SC100 Training: Base 5

Now into the second half of my Base training. Even though it is still four 8-day weeks left, it is really the last chance to get myself ready to handle the training I want to get done in the Specific phase. The first four weeks have gone pretty well. There is a good level of improvement and relatively good tolerance of my key sessions. The plan for the rest of Base is to keep the key sessions (long runs, hill plyometrics) ticking over with some progression. In between I want to increase the workload a fair bit to build that tolerance. Of course this will be done with the view of not sacrificing the long runs and ensuring injury prevention and recovery is still being achieved. Basically I want to increase my baseline load, which will hopefully lead to better ability to absorb the harder training to come.



So what did Base Week 5 look like?

Day 1: am: Basic run 50min
Day 2: pm: Basic run treadmill 40min
Day 3: am: Hill 10x 1:00 springing-3:00 high cadence recovery. Stairs and trail 8-12% grade. 70min
Day 4: am: MAF Test (4:28/km) 70min
Day 5: am: Long 4 hours
Day 6: am: Basic run 90min
Day 7: pm: Basic + Speed (drills 4x100m, 2x200m long recovery) 75min
Day 8: am: Mid-Long 2 hours

The first two days had shorter runs purely because that's the time I had available. Performing the higher intensity hill work the day before the MAF Test appeared to have the direct effect of slowing things down a little. All basic runs were run at the faster end of my aerobic conditioning range, without worrying if I spiked my heart rate on climbs. This made for a lot more day-to-day discomfort and stiffer legs each morning, but didn't seem to take anything away from the key runs. Overall a very good week of training. Pretty much exactly what I was aiming for.

If I can stick a few weeks together similar to this, then that should pay some big dividends later on. This Sunday I will throw my first of three races in the lead up. Race #1 Salomon Trail Series, Studley Park Kew. A 10.8km trail race. Last year it hammered me, but I still very happy with my result. This year I'm curious to see how I'll perform off purely base training. Hopefully I can go a little quicker than last year. Despite it being a training race, meaning that I won't truly be targeting a top performance with a good taper, I'll still go in without having done a hard key session in the two days before hand and with the intention of running it is as fast as I can.

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