Standing on the baseline
Friday 30 July 2010
That’s pretty much where I am as I write my first post.
Mark Ackroyd
I’m now onto week ten of my training schedule, with another four weeks behind that of preparation. ‘Preparation’ mainly involved doing a lot of bouldering, enjoying the last bit of pottering in the gym, and putting on a bit of chub.
Save the Children have confirmed that I can run the 2011 Virigin London Marathon under their banner, and I’m pretty psyched about that. Their support team seems good, and I must give a nod to Lucy who has been firing my enthusiasm to get this site up and running.
It’s pretty basic right now (right down to a terrible photo), but hopefully should become a good place to find out about running, cycling, training, Save the Children, coffee and a host of other randomness. Right now my Justgiving meter is forlornly set at zero: Baseline.
I’ve also had the fun of being invited to help out with a study being run by a colleague of mine who is involved with the Altitude Centre. That means I’ve been put through my paces the last few days in the gym, undergoing a battery of sprint and VO2 max tests, so I’ve now got a physiological baseline to work with too. So here’s how it all broke down in terms of heart rate during my recent test:
Mark's training graph
This comes from doing a warm up followed by some 20m sprints. The spike in the middle is caused by a block of 10x20m sprints with 30sec rests. The final scary moutain comes from a yoyo test of accelerationg shuttle runs with short recoveries. So not ideal for marathon training.
Three useful things came from the testing. Firstly, I reminded myself what it is to run hard and fast. Secondly, I found out that my HR maxed out around 192, and that things got tough around 175. Thirdly, a sesion of sprinting made every old injury and niggle in my legs remind me it was still in there somewhere. Sobering. Just need to see if I can wangle a ramp test and figure out my current lactate threshold. Thanks to Rachel Turner for running the tests!
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Tags: events, Fundraising, London Marathon, run, running, training
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