London Training 2016 - Week 4 - Back to Basics

This week was about going back to basics:-

• Increasing training time regardless of pace.
• Re-introducing drills and strides
• Adding in X-training where necessary

As I said last week - the X-country was a wake up call for me to up my training time each week regardless of pace. Unfortunately that got slightly sidelined this week with two days quite ill with a very sore throat and horrendous head. Whilst that has improved over the weekend and I've gotten back training I'm still not perfect.

Despite this I've managed to run for an extra hour over the week which is a small step forward. I'm more pleased though with getting my x-training going properly with 6 hours worth of exercise biking helping me increase the volume of low intensity training without the injury risk of added mileage. My quads have been sore for a while as a result but generally this tends to help me.

I've done two (three?) significant periods of exercise biking before in my life - both leading to pretty good results.

The first was in the winter of 2008 when an achilles injury had put me out of action over the summer. When I returned to Oxford I knew I wouldn't be able to make the Blues or Seconds team that year but I was determined to at least run my best come Varsity.

Being a student I didn't have a lot else to do but train and whilst I didn't hit huge volumes I was supplementing my running with a lot of biking. This meant that when I returned to running I regained fitness at a very quick rate. Come the end of term I had moved up to finishing 2nd in the 3rds to a very strong Carl Assmundsen. Thankfully this wasn't the end though as I followed it up with a couple of 33:mid 10ks, a 9:17 3km and 26:19 5 miler in December and then one of my best XC races in January where I finished in the top ten at the Herts County XC despite wearing road shoes and taking a fall.

At the time those results all represented PBs or very near to PBs and more importantly my body was strong enough to race hard multiple times in a month!

The second time was in the summer of 2009. After picking up a groin injury following clocking a big 32:15 10,000m (split 16:15 / 16:00)  I was unable to walk let alone run. I then got selected to run for the South of England - one of my big dreams! Knowing I needed to run well on the day I absolutely hammered my exercise bike for several hours each day. I only started to be able to run a few weeks before the race but quickly found that I was still in reasonable shape. Whilst still unhappy with my performance in the South vest a small PB off of limited training showed that *something* had gone right.

So now with London approaching and myself definitely out of shape I'm going to pick up the cross-training and see if it helps me add some additional fitness and put me into racing shape. Whilst my total running time only increased by an hour this week the addition of 6 hours cross-training should represent a big bump as I follow the example set by Meb Keflizghi with his EliptiGo training even whilst clocking upwards of 100 miles a week of running.

This week the aim will be to get in about 2 hours / day of easy running including strides and drills and keep up with cross-training. If I feel good maybe a light session towards the end of the week.

Weight continues to come down - as someone that really struggles to lose weight this is good news.

Training Table Week 4

Week Commencing	Mileage	Time Running	Average Pace	Key Sessions	Longest Run	Most Efficient Run	Sunday Weight
28th December 2015	55.4	6h 22m	6:54mm	Ely NYD -10k Newport XC	9.1 miles	952 BPM	11 st 13.25 lbs
4th January 2016	54.4	6h 57m	7:40mm	Tempo - 4.5 miles Long Run	15 miles / 7:21mm	995 BPM	11 st 13 lbs
11th January 2016	63.2	8h 20m (+2h XT )	7:57mm	Track (4) Tempo (3)  Mitcham XC (5)	16 miles / 9:12mm	N/A	11 st 10.25 lbs
18th January 2016	61.8	9h 30m (+ 6h XT )	9:13mm	None	9.7 miles / 8:36mm	N/A	11 st 8.5 lbs