Week 10
Monday – 10.6 miles cycling (road bike)
Tuesday – 4.35 miles (treadmill form session)
Wednesday – Gym strength session
Thursday – 9.7 miles (hard/medium)
Friday – Rest
Saturday – 20 miles (LSR)
Sunday – Rest
Week 11
Monday – 5.3 miles (19:11 5k, plus warm-up and cool-down)
Tuesday – Gym strength
Wednesday – 3.6 miles (treadmill form session)
Thursday – 3.2 miles (run club 400m intervals)
Friday – Rest
Saturday – 15.1 miles (2 mile warm-up then Enigma Half Marathon – 1:27:39 New PB)
Sunday – Rest
Decent couple of weeks training. Week 10’s 20 mile long run was a bit of a slog and certainly not as comfortable as the week before, it was only just over a minute slower though and still sub 7:30 average. I put the sluggishness down to it being at the end of a week of nightshifts, having woken up at 2am and getting no more than 4 hours sleep.
This week has been a bit of a cutback week; didn’t want to cutback too much though as due to work over the next couple of weeks it is going to be hard to get any major mileage in. I had a half marathon race on the Saturday and as it was in place of this week’s long run I decided I’d go out hard and see how I felt. It was an afternoon start and I had been feeling very lethargic all morning, but I turned up with half hour spare to do a couple of easy miles to warm up and some stretching. When it came to the half marathon I set off at a slightly crazy pace and led for half a mile until I decided to back off the 6:05 pace and slow down a bit. I was subsequently passed by a couple of runners and that is where I stayed. I could hear the 4th place runner behind me for about a mile but I slowly pulled away and had a lonely race with 2nd place runner slowly pulling away from me at about the same rate I was pulling away from 4th. My first 4 miles averaged below 6:30 and was just starting to get a bit warm when we had a shower, it only lasted a few minutes but cooled me down nicely. It turned out to be nice running conditions and I kept on churning out the sub 7 minute miles. Mile 11 turned out to be this slowest at 6:51; by this time I was determined to keep sub 7 all the way round though and upped my effort levels and ran last 2 miles a bit quicker. I also had the incentive of a PB to run for… when I had got to 10 miles and had been well under 7 min miles, I knew I had a chance. When I crossed the finish line I had taken nearly 2 minutes off my PB. Very happy with that and have recovered well from the effort.
Due to shifts this week, there isn’t going to be any chance of a long run so it may have to be a couple of 10 mile hardish efforts instead.
4 weeks to the big day! 🙂
bling
sub180marathon 