April 16th – 22nd
Posted under: With seven weeks until the Christchurch Marathon I’m starting to turn up the heat with my training. This last week was focused toward recovering from the 180km the week prior, smashing a session of 800s, maintaining another 150km+ week, and racing well at the annual Hagley Relays… too much? Surprisingly, I’m still able to walk and although the legs are completely shattered, I’m getting by.
The advice from coach Don, was to keep the miles high, but to ease back on the pace as to recover further, with the intention of trying to hit quality times in my 800reps and running a good race at Hagley.
Overall, I’m happy with how the week panned out, achieving all of the above! Both the workout and race are the shortest workouts I’ll complete in this build-up. Hopefully, the injection of speed will help to wake up and speed up the legs.
I’m looking to wind the miles back up to 160km + next week with two steady state aerobic capacity workouts to help with the base…. Should be interesting!
Run Big
Ashburton 10 Miler
What a cool race the annual Easter Ashburton 10miler is!
Having come off a good solid few weeks of training after racing and getting third at the Christchurch City 2 Surf, I headed down to Ashburton to run, for my first time, the Ashburton 10miler. The weather was perfect, with slight gusts of wind coming off the Southern Alps.
Having completed 4 X 2km earlier in the week, and finishing the last rep off in 6:01, I knew I was in great shape, and ‘should’ be able to handle what ever pace the competition threw at me. How it turned out, and doing what Mark Bailey did to me at the City 2 Surf, I went out hard from the gun. I went through the first mile in under 5min and laughed to myself as I already had a 30m lead and was coasting…
The course was a neat 2 x 5mile loop course, with a technical windy road out, and a long straight road back. Through the windy sections on both laps, I found it hard to get into a good smooth rhythm, as I had to adjust my pace as I zoomed around corners. But, I managed open up along the straights and comfortably run some very quick min/ks.
Overall, I had a great run, averaging 3:21s for the race, and winning by 3mins. I text my coach after with the feedback, “I won, solid tempo!” And for me, I think that’s a fair statement and a very encouraging one. Averaging 3:21s and feeling easy, obviously indicates I’m capable of running a heck of a lot faster…
My next race is the New Balance 15km, where my coach, Don Greig’s indicated he’d like me to have a ‘good blowout’ to see what true shape I’m in leading into the Christchurch Marathon in June. Now I have proved I can tempo 10mile at 3:21s, I am pretty excited to see how fast I’ll go next!
RUN BIG!
Christchurch City 2 Surf
The Christchurch City 2 Surf was held on a new 14.5km (approx) course, stretching from Pioneer Stadium, along the winding roads next to the Heathcote River, and finishing at Ferrymead Park.
Having run the old course a few times, from Christchurch’s square to QEII, I was interested to see if the new course would live up to the hype and drama of previous races… Overall, I must admit I prefer the new course, as running along the base of the Port Hills provides a nice backdrop for the race, coupled with the fantastic day of weather, the event was near perfect.
For me the Christchurch City 2 Surf was the start of my 3 race buildup phase before racing the Christchurch Marathon in June. Having run 40km the previous Sunday, and completing a very fast rep session of 600m on the Wednesday before the race, it’s safe to say that there was no taper for this footrace.
As the gun went off, Mark Bailey form New Brighton Olympic Athletics Club took the lead, with me following behind in second and Tane Cambridge sitting on me in third. Mark led the pace off extremely fast, going through the first km in close to 2:55. At this stage I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sustain the intensity, as my previous week’s running and lack of taper was racing through my mind. After 5km Mark had established a good lead, running through 5km in just over 15min. Tane was about 30-40m behind Mark, and I was sitting in third 30-40m behind Tane. At this stage I wasn’t feeling too comfortable, but knew I needed to focus on my breathing and rhythm to ensure I didn’t fall off the pace too much. Over the next miles, nothing too exciting happened, the gap between the three of us opened up ever so slightly, but we pretty much kept the same distance apart until the end of the race.
I was stoked that over the last 5km I was sitting very comfortably in third, and was maintaining 3:18s per km easily. I finished third in a solid time of 47:42:00, with Mark winning in 46 flat.
As the City 2 Surf was my first proper race in my build-up I learnt a lot about where I was physically in my build-up cycle, and it helped to reinforce some of the areas I needed to work on.
I’m confident I could have maintained the same pace to 21km on the day, which would give me around a 69min half. Although you often hear athletes rambling about what they ‘coulda’ ‘shoulda’ ‘woulda’ done, I am fairly confident I could have achieved this.
So overall, I was impressed by the event, the quality of athletes, and of-course proud that I was achieving some good results and the hard training was starting to pay off.
Onto the next goal!
