Go Hard

The previous week of recovery finishing with a weekend away was exactly what mind, body and soul needed. So after getting back to work and a hard week of consistent training, what better way to keep things on track than to have another weekend away. Instead of heading north this time we headed southeast out into the rolling, green hills of Koonwarra. Out for a a friends birthday, I was very happy kicking back in the bed & breakfast set on a winery. Plenty of food, wine and relaxation set the scene for some picturesque running. Discovering the Great Southern Rail Trail made the 65 minutes of threshold running a whole lot easier than it could have been. Especially after seven days of good hard running which have included 2hr and 2hr50min aerobic runs, plus some 7x2:30 hill repeats with sprint finish run throughs all on top of consistent mileage. I have reached the next level of fitness. Everything is on track.

The SAID principal has two key components: Demand: the stimulus such as training Adaptation: the changes to the body from the demand Over the last few weeks my training has been going well. In fact I have a bit over three weeks of consistent work that includes aerobic conditioning runs, prolonged threshold session, hill/strength training, long runs and a couple of races. This has accumulated a big demand from which I hope to gain some significant improvements ( specific adaptation ). For that to occur I had scheduled a recovery period on every fourth training cycle. This time I really needed the easier week. Coming off the weekends 10km race I had a bit of soft tissue damage to my right quads. Pain, swelling and bruising combined with some cramping of the surrounding muscles signalled the need for recovery. Three very easy days, with a bit of icing and compression did the trick. I'll be surprised if there are any ongoing problems from this. What did surprise me was just how hammer...

Another solid week of training led into the MS Fun Run at Albert Park. The pre-race warm up took some time to shake off the stiffness that's been accumulating. A night of interrupted sleep kept my mind uninterested until it finally realised the race was going ahead. Then it was business as usual. Checking out the course it was clear the race distance wasn't going to be all of the 10km advertised. Albert Park Lake hasn't gotten any bigger over the years, and the permanently marked 4.7km course has been altered either. Without the missing 300m on each lap being allowed for, the race was going to be fastest over 9.4km. The horn sounded following a reasonably low key build up. A quick scramble over the gravel, past a dip onto bitumen then under the large trees. The front of the field had broken away from the mass pretty quickly. I was happy to be up there and feeling pretty good. The top ten or so was mixture of changing positions. As the path widened out there was even more mo...

There is kind of a rhythm to my days lately. The exact routine varies a little, but there is an obvious trend. I wake up a bit earlier than I feel I need to. There is a run in the morning, either first thing or a little later. There is the time with my daughter. Food and coffee have their parts. Work has been the time consuming feature. The 0900-2100 roster (finishing on time isn't all that common either) has finally caught up with me. No night shifts have been great, but I've been feeling like I'm at work everyday. For the last few weeks, most days have felt like the one before. That's not to say I haven't been having fun. I've still managed plenty of family time. Haven't missed any training and managed a little bit of a social life. It's good to know I'm back into my preferred roster next week. More variable shifts, but it does suit me better. I've hardly had time to think about running over the last week. The schedule has been set for a while,...

After last Sunday's half marathon I was feeling ridiculously good. No real discomfort in the legs, no heaviness and I didn't even get the post-race headache I usually do. On the Monday I headed out for a recovery run and found it too easy. It was very difficult to keep a lid on the pace and my heart rate was sitting pretty low as well. I got to thinking the accumulated training was paying off in more ways than anticipated. Then Tuesday arrived. Getting out of bed was definitely harder than it should be. Even getting my running clothes and shoes on seemed to pose a problem. Out into the cold and it felt like I was trying to run through waist deep mud. Each step got worse so I bit the bullet and called it time out after only 3km. Recovery was needed. In the end I needed three days of recovery to get the legs back from the 21.1km of racing. Needing to rethink how half marathons would fit into the plan I had a look back at some of my previous years training records. It became clear...

With a couple of weeks of solid training behind me, I was pumped for a good day. Not necessarily breaking any of my records, especially since I was training reasonably hard right through race day. I was hoping to put down a time that would really put me in line to running sub 3 hours over the marathon distance. Essentially I had to go under 1:27 for the half to be happy. Which means running my best time over this course since 2006 where I ran 1:23:44. I knew I wasn't quite in that sort of shape at the moment. but I should be able to break the 1:27:xx mark. Hoping to hit around 1:26 to really be on track for the marathon. Reflect Just to make sure things were familiar, the morning started off nice and cold. A layer of fog covered most of the course and stayed for the whole run. It took a while to warm up and shake some of the stiffness of my heaviest week of running in quite a while. Yet, by the time the moment of silence was up, I was ready to go. Lined up one place from the start ...