So I survived my one hour and twenty minute training session (it was not a minute under or a minute over I hastened to add). I managed to cover a distance of just under 14km, I was hoping for nearer 15km, but the heat started to take its toll. According to my technical bit of wizardry I also burnt over 1000 calories, but that figure is largely irrelevant as I chewed on a few juicy sized flies as I made my way round the country lanes, so I would safely say that the calorie burn was negligible.
In my previous post I mentioned and provided evidence that my feet were looking a little rough around the edges. Surprisingly, they have deteriorated very little and haven’t become the mangled mess I thought they would. However, I did feel extremely tired after my exertions, finding just about enough energy to pull myself up the staircase and flop myself into a warm, muscle-relaxing bath. I proceeded to nod off a few times before I reminded myself it was only 6pm and I had my Sunday evening ahead of me.
Overall it was a good run, I now know that I can run 2/3’s of a half marathon after completing half of my 12 week training schedule (far too many fractions and numbers for one sentence, but I just wanted to prove that I did listen during Maths lessons and my poor GCSE results had nothing to do with me, it was all the teachers fault, so nerrrr!)
My typical training schedule for a week consists of one long run, as per the run I have just discussed. This is meant to be run at a relatively relaxed pace, the reason, so the experts say, is to provide you with a solid base of long distance running, acclimatising the body and preparing it to be on the road for an extended period of time. For a few years now, my running consisted of weeks upon weeks of these extended runs. I have been fixated with the 10k distance and in truth I probably still am. It was a small pinnacle for me, if I ran 10k, I’d made it, I was a runner. Much like the swimming badges I collected at school to sew onto my speedo’s, every time I completed the 10k distance, whether it be in a race or not, I would, in my mind, award myself a badge to attach to my running shorts. Now, I can’t run in those shorts because they have way too many badges attached to them, so it was time to shift my focus. So, now, once a week I complete a speed run, or tempo run as some people call it.
This type of run consists of starting out at an easy pace and at different intervals I then increase the pace of the run to what I consider to be my race pace, or my target time per mile/km. Over the weeks my training schedule increases the time I have to maintain that race pace. For instance, the first training schedule I did asked me to run for 3 mins at this pace, now I am running 15 mins and maintaining that speed. This is already taking time off my runs and in the last two weeks I have seen my 5k personal best reduced twice.
The third and last session of the week, which, again, I never did before involves hills. I hated hills. Hills were my enemy and I despised them so much. If I encountered a particularly nasty hill during a race, my heart would sink and any hope of setting a good finish time were dashed. Men and women in their 50’s and 60’s would sail past me, mocking me with their superior hill technique, whilst I looked like a giraffe on roller blades. The one and only time I have ever stopped in a race was because of stupid bloody hill. Anyway, I think you get the point.
I have now embraced the humble hill as a great training tool, I actually feel much stronger after a hill session than the other two. It can be a little repetitious because the session is purely based around running up the hill for ‘x’ amount of time and then running down it for ‘x’ amount of time and it does feel that you are stuck in a loop, or your running around the world’s smallest running track.
I suppose I will find out in 6 weeks’ time whether the change to my training programme has worked, but at the moment I am feeling fighting fit.
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