Marathon Training: Week Zero
Erm… Zero?
Last week (at time of writing) was supposed to be my first week following my dad’s marathon training plan (more on that here).
Monday was tempo day and it went alright. The aim was for a fast-ish 5km and I made it, running 5.8km instead, because my shoelaces came loose after 800m and I had to start again.
It was more difficult than I’d expected, which is a slight concern going forward, but still, I completed it. That’s more than I can say for the other two runs I had planned that week.
Things unraveled on day two. I suffered a migraine (more on THAT here) and spent the next few days recuperating, missing my Wednesday speed work entirely and not being in any condition to tackle the weekend’s long run at anywhere near planned pace.
As a result, week one became week zero and I took a long, slow run out along the Greenway in place of the long, steady run I originally had planned, just to see if I could find out where it ends and get a good idea just how long it is.
It was my intention (and it still is), to post a weekly update to track my progress on the long, four-month path to Marathonland. Despite last week being a write-off and my start date being subsequently postponed, I still see no reason not to go ahead and post a review anyway.
So, without further adieu, here are my thoughts on Saturday’s warm-up run and the state of my running in general. I’ve interspersed this with pictures of the Greenway, because it’s somewhere I’m going to be spending a lot of time over the next few months and I feel like the scenery warrants sharing.
The Trail
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Greenway is a dedicated running track that runs along the south bank of Suzhou Creek, east and west of where we live. If you follow the river far enough west the trail turns south and winds up somewhere very near Hongqiao Airport, where it “ends” at a locked gate.
I put ends in quotes because the trail is clearly visible continuing south on the other side of the gate. It’s the same red surface with the same white Greenway logo painted on top. I guess either a part of the original track has now been fenced off or they’ve extended the track recently and are yet to open it to the public. I hope it’s the latter.
The track runs through several parks on its way through the city and never do you feel like you’re running in the heart of a major urban centre. The section running south from Suzhou Creek especially is almost all parkland, with the track being flanked by greenery for most of its length.
The Run
The training plan I have is pretty simple. Each week includes a speed work session, a tempo run, and a long run. I’ve scheduled the long runs for Saturdays, so that I can head out along the Greenway while the sun’s still out. I don’t really want to be spending upwards of two hours on a treadmill indoors, which is what would happen if I scheduled them midweek.
I’ve been running on and off for a few years now and personally feel like I can handle a little more volume than the plan prescribes. Add to that a desire for more variety and I plan to throw in one or two slower long runs each week to put more miles in the legs and help build my aerobic fitness up just that little bit more.
Whereas during my weekly long runs I’ll be aiming for a more challenging, yet steady, pace, I’ll be taking my easy runs significantly slower; think 6:50 per kilometre compared to 5:20.
By taking it slow I’m hoping to put in enough time on these runs to have a positive affect on my aerobic conditioning while not taking too much out of myself physically, allowing me the freedom to really focus on more technical things like breathing and running form.
Form
Form isn’t something I’ve ever really focused on. I tend to run with a moderate to low cadence (roughly 160 SPM) and a slight, if not overly pronounced, heel-strike. Conventional wisdom seems to say that neither of these traits is particularly desirable, and so I’m planning to use these extra slow runs to focus on improving things.
First is the foot-strike. I still have a lot of research to do on all things running related, but at least while the pace is low and I’m not putting my body through too much strain I’m hoping to focus on moving more towards a forefoot\mid-foot strike.
I made it a good 9km on Saturday landing mostly on the balls of my feet before the burning in my calves got a little too much and from there I just tried to focus on landing flat and avoiding letting my foot fall heel first.
The other benefit of this, as I see it, is strengthening my calves and the muscles in my feet. I’m well aware that trying too hard and changing things up excessively in a short space of time is a recipe for injury, so I’ll be reserving the strict insistence on forefoot running for slow days and shorter runs only. Still, I can already feel the benefits of running this way and I certainly want to keep moving in that direction.
Shoes
This was my first run in my new Asics Gel-Pulse 10s, which I picked up recently to supplement the Gel-Cumulus 21s I got myself for Christmas as my first proper pair of running shoes. I’m planning to use the Cumulus 21s for my long runs, and then switch to the Pulse 10s for these slower, easy runs whenever I can fit them in.
At the same time as the Pulses, I also bought a pair of Under Armour HOVR Velociti 2s which will be living under my desk at work. I’m reserving these for speed work and tempo run days on the treadmill. As much as I’d love to run outside every day, I have a job and a wife and overtime, and the gym at work is just far more practical for weekday running.
On the day, the Pulse 10s did okay, which is a relief because my first impressions out the box weren’t great. I went with Asics again for two reasons: one, because I really like how comfortable the Cumulus 21s are to run in, and two, because having slightly bigger than average British feet in China means I don’t have a great deal of choice when it comes to high-quality, affordable shoes.
The Pulse is very much a budget line when compared to the Cumulus and the first thing that hit me about the Pulse 10s was how plasticky the outer mesh on the upper felt. As soon as I started running, however, they felt very comfortable, and despite not being particularly light on the scales they still felt almost weightless to me.
I did get some chaffing on my left little toe after 14km, and then on my right heel after 22km, but this was the first time I’d run in them and I don’t think I had the lacing quite right. Time will tell if the problem persists; they’re marketed more as middle-mileage shoes and I’m not expecting to go much further than 14–18km in them at a time going forward.
Overall I was pretty happy with them, but I won’t be buying them again and I don’t see myself falling in love with them anytime soon; even if the chaffing does clear up once they’re a little more worn in.
Gear
Maybe it’s the influence of big-city lifestyle, or maybe it’s just the fact that we make more money here then we ever did before, but both me and Nhung seem to have embraced the consumer lifestyle since moving here. We certainly spend money a lot more readily than before, and rarely does a week go by without at least one or two parcels turning up from Taobao, Jingdong, or Weipinhui.
The last few months have seen quite a few more parcels than usual. Besides kitting myself out with an all-new shoe rotation, I also picked up a bunch of running-related accessories in preparation for my most active ever year of running. I figured I might go through a few of them here.
Clothing:
Having spent over 6 years of my time in China living in Fujian, I’ve got used to mild winters. I knew Shanghai would be colder, what with it being several hundred kilometres further north, but I still wasn’t expecting sub-zero temperatures and iced-over streams.
It turns out the weather here gets pretty cold in winter (it’s dropped to -6 a couple of times already this year) and so shorts and vest don’t really cut it, especially not when it’s windy. So I picked up a couple of discount 5-piece running suits with full leggings, thermal top, and jacket to keep me warm, as well as a fleece hat and tube scarf/neck warmer combo.
I look like a bit of a tool when wearing it all, but I feel a million times better out there running in the bracing Shanghai winter and I’m already more than old enough to not give a toss about how I look.
Hydration:
My dad recommended I get a decent hydration pack. So I went out and got a cheap one. In fairness, I’ve taken it on a few runs and it’s been good. I was expecting to find running with a backpack, even a very small one, to be awkward and uncomfortable, but so far it doesn’t feel any different to running without one and it’s so much more convenient than stuffing things in my pockets or running with a bottle in each hand.
Compression sleeves:
Adding 1,000,005 points to my “looking like a tool” score are the cyan (they might be cyan, I’m not good with colours, garish is what they are) compression sleeves I bought for my calves. (They had them in black, but that wouldn’t have been any fun).
I bought them because as soon as I tried to alter my foot-strike and move towards running on the balls of my feet, rather than landing on my heels all the time, my calves started hurting like a bartender. I saw a few places recommending compression sleeves for recovery and, being the impressionable consumer I am, decided to give them a go.
I don’t know if they actually work. What I do know, is that my calves have been aching less since I bought them. And before you wheel out that old “correlation doesn’t imply causation” line, trust me, I know. I’d expect my calves to get used to the extra workload and hurt less over time regardless, but, they’re comfortable and they keep my legs warm, and even if they don’t aid in recovery I don’t see them doing any harm. (Plus placebos can be a powerful thing.)
Wearables:
The HOVR Velociti 2s I mentioned above have a chip, and presumably sensor of some kind, built into the… mid-sole? I can hook them up to the Map My Run app and watch as they consistently fail to record any of the data that Under Armour claims they’re capable of recording. It’s a great system. I give them 10 out of 10 for marketing, but approximately zilch out of anything for execution.
I didn’t know they had a chip in them when I bought them so I don’t really care, but seriously, the whole recording data thing doesn’t work at all, and I’ll go into how it plays out in detail when I try in another post.
Other than that I have a Galaxy Watch Active, which I’m sure I’ll write a review of at some point; I don’t know exactly what I’ll put in there but I already have the TLDR: Don’t buy one, they’re utter garbage!
The Galaxy watch is truly awful, but deceptively so. It takes a while of owning one and comparing data from different runs, and with different apps, and waiting for specific bugs to pop up, but after a while you realise that the data it provides is wrong on such a frequent yet unreliable basis that nothing it tells you (except for the time) can possibly be trusted, making it an entirely redundant piece of tech.
As such I rely on the Keep app on my phone to track my runs, although I would like to find a reliable watch with accurate GPS tracking that can monitor both my heart rate and cadence. If anyone could recommend one to me then I’d be open to checking it out. (The Samsung can get the cadence about right, but that’s it.)
