Rosedawn Ramblings

I'm three quarters of the way through my planned month of recovery following my ultra marathon adventure in May. I'm enjoying the slow and steady return to running. This week, using time normally devoted to running, I've been reading about running instead, learning all about the concept of 80/20 running and managing the amount of time running at high, medium and low intensity (see Matt Fitzgerald's book 80/20 Running: Run Stronger and Race Faster by Training Slower for more information). The key to this is the concept of the ventilatory threshold , the tipping point when you can no longer run and talk in complete sentences. Essentially, according to the theory of 80/20 running, 80 per cent of your running should be run below the ventilatory threshold, at a pace slow enough to hold a conversation. As running theories go, this is music to my ears! I love a chatty run. It seems for almost as long as I have been running and blogging, the chatty run has been a...

An early start this week for a very significant Sunday run with the Potters Trotters... a few weeks ago, one of our club members sadly passed away. We decided as a club to dedicate April 7th as our day to run for Kate; to celebrate her life and inspire us as runners to keep on running.  There were little groups of runners from the club out and about everywhere; I joined a group meeting early to run their last long training run before the London Marathon.  Ready to Run Our plan was to run for an about an hour then join up with another group of runners training for their first half marathon... and the plan worked. We followed the Caldon Canal for a while then looped around Etruria before meeting the second group and heading out on the Trent and Mersey Canal towards Barlaston. Getting Together Everyone had their own personal challenges for the day; some were hoping to run further than ever before; I was hoping to continue my training momentum of the last ...

It might sound like a reference to a children's book by Enid Blyton but.... About three years ago, when our work and other commitments would permit, my running buddy Liz and I would meet up on a Friday during the day and go for a run.... we usually ran about five miles and so it became known as the Friday Five . There wasn't anything particularly special about these five miles from a training sense; we weren't doing speed work or setting ourselves a particular running goal. We had a couple of regular routes - along the canal to Birches Head, or along the canal towards Trentham. Sometimes we would throw in a bit of variety and the occasional hill. In winter, we stuck to main roads and tried to avoided ice. A couple of times we went a bit further afield or ran a bit further. Friday Five on Tour... Getting lost in Hope But it was never really about the run or the route... the Friday Five was an opportunity to meet, chat, catch-up on our weeks and the five m...