Rosedawn Ramblings

My blog has plenty of posts of my love of a chatty run ... and earlier in the year, I was thrilled to discover that chatty runs are an essential part of training. Reading about the 80/20 rule, I discovered that 80 per cent of your running should be run below the ventilatory threshold, at a pace slow enough to hold a conversation.  And this week, I've definitely had some excellent chatty runs, especially with another Friday Five with Liz this week - putting the world to rights as we tried a number 5-mile-ish route around Trentham. But, whilst chatty runs might still be my specialty, ever since reading about the 80/20 rule of training, I've been trying to work on the missing 20 per cent too; running at high intensity. And this week, I might just have managed it... I set myself another mini speed session challenge in Cauldon Park on Tuesday... 10 minute warm-up, followed by 60 second fast, 90 second recovery for 10 minutes, finishing with 10 minute cool down (ish… the hi...

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...