Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Training Week Commencing 5th January

To try and keep me updating regularly am going to post up training each day for the week and just keep updating this post...

Monday: AM 35 very easy miles PM 45 steady to committee meeting with middle 27 minutes at 6:20mm (pleased to do that with a back-pack!) - also 15 minutes jogging home after (95)

Tuesday: AM: 30:38 steady to Westminster (last 2 miles 12:54) PM 58 very easy home from work (90)

Pleased with morning pace given tired legs. Evening run was intended to be easy and my legs were giving me very clear signals they needed a very easy run. 

Wednesday: AM 29:08 steady / tempo-lite to Westminster (last 2 miles 12:24), PM 32 easy with work colleagues at lunch (60)

Morning run probably too hard but was running late - very pleased to clock a pair of 6:12 miles with a rucksack on and feeling relaxed. Was considering tripling with a run home in the evening but we decided to go to movie instead (Exodus - not as bad as expected). Legs were thanking me...

Thursday: AM: 38 easy with Hayley to Westminster in pouring rain; PM long wu, 6 mile tempo alternating 1/2 mile slower than MP, 1 mile faster than MP - 1.5 mile lap splits of 9:50, 9:28, 9:09, 8:46 so averaging 6:14 with the fastest lap at 5:52mm and slowest at 6:35mm, short wd (120)

Very easy run in the morning chatting with Hayley and trying to avoid her getting run over - relatively easy which was nice for my legs. Really good tempo effort in the evening with Brian Cronin alternating the slower and faster sections and progressively getting faster over the whole loop. Very pleased to clock a 5:34 for the last mile or so. Big progress. 

Friday: Rest day

Pub in the evening - probably had a few too manyThinking about an alcohol ban until my next major race.

Saturday: wu, 2 x 9 minutes Kenyan Hills tempo, wd (35)

Very messed up day. Plan was to go to Northampton and take Hayley's grandparents out to dinner. Unfortunately when I tried to book a zipcar we realised my license had just expired. One online renewal later and I can now drive but have no way to show that to zipcar until I get my license.  Cue a journey to Henham to pick up my car there.  Unfortunately my parents are away on holiday so when we eventually get there (trains were cancelled so we were on rail replacement buses) they have taken the car to the airport - now trapped in the countryside I only get a chance to head out on my run when it was already going dark so had a very limited session. Did get a chance to try out my new Hoka trainers though!

Sunday: 2 hour steady long run around Thaxted - very hilly and windy route. ~7:45mm (120)

Longest run in about 3-4 months I think and really pleased with how I felt. Felt relatively light and floaty. Pace was worth a lot more than 7:45mm due to the hills and wind (pretty much running straight into the wind from 6 miles to 13 miles) and I felt like I was just ticking over. Disappointed I couldn't join the Chasers for the long run as part of marathon club this morning. 

Total: 520 minutes / 65-70 miles. 

Great week's training. Am so pleased with how things are going. I wasn't sure how my legs (and more importantly the achilles / ankles) would feel with the faster sections on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday runs but it's becoming a bit clearer to me now that as long as I avoid the tight twists of the track (and over-speed - when I would struggle to break 17 for a 5km the benefits of sub 70 second 400s is probably limited) I'm able to fit in an awful lot more of sub-tempo work. It's very hard for me to estimate fitness right now but I'm starting to think that I'm perhaps not a million miles away from a 2:50 marathon right now (maybe even just 26.2 miles). 

Getting a lot of confidence at the moment. Thursday's session was more progressive than intended (you can see the session splits above - I won't do this for many sessions but will for the key ones) but each lap felt roughly the same effort as the one before despite a significantly increased pace which is promising.

After linking a few weeks of reasonable training together (and hoping that cutting track finally means the end of my 4 year injury hell) I'm thinking about a serious goal for the first time in a while. In the short-run I need to clock a sub 17 5k at some point but am seriously thinking about whether targeting a sub 75 half in March is feasible. Based on my current fitness then no but I wouldn't have thought I could put a week like this together a month ago. 



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Bryn Running

Training diary and musings on running in general.