Training Week 13 Recap

Hi all,

Apologies for not posting anything here lately, aside from training recaps. It's been a slack week in terms of training, but I can assure you that I've been addressing other matters. I'm currently busy moving into my new place, and since I don't think I can fit in a run tomorrow, or have any Internet access that day, I'm going to start recapping my training now. I remember an analogy about juggling that British marathon runner Paula Radcliffe mentioned in her autobiography, which I've had to do a lot of this week. I'll blog about her analogy later on.

Tuesday

Type: Intervals

Time and Distance: 75 mins, 15.7 km.

Detail: 10 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 8 x 1600m at 13.5 km/h pace, with 1 min recovery at 8 km/h pace after intervals.

Thursday

Type: Tempo and intervals

Time and Distance: 60 mins, 12.3 km.

Detail: 10 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 30 mins tempo at 14.0 - 15.0 km/h pace, with 5 mins recovery at 8 km/h pace. 5 x 1 min intervals at 14.0 - 16.0 km/h pace, with 1 min recovery at 8 km/h pace.

Saturday

Type: Easy

Time and Distance: 99 mins, 18.3 km.

Detail: 30 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 30 mins at 11.0 km/h pace. 30 mins at 11.5 km/h pace. Remainder at 12.0 km/h pace. Intended to do a long run, but decided to reduce the session.

Total Weekly Distance: 46.3 km.

Comments: In terms of total mileage, a pretty slack week. This week, I decided to drop the pace of my mile repeats, but also reduce the amount of recovery time between interval. I'm actually quite happy with that effort, knowing that I can probably push the pace and easily add another couple of intervals. The tempo session was quite difficult. However this has given me an indication of what my true tempo effort really is, so I'll keep this in mind for future tempo sessions.

Improvements: Next week is going to be my final week for any high-intensity/high volume running, bearing in mind that I need to taper for the Reading Half Marathon. This means I'll try to push the pace of my intervals, tempo session and weekend long run. For the weekend run, I may run a half marathon distance slightly slower than my intended race pace. I don't want to burn myself out just yet!

Well unfortunately, at such a crucial time of training, I let the weekly distance slip, but unfortunately these things happen. The stress of moving house doesn't really help matters. Let's hope things become more settled in the coming weeks. My new place is very close to the Thames river, so expect some photos of her in future posts.

In other news, I have gotten a few new followers on this blog and on Twitter. Thanks to a kind mention by George Anderson, this has generated more interest from other runners around the globe! This will no doubt benefit me and hopefully other runners too, so thank you George for doing this! His response was that I could carry his 1:30 pace flag in the Reading Half Marathon when his arm starts to get tired, but we'll see if I can keep up with him first.

Getting faster (at the cost of more grey hairs),

Aaron