Go Hard

That time of year has come around again. Time for the Victorian Emergency Services Games . A chance to mix it up with the other services (because we can be a weird bunch), forget about work, have some fun, friendly and if wanted, some fierce competition. First event for me was the 10km cross country. My fitness seemed reasonable going in. Originally I had planned to train through the race, but the week turned out to be an inadvertent taper. A lot of training was missed for a few reasons. The main one being sleep. Fifteen and fourteen hour back to back nights took their toll on me this time. So I turned up expecting to feel pretty fresh. Instead my legs felt quite flat and heavy, at least until the gun sounded. Then my legs just kicked straight into race mode. There were some course changes this year. More country and less bike path, some extra hill and a bit less flat. I liked the difference. The field had plenty of new faces and missing some of the regulars so I had no idea ho...

Moving further through the base phase means the training is not just about getting ready for more training. It was nice back in the introductory phase when the long runs were almost hikes. Unfortunately, keeping things comfortable only gets you so far. The change over isn't cut and dry in that one day I am doing one thing, and the next day it's a complete change. The process is gradual and there is a lot of cross over. The start of my base phase will be fairly different to the end of it. It is the long run where these differences are showing up. At this time my long runs are travelling at two levels. The longest in a continuation of what was achieved in the introductory phase. Where I go out on a good mix of terrain with plenty of hills. I reached 2.5 hours, but am adding 10-15 minutes every week or so if I feel its right to increase the length. The so, is because I never follow a traditional seven day week. The intensity is now no longer kept at super easy. Instead I am a...

Recovery run? I just don't like the term. It is me being pedantic, but I like to use terminology that has some accuracy for me. I also like the titles to allude to a working definition. So why not recovery ? Well it tends to conjure up images of lying back on the beach or at a resort while having drinks brought to me. Recovery, tends to suggest not running to me. I like to use regeneration . I think the biology definition tends to be close to my goals:   " the restoration or new growth by an organism of organs, tissues, etc., that have been lost, removed, or injured." Which is pretty a big part of the aim of training. A regeneration run aims to enhance this process. This is all nice, but what is a regeneration run for me? Is it just an a very easy run? To be annoying the answer can be both a yes and a no. To be less annoying I will explain... ...my regeneration runs have the goal of restoration and new growth. Therefore they shouldn't be har...

Determining the pace of my runs is an important aspect of training. Just going out and running on feel has it's place, but it does have it's limitations. I want to improve, and I need to train in a way that produces results. Training should be challenging, but it needs to stay within my recovery capacities to ensure positive adaptations rather than stagnation or even regression. There needs to be something to guide how I choose these paces. I've thrown away the heart rate monitor quite a while ago. They don't make them like they used to. Even when the units are working, how fast my ticker is beating just isn't a good guide anymore. Maybe it's because I'm getting old or shift work just stuffs it all up. Can't think of any race that is won based on heart rate either. First across the line tends to be the usual way to win. Pace seems to be the option to go with. Because my racing goals flit between 100km and 10km events, picking the marathon seems be a ...

The Base Phase is probably the most important phase. It's the longest phase. It is where the main gains are made, both for the short term and long term goals. The specific phase that follows aims to fine tune the fitness built through the base phase for racing. As a result that fitness built has the biggest influence. I find it best to simplify the multitude of elements that go into the concept of fitness. Depending on how you categorise things, it is possible to fill pages of all the different aspects of fitness if you were so inclined. That doesn't work for me. Much better to combine all those aspects into two or three key objectives to focus on. Those objectives to develop are: Anaerobic Threshold Aerobic Endurance Biomechanics No individual session is the be all in developing any of this. All training sessions and recovery go into influencing each of those objectives. Some types of runs will have a greater effect over one objective than the others. As fitness de...

Coming into the end of my Introductory Phase of training means it time for a bit of a review. Other than a stint of four days off due to the family sharing their germs, it has been a good 6 weeks. The training log software breaks everything down into a weekly summary, I have the joys of rotating shift work that means there's no such thing as a seven day week for me. Turns out I hit around 75km each week. The standard run was what I labelled easy and this progressed from 60 minutes to 90 minutes over the 6 weeks. All ended averaging 5:30-5:50/km over a variety of terrain. So the progression was in distance and not pace. For the long run this moved in time from 2 out to 2.5 hours. Run over some challenging terrain at a comfortable and very sustainable effort, the pace doesn't look flashy on paper out near 6:00-6:30/km. Hill sprints and short intervals stayed pretty much the same from start to finish in terms of times and distances. The difference is the faster running has l...

The plan to get some more racing in this year has been going pretty good so far. I've averaged a race every fortnight for the last two months. Today was my local, the Eltham Fun Run . It's a good hit out, run from the local YMCA over a somewhat hilly bike path. I was looking forward seeing what I could do over 10km since back into some consistent training. Weather conditions were mild and pleasant, almost perfect for running. My warm up felt flat. It took quite a while to shake off the higher than normal stiffness through my legs. That is to be expected as the training starts mounting up. I wasn't tapered, but I was ready to race. On the start line I was relaxed, but keen to get going. The 10km runners had their own wave, so I knew who I was racing when the horn sounded. The opening kilometre is mainly downhill. I let gravity do it's thing and fell  into a relaxed but quick opener. That put me in 7th position, but all in front were in view. I took stock of t...