Danwichmann

Running season over me now, no more racing until Autumn. Just finished 30km trail race in brutal humidity. I was trying to take it easy but still felt spent and was walking a lot of the last 5km. At least I finished because now the heavens have opened and they've stopped the race for the runners still out there.

Doesn't matter, keep at it and you'll see improvements in no time.

Could be. That half was about 6 years ago and I was new to marathon distance then, so pacing and fueling were still being learnt. It's been a while since a really raced a half but I don't think I'd go under 1:35 now.

That's all pretty familiar, I started out very unfit, worked up to 10km and then got that under an hour, half marathons under 2 hours. I kicked it up about 6 years ago, more racing and smarter training, times came down a lot and managed a 1:31 half and a 3:31 marathon. I also started doing ultras and although they were much slower they did wonders for my endurance. 10 hours or more at peak training load sounds about right as well. A few weeks ago I managed a marathon PB of 3:27 off the back of a couple of months of excellent training, where everything went to plan, but it took absolutely everything, I had nothing left at the end. That's as well as I can train, I had the easy longs, the speed work and the other easy miles with plenty of cycling and a bit of strength work as well. My 5km/10km are gradually getting slower even with that quality training, I just don't think there is a way to get significantly faster for me.

Maybe if I'd started serious training in my 20s instead of my 30s, I could have run sub-3. But I've been training consistently for 10 years, I do a good mix of speed work, endurance, cross training and recovery but I just don't have the top end speed needed for sub-3, and however I train now I'm past 40 my top speed is getting slower. I still love running and I'll keep going but any chance I had of sub-3 can be filed under 'what might have been'.

It is, but we all still have our own ceiling that no amount of training will take us beyond. I'll never run a sub-3 marathon however train.

Organised a King of the a Mountain race for some of my students today. Did it properly with number bibs, start and finish lines, cow bells, music, prizes, the works. Had about 40 runners which is more than we expected and it was really fun. Only about 1400 meters long but 350 meters up, some really good road and track runners were dying by the end. Organising is definitely more stressful than running but would love to do more.

I think the worse for that is Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Gave up that one when I got fed up of pages of fish genus and species.

Not really. Occasionally, I glean some information from comments in off topic, and as I scrolled through the football section on the guardian website recently I saw we were playing Ajax, so I guess we qualified for Europe last year, but that's about it. And I don't miss knowing or feel curious about it.

There are quite a few but football is probably the biggest one, including Villa. Just no interest at all any more, don't have any idea how Villa are doing now. I still enjoy a glass of wine or a beer now and then, but less than one a week and almost never get drunk, that's another big change. I used to be able to sit and watch 2 or 3 films back to back, now it's a struggle to sit through a two hour movie in one go. I don't know the last time I went to a gig, it's been years. That stuff has been replaced with an obsession for running and more recently cycling. Definitely healthier and feel better for it, rarely miss any of the old things.

Same, but if you are racing in UK you'll be passing mile markers 26 times along the way.

I started running in England so ran and raced in miles but since moving abroad it's always km and mins per km. Feels faster! Another branch to add to the flowchart. Are you racing? > Is it a marathon? = miles > Is it a park run, 5km or 10km? = km

I grew up using stone and pounds but to this day honestly don't know how many pounds are in a stone. I just use kg now and it makes a lot more sense to me.

Recent conversation with American colleagues went something like this: "I saw a driving video from UK earlier, they were using miles per hour. I thought you guys were metric?" "Driving distance and speed is always miles, but if we're talking about height it can be ft or cm. Other things vary from person to person." "So what about weight, do you use pounds or kg?" "most people use stones" "Wtf is that?" "I've no idea, I don't think anyone else uses it except us."

If you learnt something from it, it's good.