Archives for 10 Miles category

A soaking wet 10 miles! 1 Hour 45 mins

Posted on May 12, 2013 under 10 Miles, All Weather Running, Long Runs, Milestones, Season's Best | No Comment

Have neglected this running blog of late, my running has been on and off with injuries but thankfully more on lately!

Got up to 8 miles last week, then a long walk on Monday, followed by some pretty hard running at SRC Hyde which I only occasionally get to with work at the moment.

Had planned to do 8 miles today, it was pouring and cold, at about 6k my right hamstring started tightening (it was the left I pulled months ago!), I gave it a rub and was ready to turn back, but a jog round a park and it was Ok so I headed back on my planned route through Reddish to Belle Vue. It did keep tightening when I sped up but fitness wise I felt great, very happy to be running and looking like a madman in the rain! As I neared home I was at 14.5k and thought why not go the long way round and make it a nice 10 miles, so I did, and it’s been a long time since I ran so far and really didn’t want to stop at the end as I could have gone on all night, but I don’t think my legs would have thanked me for it in the long run 🙂

10 Miles Long Run – Niggly to Start with but settled down – 1 hr 51 minutes

Posted on Aug 26, 2012 under 10 Miles, Long Runs, Milestones | No Comment

Having run a bit less this week, I wanted to get a long run in, which will probably be the last run of substance length-wise before the City of Salford 10k, as I guess I will be in cutback mode for a little while now, especially having done a 22 and an 18 mile week back to back now.

Set off at a slow pace and felt fine, could feel my body adjusting to the jogging, but it wasn’t a painful process, more like, “Oh, this again, ok, can do…” However at about 3k I felt a weird pain in my right lower leg, and it felt like the leg would give out. I slowed, it was Ok, and then the same thing started happening with my left leg. I was ok when I slowed, then when I sped up a little to take advantage of a green man on a crossing (and I don’t mean molesting aliens, ha ha!), the pain intensified, my leg felt like it would give way, and I had to stop to give it a little massage.

I carried on, wondering whether I should turn back, and abort the planned 10 miles, but it seemed to be Ok if I kept to a pace just slightly quicker than walking. CV wise I felt great, barely broke into a sweat and wasn’t breathing much harder than if I had been sitting down.

I plodded on, and at some point the nagging pain disappeared and I felt myself speed up, instead of doing 7 mins per km I was doing 6:30 and going quite comfortably. The pains didn’t come back, but I could feel my toes blistering a little! I took the hill on the motorway bridge without a second thought, although by that point I could sense my glycogen stores were depleting, but I had managed the distance without a drink or any other sustenance, which is a first for me on anything over 10k!

Slowed towards the end and had been running for just short of 2 hours, but it didn’t really seem all that far, so my fitness must have really improved lately. Not sure what the niggles were but might have been to do with the time trial the other day, so I will probably give the reps at the running club a miss, as after 2 high mileage weeks I think I need some lower mileage and lower intensity, so that my body can reap the rewards of the last month or 2, and the last thing I want to do at this stage is risk an injury before one of the few races I have been able to enter this year!

10 Mile Long Run – 01:31:49 – PB!

Posted on Aug 31, 2009 under 10 Miles, Long Runs, PB's | No Comment

Nice long 10 mile run on a hot and sunny day. Wanted to run it at a decent pace instead of just jogging along easily as I have been lately, and managed a 10 mile PB by 2 minutes – and did it 10 minutes faster than my last effort and faster than recent long runs in general, and only stopped once to eat a gel. Felt like a drink in the later stages but resisted the temptation to have a shop stop but kept going, and tried to gradually speed up the harder things got, rather than petering out like I normally do. Still felt fresh at 12k though the last couple of k’s were hard and was overheating in the sun at times. Not a bad run at all though, ended up in central Manchester, went past the gay carnival thing, and got the bus home.

Splits for my k’s were:

5:39
5:48
6:05
5:56
5:52
5:54
5:40
5:41
5:39
6:09 (gel stop/slow)
5:38
5:24
5:24
5:25
5:43 (struggling with pedestrians!)
5:11 (clear road and a sprint!)

🙂

10 Mile Long Run – Offerton Hills – 1:34:09

Posted on Jun 21, 2009 under 10 Miles, above 15k, Long Runs, Milestones | No Comment

Lungs felt a bit tight and I was feeling a bit tired when I got up this morning, Guinea Pigs Rachel claims she has swine flu and I only saw her the other day, so I did wonder if I was starting with something horrible!

Also felt a bit sick and light headed drinking my morning coffee, so wondered about even running today never mind doing a 10 mile long run. So I thought I would set off and take my bus pass and some cash so I could always make an emergency stop and get back if I needed to!

It turned out to be a great run and any feelings of tiredness, nausea or tight-lungedness soon dissipated. I was targeting a sub 1 hr 30 time and felt good after a few k’s, and felt I could keep going around 5:30/k pace but I was running a new, more or less random route, and it turned out to have some monster hills! Very long and quite steep, as well as a shorter one in Vernon Park (which has some killer hills as part of my next 10k!) which I sprinted up and astonished this lad on his bike as I blasted bast! Good thing about the run was that the hills slowed me down, but I was able to resume pace once things flattened out again.

I was feeling good at 12k and thought I might be able to push a bit as I was behind schedule for the target time due to the hills, but I was on course for a certain 10 mile PB, until the long snaking hill back up into Bredbury, which I dealt with OK, but after nearly a mile of it getting steeper I had to walk for a couple of minutes and after that I was flagging for the rest of the run, and had to just keep the legs turning over, with the thought of stopping and raiding the Spa shop in the garage keeping me going. Ticked over only 20 seconds off my 10 mile PB in the end, but I regard this as my best 10 miler, as it was pretty hilly and the PB one was totally flat albeit along the canal – a route I am still avoiding after picking up my injury on it last year.

Appropriately raided the Spa for Gatorade, Monster Munch and chocolate then walked the last few miles home. I must take more cash next time as I could have done with an extra chocolate bar to sustain me 🙂

10 Mile Run in the Blazing Sun – 1:44:29

Posted on May 31, 2009 under 10 Miles, above 15k, Long Runs | No Comment

10 mile run in the blazing sun. Had to walk at some points, especially a few hills, also sojourned in an air conditioned Co-op as I had foolishly gone out without water but wisely taken some emergency money – which came in handy, although I was a penny short for the gatorade so had to make do with Oasis and the tight shopkeeper git wouldn’t let me off for the penny

Really needed the drink, but 10 mile mission accomplished, though it hurt a lot by the end and was going very very slowly but enjoyed it.

10 Mile Long Run – Adventure, Mishap and Disaster!

Posted on Oct 05, 2008 under 10 Miles, above 15k, Injuries, Long Runs, Misc, Trail Running | No Comment

My enthusiasm got the better of me today, as I wasn’t feeling in the mood for a 10 miler but watched the Great North Run on tv and was suddenly raring to go! I got my trail shoes on after banging the mud off them from my last canal side run, and set off walking to warm up. It was cold, but the sun was out, so I had shades on! I set off at a nice slow pace and by the time I had got to the hill down into Haughton Dale I was feeling quite comfortable and good. The hill up to the canal was a bit slippery and tough, but settled back to a sedate rhythm, planning to get past the long tunnel at Woodley, and turn back at 9 or 10 k so the ten miles would tick over near home. The real fun began on the canal path, which was deep puddles every few footfalls after the heavy rain yesterday. Some of them were pretty deep, and where I could I ran to the side of them, which sometimes involved running at an angle or runnning through slushy mud and trying to keep my balance near the edge of the canal.

After the long tunnel, my feet and legs were soaked and numb with the freezing water! I was still feeling good though, and turned back as planned. On the way back I started to feel quite heavy legged and felt I was tiring – but with only 4k to go to reach the 10 mile mark, I knew I could do it. Shortly after that my right hip started to twinge a bit, so I slowed, and just decided to make it back to Hulme’s Wood so I could then walk home. I passed what I thought was the right marker before my entry back into Haughton Dale via the waterfall, but soon I was approaching the cobbled footbridge on the way to Hyde, so had to turn back. This was when the real problems began – I headed into what I thought was the right path, and this ended up being a dead end into bushes. Out again, and I tried the next one – this looked more promising, but was very unfamiliar, I thought if I followed the path it must lead back through to Haughton Dale – I had no idea where the correct path had gone! There was a treacherous path, wet and unstable, over a deep drop, and then the path went down a very steep hill covered with tree roots, and I ended up at the side of some kind of river or stream, with no further way forward – now I was at the bottom of a huge hill, and looking up it I couldn’t make out where the “path” was I had just come down, so I had to make my way up and it was almost vertical; I had to grab tree roots with my hands to drag myself up at some points! Finally I got back to the canal and the next path I tried, although unfamiliar, did lead through to the waterfall. I had expended a lot of energy for a 10 minute kilometer and was feeling really dead now, but managed to tick over the last k and by 16.1 at the foot of the hill back up into Haughton Green I could hardly pick one leg up after another.

It was a struggle to walk home, and the hip started flaring up more and more. After sitting down to check a few emails, etc, I stood up and almost fell over, wincing with the pain of putting the slightest weight on my right hip. I had to take mega painkillers to be able to do a couple of things I needed to do. In all, I think the atrocious underfoot conditions are what caused both my hip problem and unusual tiredness – there was a lot of slipping and sliding, running at odd angles with weird impacts and over such a long distance/time this took its toll. The Indiana Jones excursion into the wilderness didn’t help either, as I was already struggling by then!

Ah well, it is a lesson learned, that 10 milers over rough underfoot conditions are probably not a good idea, at least for me. Maybe 5 miles next time, and when the hip is better I will try a long run on the road. 😎

10 Mile Long Run – Hot and Sunny – 1h 33m 44

Posted on Aug 24, 2008 under 10 Miles, above 15k, Long Runs | No Comment

Nice 10 mile long run in the sun. Ran down Windmill Lane and around random streets in Reddish. Found alternative route to Reddish Country Park and had little run through there, even ran up the big hill back into Reddish! Felt really good up to about 12k, started to flag a bit, but had been going quite quickly at times – set Garmin to alert me if I went quicker then 5:30 per k, and ended up with an average pace of about 5:40 per k, could have gone quicker at times but was ready for stopping after the last mile and little respite from the sun.

Just the second time I’ve ran this far, and a few minutes faster than the last time 🙂