No HM for me!! --

[Bazza1234]

I'm going back to my Jack Daniels!

Marathon race "season" here is late Autumn through Winter. I wanted to do a HM this year - but I knew that from a training point of view, our 7 weeks overseas was exactly at the wrong time. But the last Marathon Festival in my area is on 30 August, and I thought that I could "get up to speed " ( so to speak ) in 10 weeks . But after the last couple of weeks - I don't think so. I'm not sure actually that my heart is even in it -- so I think I will go back to Jack Daniels 16 week "Running for Fitness" RED plan . I got 8 weeks through it before running my one and only 10K "race" - which I completed very surprisingly in 1 hour 3 minutes ( I am very suspicious about the accuracy of the clock that they used!!)

JD has 4x16 week plans under his "Running for Fitness" Chapter - White, RED, Blue and Gold. These are plans to get people fit and running to a very high level - but with no particular race distance in mind. He does insist that people do race during their training - and then use the result of their race to calculate the pace they are to run at for his various workouts.

I feel that this suits me better than feeling the pressure of an upcoming race. I also found it difficult to explain to a friend why I would sign up for and pay $100 to enter a race that I have no chance of winning!!!

Today I came 128th out of 268 runners at Parkrun -- I must admit though that MANY of them were dressed up as Pirates and Princesses and ran like that -- silly them!!! They looked like they were having fun though!

[runningnearbeirut Graduate]

Perhaps I need to investigate these programmes because I could do with a bit of structure, but opportunities to enter races are rather limited!

[Bazza1234 Graduate in reply to runningnearbeirut]

You can find the programmes in his book amazon.com/Daniels-Running-...

and his training pace calculator for the various workout levels here runsmartproject.com/calcula...

[runningnearbeirut Graduate in reply to Bazza1234]

Thanks! Just seen the pic - either it wasnt there before or I just didn't notice it... "40 mins or 6 miles (whichever is less)" hahaha!!! I might have a chance if it was km

Guess he's catering for all levels...

[Bazza1234 Graduate in reply to runningnearbeirut]

C'mon -- you can run 40 minutes??? This workout is an Easy/long run , so I would run for 40 minutes at the start of the plan. I feel that his long runs are not really long enough - maxing out at 50 minutes. Following the plan again, I will start at 40 and max out at 90 minutes.

Further down in the programme , you can see that he calls for mile and Klm repeats at Tempo pace. eg 3x(1 mile with 1min rest) . Elsewhere in the Chapter, recognising that this Chapter is for all athletes slow and fast, he also recognises that running say 3 miles for a slow runner is more work than it is for a fast runner and his plan assumes a 6 minute mile - therefore if you can;t run a six minute mile , then you simply run for 6 minutes at tempo pace and cover whatever distance you can. Most of his plan does use either distance or time - and as it is a "Running for Fitness" plan and not a "Running to achieve say 10K plan), it is better for someone like me to run for time rather distance. So for that workout, I would run 3x6minute intervals at Tempo pace.

[runningnearbeirut Graduate in reply to Bazza1234]

Yes, that sounds like a reasonable plan. I was just a bit put off by the 6 miles in 40 minutes. Not at all likely!!!

[Pigivi]

Nice placement Baz!

That's a huge parkrun!!! Same numbers as the HM I did in May - and the parkrun closest to me has usually around 20-25 runners..

[ju-ju- Graduate]

Good decision and you know that plan works for you too...

[AncientMum Graduate]

I'm with JJ. You've made absolutely the right decision.

[Tomas Graduate]

When I saw the title of your post I was thinking of the kind of Jack Daniels that is often mixed with Coke. My bad

Good decision Bazza.