Running Training 31/10/2016 – 06/11/2016
As we enter week 6 of our winter “base building” training, let me just recap on week 5 by giving you guys a blow by blow detailed description of what happened last week.
Monday
Tempo run day! Started the week off with a tempo run because Monday is a good day for me to get up early and get out the door pre breakfast.
The aim with this workout is to run for 20 minutes in the higher end of the threshold zone, getting the body used to running at a quicker pace, both mentally and physically.
The session went well, started out slower than normal in order to finish stronger, which happened nicely. This is a technique I am working on with my running, to finish stronger on my runs.
Tuesday
James and I embarked on our “routine” rep session….we are into our 5th week now and trying to make it a permanent fixture in this base building phase. Weeks 1-2 consisted of 400’s, weeks 3-4 consisted of 800’s so week 5 we progressed to 1200’s.
We successfully managed to run 7 x 1200 reps, which came out at the following times: 4.23, 4.19, 4.24, 4.20, 4.21, 4.25, 4.26.
Having never done 1200’s before I must say this was a bit of a struggle, I seem to be able to adapt better to the shorter reps!
Wednesday
Rest
Thursday
Thursday is normally a workout day and today we went for a progressive 8 mile session. This is the first time i’d done a run of this length constantly progressing and it was certainly challenging! The first two miles were the wrong way around but other than that we had a successful progressing session: 7:11 – 7:17 – 6:53 – 6:52 – 6:48 – 6:36 – 6:30 – 6:14.
The great thing about the session is the heart rate kept below 170bpm until just past mile 6, which is the point in the workout where I felt it turned from comfortably easy to comfortably hard. That is a positive sign in the fact that the 6th mile was a 6.36 and my recent training half marathon effort in week 3 came in at an average pace of 6.42 so making that pace even more comfortable is really encouraging.
Friday
Rest
Saturday
Long run! I must admit I look forward to the long runs each week….this was the 4th week out of the 5 week training block that we’ve gone for 15 miles and the distance is starting to become comfortable. The key element both James and I are working on is not fueling during the run and for me especially, getting up super early and not eating a full breakfast is helping to get used to running on an emptier stomach.
As per the last 3 x 15 mile runs, we have increased the tempo pace for miles 14 & 15 to marathon pace (or quicker) and we managed to hit that spot on with a 7:01 & 7:02.
Sunday
Rest
Summary
Heart rate has really surprised me this week and it seems to be paying off doing all of these workouts & reps…..suddenly, pace that was tough earlier in the year is becoming much easier to run at, which is always a great sign!
It has however been a tough 5 week block and I have been guilty of not taking an easy week so far so week 6 will certainly be much easier than this, with just one intended workout planned!
Welcome To My First Blog
Welcome to my very first blog post here on The FOD Runner! It is currently 6am on November 5th 2016 and we are in the middle of our “base building” winter training phase. As you are joining me part way through this I would recommend you hop over to YouTube and watch some of the latest training videos i’ve put up as that will give you an indication as to what I have been up too! Or, alternatively find out what our winter goals are here:
So to fill in you guys in briefly, we are currently running 4 times a week at the moment, which consist of:
1) Rep Session
2) Easy Run
3) Workout Session
4) Long Run
This training has been ongoing for 5 weeks now so we are fully in the swing of things, progression is happening and a couple of weeks ago I ran a PB half marathon time in training of 1.27.58, which im delighted with!
We have one more race left of this year, which is the Newent 9 race, a 9.5k undulating tarmac road race in a couple of weeks but other than that….we are looking ahead to the first half marathon of next year, Newport on March 6th!
I hope you will enjoy reading my blogs and watching my videos, any feedback is always greatly appreciated!
Stay tuned for the next update where I will be documenting my weeks training!