Go Hard

Despite describing my training plan in my last post, I haven't exactly followed it this week. Nothing to with my fitness or motivation. Sometimes other things in life trump what essentially comes down to recreation. Nothing too bad, but when one of the little ones has a tonsillectomy, the recovery for them means lots of time by his side, very regular medications and not much sleep. So naturally that takes the place of training. From a running point of view the week has been wiped. One thing to learn from this episode is how important sleep is. While in theory I do know this, and should have learnt from past mistakes that  sleep deprivation is a bad thing . Being a shift worker I am very familiar with running on reduced shut-eye. That familiarity also means I tend to underestimate just how tired I am and can persist in pushing through when I shouldn't. I tried getting in some training, but it is amazing just how sore the body can become purely from a lack ...

This week was mixed up a little to accommodate racing. I kept in mind that I'm still in base training so I didn't want to taper sharply or have extended recovery after the race. Instead I the aim was to keep the training moderate leading in and then ensure I kept the kilometers up post race. Day 1: am: Basic run 60min pm: Weights Day 2: off - due to work/family. Allowed me to shake off the stiffness that's been consistently building over the last week. Day 3: am: Basic run 75min Day 4: am: Race Salomon Trail #1 10.8km + warm up and cool down. Day 5: off. Post nightshift, sleep Day 6: pm: Long 2hr. Day 7: am: Basic 90min Day 8: off. extra nightshift again The really good thing about my basic runs is that all I have to do is get out and run. I may have some generalised goal like aiming to keep the intensity towards the higher end of my aerobic conditioning range, but the most important thing is I just run. Usually I don't check my heart rate during the run. I...