Yeovil Half Marathon Results 2012

If you are looking for the full results from todays Yeovil Half Marathon they are here.

Shaun Antell's winning time of 70.35 was a very good effort on that course.

Hope everyone had a great day out in Yeovil and will be back for more in 2013.

Next up is the Easter Bunny 10k and the first Yeovilton Summer Series 5k, both on the superfast Podimore course.

Does my planned marathon have cups or bottles for drinking

A great thread on eightlane with folks posting whether specific euro marathons have cups or bottles for drinking from.

UK Marathon selection policy for London 2012

UKA (the governing body for athletics in UK) has published its initial approach to selecting the marathon team for the 2012 Olympics.

What jumps out is the absence of a trial race and an intention to select athletes before the end of 2011 if they are considered a top 8 shot and in possession of an A standard. Top up selections will take place after the 2012 London Marathon.

The 'A' and 'B' standards for men are 2:12:00 and 2:16:00 and for women are 2:31:00 and 2:35:00.

Yet again UKA has gone for tougher standards than the IAAF use and while it would be great to half a dozen lads running 2.10 we don't so I would think that there is a strong possibility of having less than a full mens team on the start line which is disappointing.

Interestingly a top 20 finish in Daegu counts as an 'A' standard so could be the best hope of getting an A standard (especially for the men). So a viable strategy may be sub 2.17 in London 2011, Top 20 in Daegu and then hope that only 2 others do the time. A bit perverse but there you go.

And for all the A and/or B standard questioners if athletes with an A standard are selected (up to 3 of them) then the B standard becomes redundant.

All the details are at http://uka.org.uk/media/news/january-2011/19-01-2011-olympic-selection-policies/

Pre-london half marathon comes to Yeovil in March

The first Yeovil Half Marathon will take place on Sunday 27th March 2011. Starting and finishing at the Yeovil Town Football Club the course will take in the town centre, ninesprings country park and the village of Odcombe (below).

With the Bath Half Marathon sold out and other pre-London or Brighton options thin on the ground unless you want to travel to Wilmslow, Hastings or Fleet this should prove a popular fixture on the calendar and entries are already flooding in.

Placed 3 weeks before London this is the perfect weekend for a final hard workout before starting to taper. And if the marathon is a step to far for you in 2011 then a half could be a great target to aim for.

From a personal point of view I've run these roads thousands of times over the years and know them well. The layout will be sure to keep runners interested and there are some good spectating spots so bring some supporters along !

Online Entries HERE

Friday Track Training in Yeovil

I've been quiet on the blog front for a couple of months now. Training this year has been pretty disjointed and there hasn't been a huge amount to write about on that front recently unless you like reading about psoas stretches and glute activation exercises !

That said i've managed to get the running back up to six days a week of running singles. The resulting 60-70miles feels ridiculously easy after years of higher mileage marathon training. My body is moving well enough to do some faster training again and I'm looking forward to some good cross country races in the New Year.

One thing I have been experimenting with is weight training. Its completely new for me so like anything new I had to start cautiously and quickly notice big improvements. I've got some things to write about now so this will be the topic for a future article...

Back to now and this evening (friday) I will be at the track in Yeovil helping out with Yeovil Town Road Running Club. When they started their friday night workouts there were but a handful of hardy souls and now you can see 40 plus runners stretching their legs in a couple of groups under the watchful eyes of Tim and the two Pete's. I'm looking forward to tonight and it comes hot on the heels of leading a couple of workshops on Road Running at the England Athletics conference at Lee Valley last weekend which was good fun.

UPDATED
Photos of the exercises and stretches last night to follow soon...

Marathon build up - week 2

Last weeks prediction of a rollercoaster turned out to be true earlier than I expected as I turned in a horrid result at the Bath Half Marathon on sunday even after a couple of easy days to try and freshen up. The strange thing is that the day before my legs felt pretty good but come race day it was like running with two bags of sand where legs should have been. The modern trend with sportsmen and coaches is 'to look for the postives' in a crap performance and all too frequently this has the ring of banal platitudes. So I wont even bother !

A couple of outstanding runs in Bath worth mentioning came from recently turned V40 Martin Cox who clocked 66.01 and my Wells team mate Jon James who led home the V45 category with a 70.37 effort.

Anyway, the week's training started out quite well with a solid long run and went downhill from there.

Mon 2hr 36 mins hilly course
Tue 54 mins and 61 mins including 12 x 30-45 seconds fast
Wed 70 mins including 6km progressive and 5x250m fast stride. Breathing easily but legs struggling to keep up
Thr Rest day (planned)
Fri 35 and 42 mins quite easy feeling tired and not moving well
Sat 50mins incl. 2km at race pace and 5x200m strides
Sun Bath Half Marathon , 16th in 68.47

Encouragingly I felt pretty good on monday morning after the 'race' and not tired from my exertions on sunday. It would be more worrying if a 68 had taken a lot out of me. So on to the next three weeks block and hopefully a better run in my next tune up race at the England Athletics Championships in Wilmslow at the end of the month.