Les Croupiers Running Club Forum

As we approach the end of the year I have been reflecting on what on balance has been a reasonable year but can still see a lot of room for improvement!

It would be very interesting to see how others view their efforts for this year so far.

Training 5/10
Sporadic and inconsistent with little speed work. Very poor!

In Race (Effort and pacing) 8/10
Tremendous improvement this year but lacking teeth because of my training!

Desire 5/10
Aimed for achievable targets then often didn't put the work in to get them, poor! Not pushed anywhere near hard enough!

Overall improvement 8/10
PB's in the mile and 10km, 2nd best Half Marathon and the best year since 2010!

Total score 26/40

How would you score yourself for this year?

Relatively injury free. Not many down time so THAT is a PB for me! Simples.

2nd shite year in a row. Will be looking at going back to darts, pool and snooker next year.

Isn't it interesting how people view success?
And how they view how hard they're training?
For me it's been different, and I've learnt a lot about myself.
Motivation to run has never been an issue. And I've been incredibly lucky.
The problem with running is, it's incredibly addictive, but at the same time, if you consistently run high mileages (100+ miles a week, it's ultimately destructive).
So changing training from twice to once a day was hard.
Incorporating yoga into my weekly activity was hard.
But after a 2013 which saw a vast slowing in my race times (i.e. 3:03 to 3:18 for marathon) and corresponding regression over all distances, less mileage has led to a slowing of the regression, and over some distances I've actually improved. Growing old and staying competitive will always be a challenge, and I'm always viewing and asking others with long backgrounds in the sport how they're coping.
Most either don't run at all, either through choice or because their body can't cope, or just run recreationally.
So I view myself as being incredibly lucky to still be able to compete and enjoy it.
I raced parkrun last week in 19:41. The time was OK. I tried hard. But as Clint Eastwood once famously said (at the end of Magnum Force) "A man's got to know his limitations". And at parkrun, a ten year old boy from Carmarthen called Frank outsprinted me in the last 100 yards. That's not a defeat. It's an honour to still race these guys. And if you want to know what inspires me, it's seeing 78 year old Errol Alexis still running parkrun most weeks.

Goals at the start of the year for me are listed below

1. Earn a castles vet team place (achieved)
2. Run a sub 19min 5k. (achieved)
3. Run a sub 18min 5k (not yet..hmm have to work hard to get this one.. )
4. run a sub 38 min 10k ( achieved)
5 run a decent half or 10 miler.. ( one of two ok..)
6. a PB at any distance would be nice. (achieved)
7. Race as many off road championship races as possible ( not enough..)
8. race as many long championship races as possible ( sort of)
9. race as many short championship races as possible ( sort of )
10. do the club 10 a much as possible ( yes..)


so not bad.. bit disappointed at snowdon and cardiff half.. but oh well.. time to get back to form now..

Training 7-8/10 (done some good training recently but it has not quite paid off..)
Race (Effort and pacing) 6/10
Desire 6/10 (still head of Miss Beatty - but only just !)..
Overall improvement 6/10

Edited by user 08 November 2014 14:34:06(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I am quite satisfied with how I have done this year, but felt I might have been able to achieve more. My targets were:

Castles vet place - Achieved.
pb for 5K - Not achieved.
pb for 10k - Achieved, 39:07 now chasing a sub 39 in the 10k Mo Run in 2 weeks.
pb for Half Marathon - Not achieved. 88 minutes at Cardiff which is not disappointing, my 2nd fastest half but I was hoping for 85.

To sum up then:

Training - 8/10 - Added more intense hill sessions into my training, along with adding the long Sunday runs which I started in July, these have definitely harnessed my overall endurance.

In Race - 7/10 - Pb in the Cardiff 10K, decent time in the Cardiff Half Marathon and a pleasing performance in Castles were highlights for me so far this year, but my 5k has been 20 - 30 seconds slower off where I want it to be, due to the lack of 5k races I have run this year.

Desire - 7/10 - I have no doubt added extra miles this year on average from July 40 - 45 miles, but I have had the odd week or two where it has been been lower than this around 30 - 35 miles. If I want to improve to where I want to be next year then I will need to improve on this, but overall most importantly I have made progress, so satisfactory.

Overall Improvement - 7/10 - Overall satisfactory and has been my best year since 2009 which up until then was my best year. Hopefully next year I can hit another level and hit targets that I have not reached before, I think I have the platform there to achieve this now.

It's been really interesting to hear about different people's views on how their year has gone. I only started running less than five years ago and to start off with, I made good progress, consistently beating my PBs. 2013 was a great year for me, getting PBs at the 5k, 10k and half marathon distances. I also joined the club, which is one of the best decisions I have made.

2014 has been tougher by comparison. I suffered with an injury at the beginning of the year and it really took me until about June to start to shake it off. I still had some good runs though. Even though I was one of the slowest runners there, I took part in the Road Relays at Pontypridd, which was a real eye-opener. The standard of competition was far greater than I'd ever experienced, but our team (despite my involvement!) won a bronze medal and I'd never won anything for a sporting achievement before!

I've entered lots of races this year, probably too many, but it's been good fun. A major achievement was taking part in the CPR, especially as during the earlier part of the year I was struggling to run two days in a row, let alone five events in two days. I also ran in the murder mile, achieving a respectable PW (this is the race where your PW is guaranteed!).

I did the Scenic 7 again this year, and it's a real shame that this race may not happen for a few years, or even ever again, due to the diseased trees that are being cut down in the forest. I also ran the same course as part of The Great Gwent Poppy Run recently. You could tell that there weren't many club runners taking part in the latter as I had the distinction of leading the race at the 2k point at the top of the first hill! That's never happened to me before. I always think I'm relatively quicker on the hills so as soon as it went flat or downhill I got overtaken. I still think I finished 11th or 12th but they were only taking results for the first 3 home.

Another achievement was to do some cross country, which I hadn't done since I was at school. I made my Gwent League debut at Bridgend last month and am looking forward to the next one at Llandaff Fields.

My Cardiff Half Marathon performance wasn't great this year. I was 5 minutes slower than last year, but this single race has had the biggest impact on my future plans as it's made me take stock and decide what I really want to aim for over the next year. I realised that I'd been entering too many races for the sake of it in 2014 and hadn't really trained properly for the half marathon. One of the reasons I joined the club was to take my running to another level and I've always wanted to step up to a full marathon, so my aim for next year is to enter the Snowdonia Marathon and take the time to properly devise a training plan. I also need to learn how to recover better between runs and also how to stretch correctly.

Finally, a big reason to join this club was to improve my social life and make lots of new friends. I feel like I've really achieved this. I get to know more of you as time goes on and it's great to arrive at events and already know a group of people to talk to.

I'm just very grateful that at the age of 61 I can still run....

Ummm. Let's forget this year and move onto the next. 😄

Interesting the response this thread has generated!

Here we go...

Training - 8/10

Increased interval training up to 3x per week compared to 1x or 2x per week in 2013.

This paid some small dividends in times but I'm a bit disappointed in the low return for the effort I put in. I find training at this level of intensity (solo), quite taxing even if satisfying after having done it. It takes self discipline. As Yoda says 'Do, or do not... there is no try!' I don't mind taking a sledghammer to training, if I can reap the benefits. However, I seem to be hitting genetic & age related limits.

The current trend in endurance sports training seems to be to train very intensively, & specifically, & allow adequate time for recovery, a principle I have tried to follow. Interestingly, using a Garmin to log miles shows that successive full training weeks to be in the 40-50 miles/week region. However, averaging milage over the year results in an average about 25 miles/week. This I believe is due to tapering & recovering for races, injury, colds etc.

I've also investigated & successfully employed, some exotic breathing techniques that have definitely helped performance.

In Race (Effort & pacing) - 7/10

Improved my pacing on the flat, & improved my finishing by introducing 400m reps. Still not satisfied with my times though.

Desire - 6/10

I'm grateful & lucky that I can usually do 12 training sessions split running/swimming per week! However, I have to consider whether maintaining 3 interval training sessions per week or dropping to 2 plus 1 steady run, will make it more tolerable/enjoyable.

Overall improvement - 7/10

Targets for the year.

1 mile - sub 5:50 - Not achieved, but I did improve 1s from 5:55 to 5:54

5km - sub 19:30 - Not achieved, but did improved my Rose Inn 4 mile time to 25:19 which is equivalent to 19:37 for 5k.

10km - sub 40:00 - not achieved due to injury

10 miles - sub 68:00 - not achieved but did improve from 1:08:45 to 1:08:14

Half M - sub 1:30 - yet to be tested!

Selection for Castles Relay - Successful run!

Compete in all club champs simultaneously - looking good so far.

Total 28/40

Edited by user 04 November 2014 17:12:05(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified