John Armstrong
John is the webmaster of Mornington Chasers and is qualified as a Coach in Running Fitness. By day he is a mathematician. He has been coaching for the club for two years and helped set up our beginners programme. His marathon PB is 2:43:53.Strava Link-Up and Training Competition
Posted on January 27th, 2021 by John Armstrong
I’ve hooked up the Chasers website to Strava so we can download your training data and use it for club competitions without you having to lift a finger. This has allowed me to put together a leaderboard of the best training sessions this week.
This screenshot (taken at an opportune moment when I happened to be at the top of the leaderboard) shows you what to expect.
Every run has been given a percentage ranking. A score of 100% means that it matches the handicap we have computed for you (which in turn depends upon your recent best age graded performance and the time elapsed since you achieved it). To be precise, we take the time and distance for your run, use our calculator to compute the equivalent time for a 5K and then take the ratio between this and the 5K time predicted from your handicap as an age graded percentage.
So the ranking shows who has made the best training effort this week taking into account your ability, and how far you ran.
Each run is categorised either as “with recoveries” or a “continuous run”. If the time you spend running is more than 90% of the elapsed time, then it counts as a continuous run. I’ve allowed 10% so that you can cross roads safely, stop for water and so forth without worrying about your ranking.
When computing your performance, it ignores any laps where your pace drops significantly below your fastest pace. This means you can use the interval setting on a Garmin watch, press the lap button at the end of each fast interval, and then use your watch to time your recovery. This gets rid of the annoying problem that you can’t time your recovery laps if you press the stop button. However, if you are doing jog recoveries rather than timed recoveries you should press stop.
As well as the leaderboard, you can view all your recent runs together with their scores. Because of the way we calculate your pace for interval sessions, this is probably more useful information than that displayed by Strava (though I say so myself). You can click through to the full Strava data.
You don’t need a GPS watch to be on Strava. In principle you can enter your own training runs manually. So if you want to take part in the leaderboard and don’t have GPS you can.
This is all part of an evil long term plan of mine to capture all of your data and perform loads of analysis. For example, I hope that in the future we will be able to kick people out of the club who achieve better times than me without even trying. It is possible that we may even be able to do this automatically. For this reason, you can expect more analysis of your data will turn up – this is very much a first draft. Similarly the handicapping system will probably be refined to punish anyone who ever does particularly well and to make sure everyone has a decent chance of topping the leaderboard if they are willing to run till they puke.
Anyway, this brings me to the competition for this week (week ending 31 Jan 2021). This week’s key session is 10-12 times 300m with 100m walk recoveries (at least 50% of the time should be spent recovering so walk slowly). The competition is: who can get the best score for this session. The top 10 will be posted in next week’s newsletter. Note that it doesn’t matter to your score whether it is exactly 300m or whether you do 10-12 reps, so do the number of reps that’s right for you in terms of your training.
Coronavirus Survey Results
Posted on May 23rd, 2020 by John Armstrong
Thank you everyone who completed our survey on the club’s response to coronavirus. We received 44 responses.
Overall Satisfaction
Overall most people are very satisfied with the club’s response and our communications. Two people were “very dissatisfied” but one of them didn’t make any comments and the other made very positive comments, so I think this tells us more about the importance of naming your categories in a survey than it does about the club’s response to coronavirus.
Online Sessions
There was lots of positive feedback on the online classes. I asked about the difficulty level, and it looks as though all the sessions are pitched about right. Some people commented to say how helpful they found the different options that Danielle and Nicola offer so that everyone is catered for.
Many people commented to say how grateful they are for the efforts that Danielle and Nicola have made and suggested they should be rewarded in some way.
We (the committee) agreed before organizing these sessions that we should let those leading the sessions choose whether they wish to do so on a voluntary basis or whether they would like to be paid. Nicola decided that she would lead the first four sessions on a voluntary basis and has been paid for subsequent sessions. Danielle has so far decided that she wants to run her sessions on a voluntary basis. Alicia is not a club member and is working on a professional basis. All our usual running coaching done on a voluntary basis, but that situation is very different as the club pays for people to qualify as coaches and we see providing opportunities for people to train and work as volunteer running coaches as one of the core roles of our club, It goes without saying that we greatly appreciate the superb sessions all our online trainers are putting on and we fully respect their different situations.
Some people said that they would be interested in having more classes. The committee feels that three classes a week is the most the club should provide. However, if you are interested in having more sessions with Danielle, Nicola or Alicia I suggest you get in touch with them and see what they can do. For example, I believe that Danielle is offering other paid-for Zoom Pilates classes.
Some people have also suggested that we should keep the classes going once lockdown is eased. This is definitely something we will look into in the future, but it doesn’t seem the right moment to make any decisions on this.
Running Training
42% of respondents plan to use Parliament Hill track if it re-opens. The heath authorities have indicated that it will reopen shortly.
22% of respondents have followed one of Donal’s fartlek sessions.
There is a general appetite for us to put together some training plans for (hypothetical) autumn races. We need to have a think about how best to do this, but we will put something together and will include some track options when we do this.
One person said: “The club should have been at the forefront of lobbying parliament hill track to stay open rather then the opposite, it’s a safe space for people to run.” I’m the club’s coaching coordinator, so I can give a bit more detail on the discussions we have had.
- Before lockdown started, but when social distancing was advised, I contacted the heath to encourage them to keep the track open for as long as possible each day so it was easier for people to social distance and to see if there was any possibility of our members getting some form of discount on paying to access. They left the track open for about one week, without charging.
- During lockdown, the government’s restrictions meant that the track was compelled to close. People continued to use it, but the heath authorities did not feel it could employ people (and risk their health) simply to chase them away. They asked us to communicate to our members that the track was closed, and I was happy to do this.
- In that first week of social distancing, the track started being used by all sorts of people inappropriately: cyclists, dog walkers, children playing in the sand pits etc.. In the view of the heath authorities it was becoming unsafe to train at the track, and I agree with them. As a result, they will only reopen once they have sorted out ticketing and supervision of the track. They are working to do this as rapidly as possible. They plan to provide a range of lengths of season tickets with a club discount.
I personally feel that we have worked constructively with heath authorities to keep the track open as much as possible, but I think that they are absolutely right to not do anything that might put people in danger.
Running and Social Distancing
Posted on March 26th, 2020 by John Armstrong
We’re all just learning how we should be running while social distancing. At Mornington Chasers we’ve been discussing this a lot with each other on Facebook to figure out how to handle it. This is what we’ve learned.
Etiquette
Laurie, our club welfare officer, tried the experiment of taking a 6 mile walk (always at 2m distance obviously) to observe runner and pedestrian interaction. She forgot her love of running and get into the mindset of someone who walks but doesn’t run. Here are her tips:
- Don’t combine running with shopping. Nobody wants to be near you if you are breathing heavily and sweating right now.
- Don’t running in groups even with people you are isolating with (except for children). You are making it harder for others to pass and no-one but you knows that what you are doing is legitimate.
- Run at the edge of the pavement to make it clear you’re the one who will give way.
- Some advice from an epidemiologist in the New York Daily News: “Try not to spit. If you have to, move to a less-traveled part of your route such as off the road in the grass”
Planning
I went for a 16 mile run on Sunday into central London just before the rules were tightened up to see if I could run that far without ever going within 2m of anyone. Even though people were being a bit silly last Sunday, it was perfectly possible to do this, and it should be even easier to avoid going near others now. Here’s my advice on how to plan your run to maxmize social distancing.
Covent Garden on my social distancing run
Training Racing and Goals
I spoke to our former club coach Tom Craggs who now coaches one of England’s veteran running teams and his advice to his athletes is to see this period of social distancing as the off-season. Training for performance is a cyclic affair where you try to peak for an important race (maybe that’s the Olympics, a marathon, or your club championship). Once that’s over, you give yourself some time to recover and consolidate your gains. It’s a pity that most of us missed out on our big spring races, but it is time to let that go, we did most of the training and got the fitness benefit we wanted anyway, so it’s not such a big loss.
Since it’s now officially the off-season, you can wind down your distance and ease off a bit on the speedwork. Focus instead on improving in the areas you might let slide a bit during your peak training. Now is a great time to establish a strength and conditioning programme that you can stick to once you start running again. Similarly, this is a superb time to be working on building basic agility, balance and coordination or to work on your flexibility. These are all things you can do at home, maybe with the kids you are having to home school. At Mornington Chasers, we’re planning to have online strength and conditioning sessions together with some dance sessions and pilates to cover all these bases.
As it’s the off-season you wouldn’t normally be racing. We’ve all grown addicted to regular races, especially because of parkrun and quite a few people are coming up with ideas for online races. At the moment, I’d discourage online racing because I haven’t seen anyone figure out a format for an online race which encourages people to stick to the etiquette for running during social distancing. If anyone cracks this problem, I’d love to get involved.
If it’s the off season and you’re not going to be racing, that means you should be avoiding setting yourself inappropriate training goals. Now is not the time to be trying to increase the distance you run. Running for speed is OK to an extent, but you should never compromise on the etiquette. If you are going to be running on the grass carefully dodging other people you won’t be able to be as obsessive about your times. I think the best kind of running goals at the moment are technical ones – for example can you improve your technique with some running drills and by doing regular core workouts? You can set yourself a fitness goal too, but that could be related to your flexibility, your strength or your coordination. Some good goals you could set yourself would might be to do 50 press ups in a row (or 5, or 500), to touch your toes or to dance the Charleston.
This doesn’t mean you have to forget about running entirely. While we are allowed out, it’s a good idea to keep doing some strides and drills during this period somewhere you won’t get in other people’s way, perhaps on playing fields or down a dead-end. And if you stick to the grass you can still give yourself a decent work out while avoiding others and being easy for others to avoid.
Conclusion
We’ve only been social distancing for a week and half so there’s a lot to learn. In Spain running is currently banned and in France you can’t run more than 1km from your home. We’re incredibly lucky to still be allowed to run, so let’s make sure we keep it that way.
My Post Coronavirus Plan
Posted on March 13th, 2020 by John Armstrong
We all knew London would be postponed, and good on the organisers for putting the health of the elderly and those with lung conditions as their top priority.
I’m no epidemiologist, but I thought it might be helpful to say how I plan to respond.
Firstly, I’m shifting my training focus to Paddock Wood. I’ll immediately switch to that schedule. I have a place in a backup marathon but if I run it at all I’m not going to compromise my immune system by going at it full tilt. I know from experience that I get run down post marathon and so I’m not going to take any risks. I have no idea if there is any evidence that running a marathon hard will really be a problem, but I don’t care. My priority is my long term health, so I’m not going to chase a marathon time this spring.
Second, I’m only going to do races if this fits with the advice we are given on travel and gathering sizes. If Paddock Wood is cancelled or travelling there is considered a bad idea, well, so it goes.
The fitness I’ve built up can be used to good effect to knock out some fast short races. There are some small local races that seem perfect. After Paddock Wood, the athletics season starts with a meeting at Parliament Hill and Donal will be putting together a training plan for the Golden Stag mile. Last year I was knackered from London at the Golden Stag. This year, I plan to ace it.
We’ll need to come up with a schedule for early autumn marathons that makes the most of the summer league and the athletics meets to get us in top shape. Should be fun figuring out how to do this, and should mean some cracking long runs in beautiful weather. We’ll keep you posted…
Spring Training 2020
Posted on January 2nd, 2020 by John Armstrong
The Thursday track sessions this spring have been designed to fit in with our training schedules for London and Brighton marathons and for Paddock Wood half marathon. You can see the full schedules here.
To use the schedules, you should customize with a realistic target time. If you are running a first marathon, then you should normally base your target on a recent half marathon, assuming you are planning to commit to a similar number of training days each week. If you are targeting a PB then be ambitious, but realistic. If you decide you want to increase your training from 3 to 5 days a week (say), then do this gradually over the first few weeks of the schedule.
Our schedules contain a lot of practice races, designed around the events we like to run as a club. Most of these races are free to enter, but you might want to sign up now for the Fred Hughes 10 in St Albans and the Wokingham Half Marathon. They will both sell out pretty quickly, so get your skates on if you fancy doing either of these.
The other practice races will appear on your schedule if you choose to train on Saturdays. These include some cross country and lots of parkruns. Don’t run the parkruns hard every week, use them as a way to customize the schedule to how you are feeling. If you’re tired, give yourself a break. If you are full of beans, then go for it.
If you have a different target race in mind, or have different preferences for how to train, then use our schedules to tell you what will be happening on a Thursday and what races are coming up so that you can build your own schedule that fits in with the club. Our Thursday sessions would easily fit into a training plan for any distance from 5K up, but you might, for example, replace a Highgate run with some some hill sprints if your focus is on shorter distances.
Paddock Wood Half Marathon
Paddock Wood is an excellent half marathon for anyone new to half marathons or who is looking for a PB. It is a flat, fast course on roads. It is a one lap course with a relatively small field, so you there won’t be crowds of people getting in your way. We’ve also selected Paddock Wood as the perfect tune-up run for London marathon.
If you are worried about transport, then there is a direct train to Paddock Wood from Charing Cross arriving 28 minutes before the start, which is right by the train station. If there is demand, I’ll look into arranging alternative transport for those who want to get their earlier.
Calculating your handicap
Posted on April 30th, 2019 by John Armstrong
I’ve calculated the handicaps for our handicap race in Highgate Woods as follows.
- For every race over the last two years, look at your age graded percentage. We can only calculate this for certain event distances.
- Take off a further percentage according to how long it is since you achieved this result. If it was a year ago, we would take off one percent. The idea is that if you have been ill or injured you still have a decent chance.
This gives your handicap as an age graded percentage.
Next, we work out what 5K time this age graded percentage corresponds to. Then we use the calculator on the website to work out your predicted time over the race distance (which is a little over 5K).
This number is your handicap. Everyone will start at such a time that if there handicap predicted their race time perfectly, we would all finish simultaneously.
To see your handicap visit the results page of our website and search for your results.
If you think your handicap is not appropriate you can tell me why it is not appropriate and tell me your own predicted time. I’ll decide whether I agree with you or not. My decision is final.
Book Your Spring Training Races
Posted on December 2nd, 2018 by John Armstrong
I’ve put together a training plan for London Marathon 2019. We’ll also have a half marathon specific schedule building up to Croydon half marathon which should be up by the New Year.
We’ll use the same key training races for both schedules, so book your place and get them in your diary now.
- Fred Hughes 10 OR Benfleet 15. Fred Hughes is a fast flat road race. Benfleet 15 is a slow hilly trail race. Don’t even think about Benfleet unless you are confident to run that distance in January. Think of it as roughly equivalent effort to 20 miles on the road.
- Southern Cross Country Championships at Parliament Hill. This is a brilliant race and a must for any Chaser who owns a pair of spikes. Click on the link to enter (you will require England Athletics membership too, so request that via your Chasers account if you don’t have it already).
- Wokingham Half Marathon. This isn’t even mentioned in the schedule yet. It will just be an alternative to the current published schedule for those who want a half marathon test at the end of Feb. The scheduled alternative is to do a long run the next week building in a fast section at the Regent’s Park 10k.
- Croydon Half Marathon. Get your discounted tickets from our online store.
Marathon day essentials
Posted on April 17th, 2018 by John Armstrong
- Race number, pinned to vest
- Shorts
- Shoes, chip attached.
- Socks
- Bag with number on it.
- Watch
- Pacing wristband *
- Mobile *
- Fancy dress costume *
- Vaseline, for anywhere potentially chafy
- Sunscreen
- Sunglasses *
- Hat *
- Plasters for nipples (or more vaseline or a bra)
- Gels, jelly babies, carrying device
- Imodium *
- Loo roll *
- Beetroot Shots *
- Drink for while you are waiting, maybe a bite to eat.
- Bin bag or disposable clothes.
- Oyster card. They say its free travel on race day but not everyone in TFL seems to get the memo.
- Something to wear afterwards *
- Lucky heather *
* = optional
I think that’s everything. See you at the start or at the Pineapple.
Mental Preparation
Posted on April 10th, 2018 by John Armstrong
Just two weeks to go to the London Marathon. If you’re racing it you’re probably beginning to feel the nerves. If so, that’s good. We want that excitement and nervous energy on race day. Here are some thoughts to get you mentally prepared.
Have a Plan: If you haven’t done so already use our pace calculator to check whether your goals are realistic and formulate your race day plan.
Part of your plan will be your pacing plan. Some possible suggestions are: stick with the pacers for a particular goal time; aim to arrive at half way 1-2 minutes ahead of goal pace to allow for a slight fade at the end of the race; pace it absolutely evenly throughout; go for a slight negative split (that is aim to do the last half slightly faster). Each of these options has their merits, so I’m not going to pick one for you. But what I will say is that you shouldn’t aim for more than 2 minutes ahead of goal pace at half way and you should go in with a plan. “Go out hard and see what happens” does not count as a pacing plan.
On race day you will be sorely tempted at two points to break the plan by going too fast. That’s at the start and half way. As in practically all races most people set off too fast. Let them shoot off, while you pace it right. If you’re starting further back at London, accept the reality that it’s going to be very crowded at the start. Don’t waste energy weaving and getting angry with other runners for being in your way. Take it easy and think of the big guy in front of you as a useful windbreak. The second moment when people decide to waste energy in London is half way. I find that everyone starts waving at the crowd and speeding up for no clear reason. Again, let everyone else zoom off. You will have caught them all up again by mile 15.
Another part of your plan will be your hydration and nutrition plan. A hydration plan perhaps isn’t such a big deal for London as there are very frequent water stops, but if you are relying on the Lucozade sport they hand out, you’ll need to know exactly when to expect it. In smaller marathons you may only get water once every 5K in which case you definitely want to be prepared. Your nutrition plan should start several days out from race day and will certainly include your race day breakfast and everything you plan to eat during the run. Do listen to your body, however: if your stomach starts complaining about the gels, stop eating them; drink if you’re thirsty; don’t take on excessive amounts of water.
Stay in the Moment: On race day, try to focus on where you are in the race right now. Are you running with good form? Are you following the blue racing line? Are you keeping to an even pace? It can help to run an occasional check on yourself asking how everything feels to make sure you are staying relaxed and comfortable. If you’ve been working on an area of your form, think about that but don’t try to force it. For example, I’ll be monitoring myself to try and keep my head up and avoid crossing my arms. Try not to think about that beer you’re going to have at the finish as you’ll find that distractions like that do actually slow you down a little as you lose focus.
A Mantra: A mantra is any phrase you can say to yourself to focus your mind. Go for something positive. Nike recommends “Just do it”, I like “I have found the line and its direction is known to me. Absolute trust keeps me going in the right direction” (Talking Heads – The Good Thing). You might also try counting. Paula Radcliffe would count to one hundred over and over again to help keep focus. I like to just count and see how high I get. My PB is over 8000.
Enjoy the Cheers: For me the two highlights of the London Marathon are the cheers from the Chasers cheering squad. You’ll get the cheers at about mile 13.5 and mile 22. I think they’re a huge psychological boost. The crowd will be cheering you the whole way too. Smile and look around you to take it all in. Enjoy the fact that all these people are out there supporting you and want you to succeed.
Positive Visualisation: As race day comes, you will find you dwell more and more upon the race ahead. Use this as an opportunity to mentally rehearse your race day plan. Visualize yourself running in controlled and comfortable manner from the start. Rehearse your mantras. Picture the crowd cheering you on. Picture yourself smiling as you take it in. Picture yourself staying focussed throughout and holding your form to the end.
This week’s training
To help you prepare your mind for race day, this week includes a marathon pace fartlek on Thursday and a hard Parkrun on Saturday.
The hard Parkrun is a practice for staying focussed andlooking at your form. If your training has been going well and you get a PB that’s a bonus, but you’ve been marathon training not 5K training so don’t worry too much about your time.
The marathon pace fartlek is a comfortable run where you run some of it at marathon pace as you feel. This run is about getting outside and just enjoying running without tiring yourself out. It’s about running comfortably, sticking to a sensible pace, looking around and having a nice time. There aren’t any more rules to the run than that, its all about doing the kind of running you enjoy as a reward for all that hard training.
The Taper
Posted on April 1st, 2018 by John Armstrong
If you are following our schedule for the London Marathon, you have just started your taper. For those of you doing Brighton or who are racing a marathon next weekend, your taper should be in full swing.
A taper is a period of gradually reduced training just before a big race. The idea behind it is simple. It takes about a month for any training you do to have a positive impact on your race performance. However, training does make you tired and that will have a negative impact on your race performance. So you should reduce your training before a big race in order to get the best possible time. This is true to some extent whatever the distance, but it is particularly important for marathons.
If you’ve been following our London schedule, you should have been doing a lot of very hard training over the last few weeks. The chances are you’ve been feeling a little tired as a result. Our schedule should have pushed you about as far as it is sensible to go without risking too big a chance of illness or injury. It’s time to ease off. You’ve probably heard about elite athletes who aim to peak at the Olympics. Our schedule is designed to get you to peak on race day.
The first week of the taper feels a lot like business as usual, but if you look closely at our schedule you’ll see that there is a small reduction in effort from the last few weeks. In particular the long runs are not so long any more.
In the second week of the taper, you’ll begin to notice the reduction in training. In particular, there’s no track session in the second week. You will be doing a marathon pace fartlek instead (I’ll explain some other time).
In the third week of the taper, you should scarcely run at all.
You might start to panic that you haven’t done enough training and be tempted to put in a little more work than the schedule says. Don’t worry, you have done enough training. Yes, I know you had to miss some training at one point due to injury, and there was that session you missed because you were working late, but this happens to everyone. You’ve done the work, if you try to do more now you’ll be doing more harm than good.
The final week of your taper is critical. You have to do a lot of resting. You may actually hate this. You may start to feel nervous tension building. You mustn’t go on a run just to calm your nerves. We want that nervous energy still in place for race day.
Don’t be tempted by other activities in place of running. So no gym work during the taper. No decorating the house. No gardening. No overtime. No long walks. No sight seeing. No swimming. No acrobatics. No heavy petting*.
So download a Dan Brown/E.L. James/Melville onto your kindle, find yourself a good box set on Netflix, and start relaxing.
Footnotes
* The heavy petting comment is a joke. It is perfectly OK to have moderate to vigorous sexual intercourse during the final week of the taper. However, it should not be attempted during the race except in the portaloos provided.
