Monday 21 July 2014

Countdown to Chelmsford Marathon 2014 - Week 7 of 20 - Corner Turned?

Very pleasing weeks training. 30 miles run in 4 runs.

1 x Yasso 800 intervals
1 x 5 Mile Tempo
1 x 10km easy
1 x 2 hour run (13.34 miles)

I have got a new structure to my training, namely 3 x hard sessions a week with one and if I'm very lucky 2 easy paced runs. I've felt for a while that I am training too easy a lot of the time, hoping for monster mileage and to get quicker that way. The big mileage has never quite come and the effort has still felt quite high as I often run at the end of a long day at work and not properly fuelled.

The hard runs can be intervals, tempo, hills, parkrun or a long-run. Also in weeks where I have a race I may not do any other hard sessions and focus on easy paced stuff to get me to the start line fresh and firing.

My first go at Yasso 800's had me doing 6 sets and I managed to hold 3:35-3:45 with the same amount of time to recover. I will look to build this up to 10 sets. It was a really tough session, but with the constant clock and distance watching the time flew.

The tempo run was also a success, needed sub 5 minute km's at least and hit 4:45 or quicker through the 5 miles.

The easy run was anything but and felt like a struggle for large parts, but I got it done.

The most successful run however was my Sunday evening long run. After a busy weekend and waiting till the storm had passed I went out at gone 7pm and made a point of keeping my efforts steady. Managed to keep it pretty relaxed throughout and average heart rate was 149 bpm which was pleasing. Pace hovered around 9minute miles but I wasn't too worried I just wanted the run to feel comfortable. Just over a Half Marathon in 2 hours was a very pleasing result, and I felt I had plenty more in me.

Another busy work week and weekend coming up, so think 4 runs will be the maximum I will squeeze in. I think it might just be a tempo run and a 15 miler with the other runs being gentle recovery runs.

So perhaps some progress being made, but we will only really know when I race next. Which might be a parkrun in a fortnights time, watch this space.

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