might not be long enough to allow them to heal.

I then looked around for something a bit earlier in the season and came across Bath Half. This was six weeks before Brighton and marked as a fast, fairly flat course. I therefore signed up for Bath as well. The aim being to do Bath as a full-on effort, aiming for a new PB for a half marathon. Reading would be a marathon pace training run and race practice, with the option of running it as a full race effort if things were going well with my training.

My race calendar for the start of 2015 was now complete. I then went away to focus on triathlon for the summer.

Training Plan Selection

For my first half marathon I followed a basic plan straight out of the pages of Runners World. As I started to read and learn more about running I then switched to building my own custom plans using various books and online sources as inspiration. However, for my first marathon I decided that it was important to follow a proper structured plan. I wanted one with a sound scientific background and a proven track record.

Finding a plan

Listening to the Marathon Talk podcast I had heard quite a bit about the Pfitzinger and Douglas plans and their book Advanced Marathoning. I purchased a copy, read it cover-to-cover and was very impressed by their approach.

I have a strong belief that a training plan will only be really effective if you believe in it. As someone with a scientific and highly logical background I was far more comfortable knowing the full reasoning behind the plan structure and recommended sessions. I just can't see myself ever being confident with plans that just tell you what sessions you need to do and when without giving you the full understanding of why.

With an understanding of and confidence in their approach to marathoning, I decided to select the Pfitzinger & Douglas 18-week 'up-to 55 miles per week' training plan. This felt compatible with my limited running history, my current mileage and the number of hours that I could dedicate to training each week.

Customising the plan

The first step was then to customise the plan to fit into my slightly unusual circumstances. I had the following constraints to meet:

• No training runs at weekends, except short sessions on a Sunday evening (part of my agreement to enter the marathon would be that training shouldn't impact on family time).
• Avoid training in the evenings during the week (for the same family time reasons and because my wife uses evenings for exercise classes and activities).
• Maintain one swimming session each week, which has to be on a Wednesday or Friday morning as that's the only time when the pool has convenient adult lane sessions. This was necessary as I was planning on some triathlons later in 2015.

With the above constraints in mind, I re-jigged the P&D plan so that it roughly fit the following pattern:

• Monday morning – general aerobic run
• Tuesday morning – long run
• Wednesday morning – swimming
• Thursday morning – medium-long run
• Friday morning – session (e.g. lactate threshold, intervals)
• Saturday – rest day or slow recovery run with the kids (working up to Parkrun)
• Sunday evening – easy recovery run

This would mean doing some 3 hour runs on a Tuesday morning before work, but the plan fit my schedule nicely and getting up early has never really been much of a problem for me.

I also planned on making the runs on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday morning end at work so that I could do a 3.5km (2 mile) recovery run home each evening.

In addition to the running, I also scheduled in a core strength session every Tuesday evening and a leg and hip strength session on a Friday or Saturday evening. Also there were short sessions of stretching and rolling pretty much every night as well.

Ready to Go

With a plan in place it was time to start my build-up and then move on to the training plan proper. These will be the subject of my next post in this series.

Brighton Marathon 2015 Review

This weekend I raced my first ever marathon: Brighton Marathon 2015. I had a really good experience and finished in 160th place with a chip time of 3:05:19. Very happy with this for my first attempt at marathon distance. In this post I'm going to review the actual marathon itself. I'll make another post where I'll review my performance and training.

Registration and Pre-Race Information

When I was contemplating my first marathon I was looking at either London or Brighton. In the end I went for Brighton as there was no ballot process and I felt this was a better way to plan my race season. Registration was easy and I had my goal race for the following year planned in May. Nice feeling.

All through the following months the communication I received from Brighton Marathon was timely, clear and sufficient. At no point did I feel I was unprepared for the weekend. It's difficult to emphasis how important this is. There was enough on my mind about the actual run without having to worry about administration details or logistics.

Finally, the Brighton Marathon Weekend Guide appeared online which contained every piece of useful information that you could wish for. I'd list this as an essential read as there was loads of really useful material contained within. Top marks for quality of information and communication.

Exhibition

Having never done a marathon before I wasn't sure what to expect from the Exhibition. All I really knew was that I had to go there and collect my race number. As the kids were off school, we made a long weekend of the event, travelling down on the Friday and returning home on the Monday.

We visited the exhibition on the Friday afternoon. This seemed to be a very good plan as it was fairly quiet and I was able to collect my number in minutes. We probably only spent about 20 minutes looking round the rest of the exhibition as there wasn't much to appeal to my kids and non-running wife. It was funny watching my boy try a sample of beetroot juice though!

Exhibition was well organised and had just enough stalls to make it interesting, but not too big that it felt like a major effort to explore. I wonder how busy it got during the peak collection periods on the Saturday?

Before The Start

On the Sunday morning of the race I got up early in my hotel. Breakfast was two pots of just-add-boiling-water porridge as I wanted to eat way before the hotel's breakfast opened up. Not too much hassle really. I drove about half way from the hotel to Preston Park and left the car in a side road (fortunately in the same parking zone as my hotel permit) and walked the remaining mile to the park. The walk was an excellent leg stretch to start the day.

Preston Park was a nice venue to start the race. Everything seemed well organised and laid out. Bag drop-off was nice and easy. Two potential improvements I would suggest to the organisers:

1. It would be good if the changing tents had some form of carpet on the floor or more chairs. I've been to other races where this has been the case and have always found this a good place to chill before the race, but I didn't want to sit on a plastic bag on the cold, damp grass.
2. I'm not sure there were enough toilets for the number of people present. There were some really huge queues that didn't seem to move very fast. Reading Half Marathon is a similar sized race and that has probably double the number of porta-loos plus all the toilets in the football stadium available as well.

There was a very short walk to the start and the corrals seemed very spacious and well organised. The fact that the elite wave had a different start just down the road meant that I was able to get almost right to the front of the race as well, which made for a nice quick start.

The Course

The course takes a nice tour through both Brighton and Hove. You get to see plenty of the sights and spend a fair amount of time along the seafront, which was very enjoyable.

Here's my Strava activity from the marathon:

The race starts out with a lap around Preston Park. Unfortunately this encompasses both a fairly steep hill followed by an equivalent descent within the first mile. Not perhaps the best way to start a marathon. The elite wave starts down the road and doesn't have to do this loop, so if I ever did Brighton again I'd be targeting getting into that wave instead.

The first part of the race goes through the centre of Brighton round by the Pavilion. It's a nice flat area and it was great to see the elite leaders on one of the double-back sections. Support was also pretty good in this area.

After that the route heads up hill into the Kemp Town area and on towards the marina. There's quite a lot of uphill here and you are very exposed to the wind. I think it was this section that took a lot out of so many competitors. Good crowds at the turning point where you head back towards Brighton, but other than that, this section of the race is very quiet.

Next is a run right along Brighton seafront. Very enjoyable with huge crowds and lots of support. Easy to get carried away here and overdo the pace a bit.

After that there's another inland section as you head deep into Hove and then back out again. The support in this section is surprisingly good. I think the people of Hove make a big effort to support this section of the race.

Next up is probably the toughest part of the race as you head out into the industrial area of Hove, round the power station and then back again. This section encompasses miles 19 through to 24 and is pretty soul destroying this far into the race. There's a much lower number of supporters in this area, although the big band were a fantastic boost. If you can keep a focused mindset through this part then you have the race pretty much nailed.

The final section of the race is back along the seafront promenade, back through the seafront area and finishing just past the pier. The support in this area really carries you through to the end. I got some really motivating comments from supporters along the promenade part. Thank you people, you really helped a lot. By this time my left glute and hamstring were really starting to get tight. It was just a case of gritting the teeth and keeping going and the support really helped with that effort.

Finally it's through the finish line and a big sense of achievement at having completed a full marathon!

Weather

It was a lovely day: clear skies and warm sun, but coupled with a fairly brisk sea breeze. This did seem to present some challenges to marathon running. It was actually a lot hotter than it felt and the breeze was enough to dry sweat fairly quickly. A lot of runners, myself included, therefore underestimated just how much fluid we were loosing and probably didn't take enough back on to compensate. This led lot of runners experiencing muscle cramp and reduced performance due to dehydration in the final stages of the race. Definitely something I will be more aware of for the future and an important consideration for anyone doing coast based marathons.

Drink Stations

There were plenty of drink stations around the course, pretty much one every mile. Some were water only, others were both water and gatorade. All drinks were supplied in paper cups rather than the more traditional bottles or pouches. Cups were certainly much more challenging to drink from and I ended up spilling quite a lot of water at each station - probably didn't help me in getting enough fluid on board. I'd certainly recommend extensive practice at drinking from cups while running, especially as I think future races will continue to follow this trend.

One minor complaint that I did have over the drink stations was with those offering both water and gatorade. Pretty much the only way to differentiate drinks was the colour of the cup: light blue for water, light brown for gatorade. This made selecting the right drink yet another thing to think about when approaching the drink station. On a couple of occasions I went for a water only to realise that it was gatorade and then having to adjust my positioning or stride while avoiding other runners also trying to use the station. For future races I'd strongly suggest to the organisers that they separate the water and gatorade stations from each other to reduce the chance of confusion.

I'd also recommend that if you have a supporter with you that you provide them with a disposable drink bottle and get them to pass it to you at an agreed point during the race (about half way would be good). That way you are guaranteed to have a good chance to take on enough fluids before the latter part of the race if you haven't got on well with the cups.

Finish Area

The finish area seemed pretty well organised. After crossing the line there was a smooth transition to collect foil blanket, water, food and medal. Bag pick-up was very smooth, but then I was an early collector of my bag. I expect the back collect got very busy once more runners started to finish.

After bag collect it was a short walk to the family/friends meeting point. This was nicely rearranged alphabetically which made finding them very easy - just make sure you agree a letter in advance. I then went for a stand in the sea, as suggested by my physio, as a convenient alternative to an ice bath. I think this greatly reduced the amount of muscle soreness I experienced over the following couple of days.

Atmosphere

Brighton is a really well supported race. It has a nice atmosphere and lots of cheering crowds. This especially true through the main seafront area of Brighton. However, the whole town seems to make a real effort for the event and there was even some support at the most remote parts of the course.

Some great bands along the way also helped with the atmosphere, as did the big screen and commentary around the power station part of the course. I'd also strongly recommend getting your name on your race top (something I didn't do) as the supporters along the way made a real effort to call out racers by name whenever possible.

Brighton Marathon App

Brighton Marathon publish their own supporting App to accompany the race. You can add runners and track them round the course based on their split times and predicted pace. My wife certainly found this really useful in making sure she got in place to cheer me on. In fact, she found it so useful, that I got to see my family at four separate points during the race - a great motivator.

Being able to track other runners was also great as I had made a few good friends through our Brighton Marathon Strava Club. It was really good to get to the end of the race and be able to instantly see how they were all getting on. Having access to immediate results of your finish time and position was also a great feature of the app.

For the race I'd been raising sponsorship for Wolfram Syndrome UK and apparently the founders of the charity were also using the App to follow my progress.

If you are doing Brighton Marathon in the future then I'd recommend the App as a must have item for both you and your supporters.

Medal, T-Shirt and Goody Bag

The medal I received is very nice, a decent size and quite heavy. Feels good quality, which is always nice. The finisher's t-shirt is also pretty good and something that I will end up wearing regularly. However, I do regret not purchasing a technical top at the expo and it would be nice if these were offered online as well.

The goody bag was pretty basic: a banana, seed bar and some chocolate. All most welcome, but I've certainly had much better bags at much lesser events. But hey, we do it for the challenge and the result, not the prizes!

Hotel and Transport

We stayed at the Langfords Hotel in Hove. This is a fairly cheap, but quite comfortable and very friendly hotel. Perhaps a bit far from the centre of Brighton, but in a perfect position for the race. The course goes past both ends of the road where the hotel is situated, so my family were able to come out and support me without having to go on a massive trek. (Although they did walk down to meet me at the finish.)

Transport from the hotel to the start at Preston Park was always going to be an issue. According to google maps it's a 1.8 mile walk, slightly further than I want to cover on the morning of a marathon. Fortunately, the Brighton and Hove parking permit system is quite good and I was able to get a permit from the hotel and then drive about half way to Preston Park and leave the car in a side road in the same parking zone.

It would be nice if the bus company would put some earlier buses from Hove up to the park for marathon morning.

Conclusions

Overall, I'd have to say that Brighton Marathon 2015 was an excellent event. The course is good and the organisation pretty much perfect. Atmosphere and support round the course was amazing.

Do however be aware of the challenges of hydration using cups and the effect of the sea breeze. Go prepared either by practising with cups or by having your own additional drink supplies on hand.

I'd definitely make this a must-do event, especially if you want a big marathon feel without taking the risk of the London Marathon ballot system.

Reading Half Marathon

On 22nd March 2015 I raced Reading Half Marathon. A great day of racing and a new PB for the half marathon of 1:24:33. This is the third year I've run Reading and it remains my favourite race for speed of the course and quality of organisation.

Strategy

After my 1:26:09 at Bath three weeks previous, I was confident at being able to post an improved time. At Bath I had an average pace of 4:03/km and managed to hit sub-4:00/km pace for each of the last 5 kilometres. I therefore had a suspicion I might be able to sustain a 4:00/km pace for the whole 21km race. My goal was therefore to set off at 4:00/km pace and then to back off slightly if it got too tough. (Brighton Marathon is only three weeks after Reading this year and is my A-race, so I didn't want to put that in jeopardy by overdoing it at Reading).

The plan worked well and by just after half way I was on an average pace of 3:59/km. I was feeling good so continued to put my foot down and maintain this pace for the remainder of the race. Slightly tough for the last couple of kilometres, but I was catching other runners and that is always a great motivator to keep going. Finished the race with a 3:59/km average pace, so the plan worked out just about perfectly.

Organisation

Reading has always been an incredibly well organised event. In fact, my only gripe in previous years has been the queues at the baggage collection after the race and the bottleneck of runners at the first two roundabouts. Fortunately this year they solved both of these problems.

In previous years, they seemed to allocate numbers based on predicted finish times. Thus, all runners finishing around the same time were all queueing for the same baggage line while other lines were empty. This year the numbers seem to have been more randomly allocated, resulting in baggage collect being nicely spread out across all the lines. The addition of a one-way system as well, made bag drop-off and collect super smooth. In fact, they had my bag ready and waiting for me before I even made it to my collection point. Nicely done team!

Everything else about the organisation went perfectly for me. Car parking was good, the race village was well laid out, facilities excellent, course marking clear, medal and goody back collection smooth. A definite 10 out of 10. This year's medal is MASSIVE!

The New Course

For this year's race, they changed the course round slightly. In previous years the race would start coming straight out of Green Park onto roads and then round two roundabouts. This was always a massive bottleneck, with everyone jostling to get a good position and into their running flow. Then, at the end of the race you would run down towards the Madjeski Stadium then have to turn off and do a soul-destroying extra mile through Green Park before coming back to the stadium.

This year the course was changed to put the extra mile in Green Park at the start of the race. This worked incredibly well. Firstly, it meant that by the time you hit any road junctions the pack had already spread out a bit and there was less bottleneck at the roundabouts. Then at the finish you just reached Green Park again and ran straight into the stadium, which felt much more satisfying.

The other change to the course was to chop out a bit of Northumberland Avenue and Whitley Wood Road and replace it with some extra time in the Reading University grounds. This also had the advantage of chopping out an extra small hill, which was most welcome!

Overall, I'd have to say that the course change was very successfully and makes Reading an even better place to attempt a Personal Best.

Atmosphere

Reading always has a great atmosphere. There's great support right round the course and the various bands along the way provide a great boost. The finish in the Madjeski Stadium is always amazing and really motivates you for a sprint finish in a way that you just don't get elsewhere. A big shout out should also go to the various cheerleaders around the course. The group on the A33 in the last mile were a great morale booster.

Room For Improvement

The race was so well organised that it's almost impossible to find any faults. There are only two very minor things that I can find:

The first is that the route through Green Park at the start contained a number of speed bumps. Some of these were so well camouflaged with the road that it was almost impossible to spot them until you tripped over them. In fact, one poor runner next to me went over in the first couple of hundred meters on one of these - not how you want to start a race. Even after seeing this I still stumbled on another one, even though I was looking out for them! For next year I'd suggest the race organisers head out with some spray paint and make these much more visible.

The other is related to the staggered start. On my entry I specified a predicted finish time of 1:30:00, putting me in the red start zone. However, my training had gone very well and I was now looking for a 1:25:00 finish. I'd hoped to be able to tag on to the 1:25 pacemaker, but they were positioned in the yellow start zone which went off three minutes ahead of the red zone. There was thus no way of catching the 1:25 pace maker. As a suggestion, for future staggered starts, it might be worth including an additional pacemaker at the front of each zone who is set to go 5 minutes faster than the zone pace to support those runners who are faster now then when they entered (there were plenty of us).

Conclusion

Overall I'd have to say Reading this year was a better course and better organised than ever. This is definitely a race that should be on your race calendar for next year.

What I Want From an Online Training and Activity Tracking Tool

Someone in our local Facebook running group recently asked members to complete a survey on how they track, record and share their running. This got me thinking about what sites and service I currently use and what features would be required for me to swap them all for a single unifying solution.

Primary Tools and Services

First off, it's worth looking at what I currently use and what features are good and lacking in each service. My current activity tracking and training platform consists of four fairly disjointed websites and services:

Movescount

I use a Suunto Ambit3 multi-sport watch to track all my activities. It's a superb watch (I'll add a separate review later) and it synchronises to Suunto's proprietary Movescount site and app. Movescount is essential in the mix as you need it to get data off the watch, configure activities and update the settings on the watch. Additionally it has a pretty neat app designer for building your own watch apps (as a software engineer this is something I'm using quite a lot).

Also, it has a reasonable training planner feature that syncs with the Ambit3 so you can always find out what your workouts for the day should be without needing to be near a computer or mobile. Unfortunately this planner isn't the easiest to use for actually building a plan and it doesn't work particularly well as a training diary, so I also have to maintain this data elsewhere as well and keep the two in sync manually.

Analysis of activity data is fairly rudimentary, probably just the minimum subset of features you can get away with. There's fairly good data about individual activities, but there's no way to track trends across multiple activities or periods. Fortunately the Movescount site can be configured to automatically export to Strava and TrainingPeaks, and you can also download .fit or .gpx files for manual import into other sites.

The community aspects of Movescount are quite limited, mainly because it's comprised only of Suunto owners.

Strava

I switched over from Runkeeper to Strava about 18 months ago. It's one of the two sites that I actually pay to use the premium services. Most of my individual activity analysis is done on Strava and this is also the place that I use to track shoe usage figures and to plan routes. I like the features that they have for analysing running and bike data. However, as a triathlete, I wish they did a better job on swim analysis.

The recent expansion to start tracking trends across similar runs/rides is nice, but this functionality is still very lacking in it's scope. You can't use it for any serious performance over time analysis as it appears to be only based on following the same identical routes each time, which gets rather boring.

I like the Strava training log and calendar feature, but not being able to use it as a training planner is a real weakness in my mind. Also, Strava doesn't really function that well as a training diary as you can only attach limited information to individual activities and there's no real publishing/sharing mechanism.

However, the biggest value I get from Strava, beyond the activity tracking, is the community aspect. Being able to join clubs, link to races and follow other athletes is great. I've been able to meet some great people and share in experiences and discussions. Being able to send and receive kudos and comment on activities just makes at all a bit more special. After doing a particularly awesome but tough session or race, getting some virtual high-fives is a really nice feeling.

TrainingPeaks

I've been looking for a good training planner/diary tool for a long, long time. I even started writing my own at one point (but work got in the way of finishing it!). First I came across XHale (see below) but it's limited feature set and manual event import weren't working for me. Then I decided to experiment with TrainingPeaks and I've been using it happily for a few weeks. This is the other tool that I now actually pay for the Premium Edition.

The main feature that I use within TrainingPeaks is the Calendar functionality. I use it as an additional activity tracker (in addition to Strava), with activities being automatically synchronised from Movescount. I also use the Calendar functionality to build my future training plans. It's a great plan builder and has good support for libraries of workouts and moving activities around. The ability to expose the Calendar as an iCal feed and also work with it in the dedicated TrainingPeaks iOS app are really useful as well.

In addition to using the Calendar to plan and record workouts, it also acts are a reasonably good training diary. You can record pre and post-activity notes and details of how the session went. There's also pretty good support for adding metrics like sleep, weight, mood, motivation, steps and so on into the Calendar.

Probably the only major features that seem to be missing from the Calendar are the ability to record notes and goals against weeks or training meso-cycles as opposed to individual activities (I think the classic view supports this to some extent, but it's not yet present on the new view) and the ability to publish a summary of my training diary to a blog. It would also be really nice if the TrainingPeaks app was HealthKit integrated so that it could automatically populate metrics into the calendar from the other apps that I use to capture this info already (SleepCycle, Nudge, MyFitnessPal, manually entered weight etc.)

The other parts of TrainingPeaks that I make good use of are its ability to define Annual Training Plans (which help with training plan building) and the Dashboard. On the Dashboard, the Performance Manager is by far the best component in terms of assessing ongoing levels of training load and stress in order to get the right balance between training enough to get improvements versus over-training. Being able to add custom charts and graphs to the visiualisation on the Dashboard is also a great feature.

Blogger

I maintain two blogs, one about software development and another about running and triathlon (this one in fact!). I do these via the free Blogger platform, mainly because I can't be bothered with the hassle of administering anything myself! My blog entries tend to be just observations, thoughts or reviews.

I don't record a training diary on my blog mainly because, again, I can't be bothered with all the pain of exporting and duplicating the information from Strava/TrainingPeaks into yet another location. I make do with the minimalist Strava activity summary and activity feed blog widgets.

Other Tools and Services

There are some other tools and services that complete my platform or that I found useful but stopped using for one reason or another.

Facebook

Unfortunately I can't avoid Facebook as most of my friends and family are on there. I usually share major runs or important races from Strava on to Facebook so that all my non-running contacts can see what I've achieved.

Twitter

I don't normally tweet all my runs as I find that frustrating when other people clog up my feed with that level of noise. I do tend to announce any new blog posts that I write via a Twitter post as I know a good proportion of my followers will find them of interest.

XHale

A few months ago I started using Xhale as my training planner and diary. It's pretty good for a free tool. Unfortunately it has very minimal ability for analysis, limited import functionality (I was exporting .fit files from Movescount and manually uploading them) and it also doesn't provide any way to export or expose the training diary. These are the main reasons I swapped to TrainingPeaks. It also doesn't provide any way to publish the training diary to a blog. It does what it does well, but it's yet another location to visit rather than a unifying point for my data.

Smashrun

I only came across this new site a few days ago. I've uploaded a few runs and so far it looks promising. What I do like so far is that their focus seems to be on detailed analysis of individual runs plus also trends over time. If they get the trend analysis right then they will have a real differentiator in the market.

Downsides seem to be at the moment that they only track runs (not other activity types like bike or swim), they have limited sync capabilities (so data import is manual TCX files for me), and there is no training planner / diary support. Still early days, but I will continue to watch this one, although not actively use it for the time being.

Swim.com

I was using swim.com with my Pebble watch to track and analyse my swimming sessions. I found their service very useful and the analysis features were nicely optimised for swimming. Unfortunately they don't support or plan sync for Suunto devices and they only seem to be able to handle Garmin specific FIT files.

I therefore don't use their site any more and I haven't yet found anything as good for analysis of swimming data.

iSmoothRun

Before I got my Ambit 3, my main activity tracking was via the iSmoothRun app on my iPhone. This is by far the best app on the market and has a huge amount of configuration and export options. It also has great support for audio cues, interval sessions and so forth. Having a dedicated GPS watch is much nicer, but I do miss many of the iSmoothRun features.

What I'm Looking For

Basically, I want it all! However, at the minimum, I'm after something that:

1. Allows me to upload, comment on, tag and analyse (in detail) individual activities (must support: run, bike and swim, plus multi-sport events like duathlons and triathlons)
2. Identifies and presents me with performance, fitness and training load trends over time for different types of activities, sessions and metrics
3. Provides a training planner tool that easily allows me to build and modify my plan
4. Provides a diary so that I can review sessions, comment on how sessions went, link activities to sessions, comment on weekly and other training cycles, define and track goals, and track usage of shoes and bikes
5. Support for capturing and analysing other metrics (e.g. sleep, body measurements, food intake, hydration, mood, motivation, injury etc.)
6. Route planning and sharing
7. Allow me to write blog entries and then publish my training diary, activities and blog entries to a single common page
8. Allow me to share content via Facebook and Twitter
9. Have a community element where I can join clubs and events, follow other user's activity feeds, diary and blogs, give them a virtual high-five and comment on their content

Secondary features that I would like to see include:

1. The ability to sync activities directly with Movescount so that they are automatically added just by syncing my watch (but I guess this is Suunto dependent)
2. The ability to sync my training plan with Movescount so that upcoming activities are always available on my watch (again, probably Suunto dependent)
3. The ability to customise and extend the data and trend analysis platform so that I can define my own additional metrics to track and which activities to include, display custom graphs of and so forth
4. Support for a wider range of activities that can be tracked (e.g. mountaing biking, hiking, yoga, pilates, strength, stretching, spin, skiiing, football etc.)
5. The ability to expose my training calendar using standard calendar exchange formats so that I can view my training plan from the Calendar application on my phone/laptop
6. An iOS app so that I can see, update and publish my training calendar and diary on the move
7. HealthKit integration on iOS so that metrics that I capture from other apps are automatically synced into my training diary
8. An open API, so that I (or other devs) can write our own tools, apps and site integrations on top of an open service/data platform
9. The ability to have a coach account so that (when I can finally afford a coach) they can build training plans for me, review my session stats and diary entries, add their own comments and track the long-term trends associated with my performance, so that they can continually improve my training plan

That's a lot to ask of a platform and its a very crowded market place to be entering. However, I'm currently playing for two services, each of which does part of what I'm after, but even together not the whole. I would certainly pay for a platform that meets even just my primary requirements (provide it's not too expensive – ideally less than £120 per year [5% of my training, kit and race entry budget]). I would hope that there is a significantly large body of athletes with similar requirements to me in order to make it viable.

Plans and Specificity

I'm currently training for Brighton Marathon in April, and following the Pfitzinger and Douglas 'up-to-55-miles per week' training plan. There's no denying that the plan is tough, especially completing both a long (up to 20 miles) plus a medium-long (up to 14 miles) run each week. However, I'm finishing the long runs feeling strong and that's giving me a lot of confidence for what will be my first ever marathon.

Chatting about training plans on a forum, someone mentioned that they weren't keen on the P&D plans as they don't include a large amount of speed work sessions. They are correct: most of the sessions are focussed towards endurance and marathon pace work. However, to my mind that's why I picked this plan. I'm not currently looking towards building speed and going faster.

This got me thinking about specificity of training. My goal is very specific: take my existing 5K/10K/HM pace and scale it up so that I can maintain the same level of performance over the marathon distance. To achieve this requires endurance and longer distance marathon pace work: exactly what the P&D plan offers.

If I want to run faster, I'm not going to try to achieve this as part of a marathon training programme. I'd first be looking to scale back and focus on improving my speed over the 5K-10K distance as these are more speed-specific distances. My training would be specific to these events: more intense VO2 Max and interval sessions, more threshold runs. Then, once I've locked in these speed improvements into my general running, I'd then be looking to switch back to a plan focussed on endurance and allowing me to apply these new performance gains over longer distances.

My take-away from this is that when your training time is limited, trying to improve multiple performance aspects at the same time just isn't going to work. You'll just get mediocre improvements across the board. Instead, work out what your main priority is and build a plan specific to that goal. When that goal is complete then is the time to decide if you want to change the focus. If so, build a plan specific to the new objective.

Bath Half Marathon 2015

This weekend I raced the Bath Half Marathon. I had a great race and ended up with a new half marathon PB of 1:26:09 (which you can look at on my Strava account). Overall, the day was superb, well organised and very enjoyable.

Transport

I'd very sensibly booked in for the Park and Ride service provided by Bath Racecourse. While, this was slightly more expensive than other options it was lovely to arrive to a nice warm waiting room with tea and coffee on tap. The coach into town departed spot on time and deposited us just a short walk from the race village. The return journey was just as smooth. I'd definitely go with this option again another year - but book early as it sells out quickly.

Race Village

The race village was nicely organised, if a tad muddy. Not a great deal to do if you weren't a charity runner, but that just allows you to focus on race preparation. Changing tent was a nice size and dry - which was very welcome during the short shower about an hour before the race. There seemed to be plenty of toilets and I didn't have to queue for too long. Bag drop-off and collect ran very smoothly.

The Start

Getting everyone into the starting pens was very smooth. With a predicted sub-90 minute time I was able to secure a white race number, which got me into the second pen, just behind the elites. Organisation of the pens was very smooth and it was very pleasant standing chatting with the other runners in the sun. The race started spot on time and I was across the line about 30 seconds after the gun.

The Course

The course starts on nice wide roads, which meant it was easy to get into a good running flow quickly. By the time we hit any narrower points the field had already spread out a bit. Much better than the early bottlenecks you get on some courses. It then turns into a 2-lap circuit round the A4/A36 area of Bath, running parallel to the River Avon. The outward leg of the loop has a few undulations to get the legs working, but nothing too steep. The return part of the loop felt much flatter. It was a breezy day and there were a couple of spots where the wind really hit you head-on, which made for some tough sections. Mostly the route was sheltered enough that the wind was only an occasional annoyance. The final section returns back along the start route to finish at the same point you start from.

On the first lap you run to the left of the cones (which are positioned down the centre of the road) and for the second lap, you run on the right. In the mass field I can imaging that space is tight and the danger of running into a cone is quite high. However, in the leading groups I didn't experience any problems with space or cones.

Water and Lucozade stations seemed to be well spaced, well staffed and easy to use. However for a half marathon I'm only taking on a few sips of water from a couple of the water stations so I can't say how well they functioned for the main group of runners.

The only downside I could find with the 2-lap course was that at about 8 miles I started to catch tail-end runners who had just reached mile 3. I'm not sure how those runners actually felt, but were it me I would find it quite tough knowing I've got 10 miles left to go while fast runners go whizzing past in the final stages of their race. Still, I suppose you know it's a 2-lap race when you enter.

Support

The supporters along the route were amazing. Being a 2-lap course it meant that there wasn't a single point in the course where there weren't spectators cheering. Additionally, by the time I had reached the 9-mile mark, on my second lap, I was lapping many of the runners still on their first loop. It was therefore possible to benefit from the great cheering and support being offered to those runners. A great experience compared to some half marathon courses that leave you with a few miles of isolated running before heading back into a supported area.

The 'Battle of the Bands' feature really helped the atmosphere. Every mile or so you ran past a local band belting out some excellent music. A great way to put a spring back in your step.

The Finish

After crossing the line, the finish process ran smoothly. We were funnelled down a path to pick up water and the finishing medal. Then it was on to finishers t-shirts, goody bags and a good supply of Soreen malt loaf bars. The goody bag was nice, with plenty of chocolate to restore lost energy (or so I like to pretend!). The finishes t-shirt is a nice memento of the day. It's a good technical t-shirt as well, although the size did come up quite big.

When I reached the finish funnel it was very quiet and I passed through very quickly. However, it's quite narrow, so I can imagine that it got very busy once the mass-finish began.

Overall

A thoroughly great race. Nice fast course, perfect for attempting a PB. Organisation was superb and everything happened very smoothly. I'm definitely considering this race again for next year. Bath is a beautiful city, and while you don't get to explore the most scenic parts, it's certainly a nice location for a race.

For those planning on attending in future, my main advice would be to make sure you plan your travel well in advance. Also, if you are in the 1:45 – 2:15 finish range you may find the course rather crowded, which may hamper a PB attempt, but probably not any more than other large field city half marathons. For a sub-90 minute attempt it's just about perfect.