Well that was quick. Christmas and New Year still fresh in my mind, yet my first race of the year is tomorrow already!
The Reedham Ten is a circular 10 mile road race starting and finishing at the Village Hall, in the Norfolk village of Reedham. It is organised by the Great Yarmouth & District Athletics Club, and the 1st race of the Sportlink Grand Prix 2023 series of races. I’ve not done it before and don’t really know much about it, but I expect it is fairly flat. The organisers did send out a ‘Weather Warning’ email yesterday morning with regards to ‘expect icy conditions’, so luckily I have some new shoes to wear that actually have some grip on them.
On the shoe front. I fortunately received a new pair of shoes yesterday afternoon. I ordered them over a week ago, but a well known courier failed (as usual) with delivering them within the expected 48 hours. It’s certainly a case of better late than never, as my previous pair was getting a little on the old side. Not only had they basically lost their grip (which would not have been good for tomorrow’s race), but my big toes were poking through and the upper had just started to come away from the sole. I estimate that I have done over 2,000 km in them (probably nearly 2,500 km), so they have served me well. I think this should be an impetus to get shoe (kit) tracking into TrainAsONE!
So how’s the training been going?
Short and sweet, is probably the best way to answer that. It’s only been 3 weeks since I decided to enter the Reedham Ten (see my ‘Upping My Running Game‘ post for background on this). So not a lot of time for any real serious or hard training. However, I do have TrainAsONE as my running coach and there is no better way to be guided on training under such time constraints.
I’ve run every day (twice or even 3 times on occasion when my wife and eldest daughter wanted some company on their runs), completed some intervals and threshold workouts, and even got a couple of very long runs in. The long runs were challenging (not just the fact that they were long – over 25 km), but because they were scheduled for a Friday. I know I could have told TrainAsONE that I could not commit to such long runs on a working day, but given the training timescale I decided to show commitment!
I certainly feel a little more prepared than 3 weeks ago, and it’s always great to see this objectively displayed in my TrainAsONE Fit Scores:
As you can see above, my Speed and Goal scores have improved, whilst my Endurance is unchanged since the start of the year. It’s great that the Goal score is up, as this is really the only true indicator that matters – it is after all being calculated to explicitly measure my overall ‘fitness’ to perform my 10 mile race! The fact that Speed is up but Endurance is flat would signify that improving my speed was the most appropriate way to best prepare me for my race. This does not explain the full picture though. But that would be because TrainAsONE is training me not just for this race, but the others in the series – another USP (unique selling point) to the platform!
Disappointing News!
I had just taken a small break from writing this blog post, and decided to check my emails… Due to the icy conditions, the Reedham Ten has been postponed! This is obviously disappointing news to everyone (runners and organisers) and I’m sure was a decision not made lightly. I look forward to learning when it is being rescheduled for, and hope I can make it.
So now it looks like the first race of the Sportlink Grand Prix will be the Valentine’s 10k in 3 weeks time. I wonder how my scores will have changed come race day for that. I’ll be sure to let you all know.
I was going to continue this post with a short discussion on predictions for tomorrow’s race, but as there is now no race, there is little point. Will do so for the Valentine’s 10k though.
Till next time – happy training.
