Training Week 29 Recap

Hi runners, football fans and everyone else,

How about that for a result - a 1:1 draw against the mighty Azzuri! They weren't expecting that, and with all that pre-match talk about the Italians saying "we should win this game", they were definitely humbled that day. And I saw all 90 minutes of it. The All Whites achieved what no one thought was possible. Hopefully I can take something away from this!

Well, on to something not as exciting - my training recap for this week. Another 8 runs this week, and as a matter of fact I think I am starting to adapt to this harsh regime. Here it is again.

Monday

Type: Recovery

Time and Distance: 30 mins 25 secs, 4.7 km.

Tuesday

Type: Recovery

Time and Distance: 28 mins 37 secs, 4.1 km.

Type: Threshold

Time and Distance: 52 mins 15 secs, 10.2 km.

Detail: Warm up for 15 mins. 4 x 6 mins at threshold pace. Each 6 mins covered around 1300-1400m.

Wednesday

Type: Recovery

Time and Distance: 42 mins 20 secs, 6.1 km.

Thursday

Type: Progression tempo

Time and Distance: 45 mins, 8.9 km.

Detail: First 15 mins at recovery pace (2.3 km), second 15 mins at steady pace (3.0 km), last 15 minutes at threshold pace (3.6 km).

Saturday

Type: Continuous hills

Time and Distance: 45 mins 58 secs, 7.6 km.

Detail: 12 mins warmup. 5 sets of 5 mins at threshold with 90 seconds recovery.

Type: Recovery

Time and Distance: 27 mins 43 secs, 4 km.

Sunday

Type: Long run

Time and Distance: 86 mins 57 secs, 16.8 km.

Total Weekly Distance: 62.4 km

Comments: Another 62.4 km this week - the only difference is the extra threshold run. I think I have a better understanding of my threshold pace and will want to target this pace in future training. It's like running hard, but also knowing that your legs aren't going to fill up with lactic acid that quickly. If your legs are starting to burn quickly, then you're running faster than your threshold pace, which is something you don't want to be doing at this stage.

Improvements: I've had a look at week 3 of the sub-3 hours training programme, and there is a lot of emphasis on threshold running, with the times spent running at threshold getting gradually longer. I think I know what the effort should be like, so hopefully I can really aim in on that zone to get the maximum training benefit. It's easy to slip into the faster-is-better approach, but wasting yourself unnecessarily is not the best thing to do at this stage.

There's less than 100 days to Berlin, and when I started this blog I had over 250 days on the clock. So much time has passed and I'm keen to know how far I've come as a runner. I believe that I'm faster than when I first started, though I really need to run a shorter race again to really know this. I've been challenged a lot, and had to change some of my previous thinking about my training and running. Overall, I think I've learned a lot about my running in that time.

Now, fast forward to race day. I hope that I can do something similar to what the All Whites just did against the might of Italy!

Cheers,

Aaron