Back Into It - GOW100 Training
It's been a bit of time since my last post. So it's now worth an update.
The first two weeks crossing over from May to June definitely went as planned. The time was spent in Bali in pools, on the beach, with great food and plenty of Bintangs and cocktails. There were even a few runs mixed in, but not much. Sun and hot weather eventually gave way to a return home to winter.
Off the plane on Sunday, early to bed to catch up on the sleep lost on the over night flight, and back to reality on Monday morning. A slow and stiff pre-dawn run in the cold before work. This first week was a simple ease into it. Which was take one-and-a-half days between the first three runs, which were all 8-10km and very easy. That had the legs feeling normal.
Then came the long run. With the view I am preparing for a 100km race I feel an urgency to push up the kilometres, both in individual runs and overall. Just bashing out extended distances has too high a risk of bringing back some injury. So I need to be smart in getting that volume up. This first long run was an exercise in keeping my ego well in check. I chose an out-and-back course with a mixture of trails, some of which were quite technical (bush bashing along the Yarra river). I kept the run pace on the ridiculously slow side of things then made that even easier by alternating 15 minutes of running with 5 minutes of walking. Then at the 2 hour point I turned around and headed home. While keeping everything in the slow range I still finished with a negative split by 15 minutes. A bit tired at the end, but a good intro into the concept of ultra again.
Next it was Sunday and with the joys of shift work this was also a work day. Since I'm working locally at the moment that brought the return of the run commute. So an easy jog into work and an easy jog back home rounded out the week. That gave a total of 63km for the week. I felt ready for a true ramp up.
The first two weeks crossing over from May to June definitely went as planned. The time was spent in Bali in pools, on the beach, with great food and plenty of Bintangs and cocktails. There were even a few runs mixed in, but not much. Sun and hot weather eventually gave way to a return home to winter.
Off the plane on Sunday, early to bed to catch up on the sleep lost on the over night flight, and back to reality on Monday morning. A slow and stiff pre-dawn run in the cold before work. This first week was a simple ease into it. Which was take one-and-a-half days between the first three runs, which were all 8-10km and very easy. That had the legs feeling normal.
Then came the long run. With the view I am preparing for a 100km race I feel an urgency to push up the kilometres, both in individual runs and overall. Just bashing out extended distances has too high a risk of bringing back some injury. So I need to be smart in getting that volume up. This first long run was an exercise in keeping my ego well in check. I chose an out-and-back course with a mixture of trails, some of which were quite technical (bush bashing along the Yarra river). I kept the run pace on the ridiculously slow side of things then made that even easier by alternating 15 minutes of running with 5 minutes of walking. Then at the 2 hour point I turned around and headed home. While keeping everything in the slow range I still finished with a negative split by 15 minutes. A bit tired at the end, but a good intro into the concept of ultra again.
Next it was Sunday and with the joys of shift work this was also a work day. Since I'm working locally at the moment that brought the return of the run commute. So an easy jog into work and an easy jog back home rounded out the week. That gave a total of 63km for the week. I felt ready for a true ramp up.
That ramp up did away with the only increase your mileage by no more than 10% rule. Accumulating 115km for the following week. To mitigate the big increase, there was a relative easiness to my running. While I did hit the track for some intervals, and there were some hill repeats, nothing was forced. All my running was well within my abilities. I finished each run feeling like I could have done a lot more. Of course I was tired, and a heaviness through the legs has been gradually developing. However, I am moving well and am showing no signs of any the injury trouble I've had over the last couple of years. It looks like I have gotten my body to where I need it be in order to handle the ultra marathon training. The trick will be to keep it that way as things escalate.
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