Runability - New Specialist Running Shop

It has been some years since Bury St Edmunds has been fortunate enough to have its own specialist shop catering for runners. There are 1-2 general purpose sports shops but nothing which caters directly for the runner.

That's all changed now that we have Runability in St Johns Street Bury St Edmunds. Its down the hill on the right hand side more or less before you get to the fish and chip shop.The shop has only been open a couple of weeks or so and is still gearing it self up in terms of new media presence - website etc. However I paid a visit today as I needed a hat. It was really cold and frosty this morning and my previous hat had lost its elastication and kept falling off in strong winds. So I bought a Ron Hill beanie hat.

There is already a good range of running shoes for men and women and a gait analysis machine to help you choose the right type. Loads of  bright winter wear to keep you safe and lots of gels which again have been something often hard to find in Bury St Edmunds.

Hopefully all locals will pay a visit and support this new store as it is great to finally have a running shop in Bury St Edmunds.

Running Log - Parrott Predictor

For the 1st time in the five weeks of my half marathon training programme I ran on a Thursday. Usually this is a rest day for me and had been something to look forward to after running 5 days a week.


I am now at the stage of this training programme where there is no rest rest for the wicked, well there is one day on a Tuesday but I am now in to 6 days a week training. This is something I haven't done I doubt for years.

Tonight it was dark as I set out on an easy 5 miles at 9.15 pace. My Garmin Forerunner 205 recorded splits of 8.59,8.33,8.44,9, and 8.51 for a total of  44.10

Almost hidden away in my Dead Runners Society excel running log  is something known as the Parrott Predictor. I have used the software written by David Hays as detailed here. for many years as it is easy to use and is totally free. There may be other more up to date training logs out there but I haven't really searched for them. The David Hays running log is simple to use and can be downloaded and opened by any user with a version of Microsoft excel 97 or later.

You log your data on one page but there are about 17 tabs which all interrelate and take the data you have entered to provide you with alll many of statistics and graphs on performance.

The parrot predictor named after George Parrott of the Dead Runners Society attempts to give a rough estimate of the amount of time it would take you to run a marathon, based on the distances and times of running workouts that a person has recorded for the week.
If a person hasn't recorded enough running for the week, the predictor will simply read "sub 26.2 Mi week" (or "sub 42 km week" if recorded in metric) and no estimated pace will be shown.

My parrott predictions for the marathon show

Jan 11th 3.53.07
Jan 18th 3.50.36
 Jan 25th 3.49.50

I am not training for the marathon but I do think it is a good indicator that my training is going in the right direction