I’ve been a little lapse on writing the blog recently, simply because I’ve been training so much. For the last four weeks I have most definitely been On. Which is to say I’ve been knuckling down and going for it, stretching my peak mileage, and doing at least two sessions a week.
At first being On doesn’t feel so bad, but by week four I have to say that I have been starting to feel the strain. Two runs in a row, one easy, one hard progressive, done before early work shifts, felt absolutely awful. The results of the runs were exactly what I wanted them to be, but they didn’t feel good. Beyond how I felt during those runs, those two entire days just felt sluggish. It seemed that I had run out of gas. But that’s why we have days off. I took a day without running, did a decent amount of walking to keep blood flowing in my legs, and came back at the weekend to do 10 on the Saturday and 14 on the Sunday, making for a very substantial weekend of mileage to round out this 4 week block of very successful training.
Although the weekend was a success and that I’m writing this feeling good, I now need to take it easier next week. I need to let the mileage drop down, take an extra rest day, and get ready to go again for another four weeks (roughly) at the end of which I will (hopefully) race a 5 or 10k. The point of this is to let my body adapt to what I’ve just put it through. The long runs in particular take a while to take effect, and if I just keep piling and piling more miles into the tank I’ll never have the chance to take a step back, look over my shoulder, and see how far I’ve gone.
It probably isn’t completely accurate to say that this upcoming week is an Off week, I’ll probably do 30ish miles still, but I won’t do any full sessions. A couple of strides, a truncated long run, but mostly it’ll be easy running and cross training. The track is open to athletes again, so when I come back it’ll be back to group sessions, which works perfectly as I will be looking to refine my pace towards race day in January.
Speaking of which, the main thing I have to do this week is one of the more exciting non-running aspects of running – choosing a race.
run into words 