April 23rd – 29th
Posted under: The last week’s training was big! – Easily over 110 miles combined with my best ever workout.
Don scheduled a 10 x 1km workout on Tuesday with a 2min recovery between each rep. Warming up for the workout I wasn’t feeling fresh, and overall a bit sluggish. But it’s weird sometimes before workouts and races, when you’re feeling a bit off; sometimes you do your best workouts.
So as the first few reps flew by, I became more and more relaxed. I was running about 3:06 per km for the first reps. At this point I vividly remember smiling to myself and chuckling as I knew I was floating and managing to run the speed easily.
As it’s winter now in NZ, it becomes dark early and very quickly. But weirdly, as it became pitch black on the course I was running, I started to run faster, finishing the last rep off in 2:56.
The best thing about the work out was Don’s response; “you’re not a pussy anymore.” To give some context, in the 80s Don ran numerous sub 2:15 marathons, and achieved a PR of 2:13. So obviously hearing Don’s classic feedback has given me definite confidence going forward for the final few weeks before the marathon.
The rest of the week was good too, as I travelled over to the West Coast primarily to run some large k’s but also to catch up with my sister too. I ran around 60km in 2 days, with two staggering runs. The first was a 20km tempo next to the Paparoa River, over a ridge and back out down the Punakaiki River. The trail was off road, but I used it as a ‘light(ish)’ tempo.
The second run was my Sunday morning run, which took me up to Hokitika’s Trigg station, with an elevation of about 400m and complete 360degree views; beautiful!
All in all, a very good week, both in-terms of workouts and long runs. Over the next few weeks, I’ll compete at the New Balance 15km race, and will continue to build my kms per week too
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April 16th – 22nd
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
