Running Training 14/11/2016 – 20/11/2016
After a really nice and relaxing easy week last week…. we ramped it up again in this 7th week with one eye on the final race of the season on Sunday…the Newent 9k. Getting back into the swing of the speedier work was the aim of the game but I also decided at the beginning of the week to swap Thursdays workout with an easy run to ensure I was fresh ready for Sunday.
Monday
Monday morning has become tempo run morning….it seems to fit in well as I get up early and get it done on only an apple for breakfast before I need to get back and get the kids ready for school. This weeks tempo run was the best yet, which seems to prove that consistency is paying off…. a new 5k pb was set at 18:45!
Tuesday
Wasn’t able to get out on our normal Tuesday night rep session so ended up doing 13.1 miles on the exercise bike at a very easy pace.
Wednesday
Normally rest night….this Tuesday was workout night! James and I mixed it up tonight and did a new workout….someone tweeted out an ironman hill workout which consisted of 3 x 10 minutes at threshold pace up and down hills with a 3 minute rest after each rep. After the 3rd rep it was then a 2 mile tempo on flat terrain at the same intensity…so this workout was done moreso on heart rate rather than pace. We gave it a go…it was challenging to say the least and you really felt it through the quads pounding the downhills but overall it was a super solid workout!
Thursday
After the workout the night before, my legs were really feeling it so we stuck to a nice easy run…albeit on a new route! Armed with headtorches…James and I ventured up some nice hills in the dark at an easy pace….I had in the back of my mind that I wanted to go at half marathon pace for the last mile or two just to keep the legs ticking over but actually by 5 miles they were so tired that I decided against that!
Friday
Rest
Saturday
Rest
Sunday
Newent 9 race! So this was the last race of the calendar year that we have booked up….i’d been looking forward to this race for a while as I don’t race too many shorter distances throughout the year and I really enjoyed the course last year. The long and short of it is….its a 9.5k race that climbs up for about 4.5k then comes back down for the last 5k….
Going into it this year…I had in the back of my mind that I finished 15th last year in 40:41 and this year they had an extra 100 people entered, so I simply had two goals:
- Beat last years time
- Finish 15th or higher
The race starts on a local school playing field and heads out to the end where there is a small track leading out onto the road….as expected and as what happened last year…there is a manic burst of people off the start line to try and get through the gate first so when I finally got out onto the road I worked out I was in 15th place.
As the race progressed I felt super strong and whilst holding back a bit going up the hills, I felt like I really could give it my all in the second half. Slowly but surely, one by one I overtook people in front and managed to finish the race in 5th place. Not only was I over the moon by getting a time of 37.31, but I was delighted about my race strategy and how I was patient in the build up.
Finishing the racing year like that really made all the training worth while and although not a big race…. coming 5th out of 260 people really made me feel like the progression I had made over the past year has been worth all the training!
And of course….I managed to get the race on film, I hope you enjoy my Newent 9 video blog!
Running Training 07/11/2016 – 13/11/2016
Week 6 has been and gone…well… it finishes today but I rested so for me its gone! It dawned on me earlier this week that in the 5 hard weeks we had been “base building” we hadn’t run many straight forward easy runs….I have been spinning out on the exercise bike for my “easy miles” but sometimes that’s not enough and my body was screaming at me to slow down. When you are training for a specific race you tend to put in 3 hard weeks then on the 4th week you slightly ease off to give your body a break but I have been so keen to speed up over winter that the “easier week” passed me by…. so after the Monday tempo run, the whole week was taken easy!
Monday
20 minute tempo run was on the cards for today….I wasn’t feeling too chipper first thing I must admit and all the hard sessions of late had been taking its toll but I ended up running a solid tempo run that was much better than last weeks….with two of the miles under 6 min mile pace.
Tuesday
After Monday’s session I spoke to James, who I train regularly with and we decided our bodies had enough of the hard weeks so the rest of the week would be completely easy…. we ended up doing a really nice 6 mile run around town at 8.23 ave pace at just 133bpm heart rate!! Somethings beginning to work….
Wednesday
Nothing exciting really except for spinning out some more easy miles on the exercise bike….just went for a 30 minute session and got 7.4 miles in.
Thursday
Another easy run was on the cards, this time is was 8 miles on an old route from last years winter training….again a lovely gentle run at 8.11 ave pace at just 134bpm…. by this point I realised this training was paying off. Heart rate has never been that low at that pace before.
Friday
Rest
Saturday
Long run day!! Loving the long runs at the moment and I was joined by James…my normal training partner and James Yemm, another local runner who will be joining us more and more over the coming weeks. We were up and out by 7.30am and did a nice easy 11 miler on much flatter terrain, compared to the normal 15 hilly miles we have been doing of late.
Sunday
Rest
Summary
Our attempts to lower our HR is working!! After 5 intense weeks training this week was a definite easy week and much needed. Sometimes you have to listen to your body and my body was saying “no more reps”!
All in all another quality week of training and now I am ready to tackle the next block of intense work!
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!