This week went pretty well and I found myself able to bring forward my goals like, for example, instead of 2 x 3' + 5 x 2', I did 3 x 3' + 3 x 2'. If you've done the maths, you'll see that there is a little trick there - 2 x 3' + 5 x 2' = 16' but 3 x 3' + 3 x 2' is only 15'. Still, I'm pleased to have progressed (finally) to 3 sets of 3' minutes at the not too shabby speed of 19 kph (3:10 /km).
Similarly, the fractured 10K run I did on Sunday, I was able to do faster and with less rest than I had envisaged, so that I am training more or less at where I expected to be by the end of the 9 week cycle. It's funny how fatigue works: I distinctly remember feeling tired when I woke up on Sunday and not in the mood for a tough workout, but by the afternoon I was ready for more!
I thought about something new while I was running. As I do quite a bit of running, you can expect that I don't think of new things very often and, when I do, they are just a tweak of a tweak. What I thought of was this: by "priming" my foot before landing by stretching the toes upwards a little, it felt ever so slightly more "springy" than usual, perhaps adding a fraction of flight to my stride. I remember my coach telling me - years ago - to think of priming the foot, but it was too subtle for me to notice back then. Ultimately, if you cannot sense at some level the improvement from a tweak, you need up discarding it, assuming you were doing it right in the first place. I imagine that the treadmill has given me some bad habits but it's consistency makes for an excellent laboratory to tweak your running technique.
Today (Monday) I ended up going to the osteopath - not by design, but rather because my wife had forgotten her appointment and so I made use of the session that would have otherwise gone to waste. He told me that my back was in the best shape of anyone's he had seen recently, which was encouraging and also tallied with my own perception of late. Perhaps if I can remove the "stopper" of my back, I can find another level of training intensity. After all, I can't say I am finding it too difficult right now. The only difficulty I seem to have is with the "recovery runs" which I sometimes find too stifling and, as they are supposed to be recovery runs and not quality, I have tended to cut them short or into pieces. I had a dream the other day (a nightmare?) in which my ex-coach, Jonathan, appeared and I felt terribly guilty about not respecting his polarised training (doing 80% of runs quite a bit more slowly than Marathon Pace).
Monday: -
Tuesday: 3 x (3' @ 3:00, 3' @ 6:00) + 3 x (2' @ 3:00, 2' @ 6:00)
Wednesday: 40' @ 4:00
Thursday: 6 x 200m-400m + 400m, 200m @ 3:00 w/ 30" jog, 400m @ 3:10 w/ 1' jog
Friday: 40' @ 4:00
Saturday: 20' + 10' + 10' @ 4:00
Sunday: 1K, 1' jog, 3K, 2' jog, 2K, 1' jog, 3K, 2' jog, 1K @ 3:25 (morning), 40' @ 4:00 (afternoon)
Similarly, the fractured 10K run I did on Sunday, I was able to do faster and with less rest than I had envisaged, so that I am training more or less at where I expected to be by the end of the 9 week cycle. It's funny how fatigue works: I distinctly remember feeling tired when I woke up on Sunday and not in the mood for a tough workout, but by the afternoon I was ready for more!
I thought about something new while I was running. As I do quite a bit of running, you can expect that I don't think of new things very often and, when I do, they are just a tweak of a tweak. What I thought of was this: by "priming" my foot before landing by stretching the toes upwards a little, it felt ever so slightly more "springy" than usual, perhaps adding a fraction of flight to my stride. I remember my coach telling me - years ago - to think of priming the foot, but it was too subtle for me to notice back then. Ultimately, if you cannot sense at some level the improvement from a tweak, you need up discarding it, assuming you were doing it right in the first place. I imagine that the treadmill has given me some bad habits but it's consistency makes for an excellent laboratory to tweak your running technique.
Today (Monday) I ended up going to the osteopath - not by design, but rather because my wife had forgotten her appointment and so I made use of the session that would have otherwise gone to waste. He told me that my back was in the best shape of anyone's he had seen recently, which was encouraging and also tallied with my own perception of late. Perhaps if I can remove the "stopper" of my back, I can find another level of training intensity. After all, I can't say I am finding it too difficult right now. The only difficulty I seem to have is with the "recovery runs" which I sometimes find too stifling and, as they are supposed to be recovery runs and not quality, I have tended to cut them short or into pieces. I had a dream the other day (a nightmare?) in which my ex-coach, Jonathan, appeared and I felt terribly guilty about not respecting his polarised training (doing 80% of runs quite a bit more slowly than Marathon Pace).
Monday: -
Tuesday: 3 x (3' @ 3:00, 3' @ 6:00) + 3 x (2' @ 3:00, 2' @ 6:00)
Wednesday: 40' @ 4:00
Thursday: 6 x 200m-400m + 400m, 200m @ 3:00 w/ 30" jog, 400m @ 3:10 w/ 1' jog
Friday: 40' @ 4:00
Saturday: 20' + 10' + 10' @ 4:00
Sunday: 1K, 1' jog, 3K, 2' jog, 2K, 1' jog, 3K, 2' jog, 1K @ 3:25 (morning), 40' @ 4:00 (afternoon)
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