VLM training week 7

Enthused by my first proper run outside for weeks, I was back in the gym at 7am on Monday morning (16^th Feb) for the first run of a scheduled recovery double (2 miles am / 7 miles pm). I decided to split the miles more evenly because whilst my legs were a bit tired after a 78 mile week, I was ticking along easily at 6:30 pace and thought it would be a bit daft to get sweaty and showered for the sake of 2 miles. So I went for 5 miles in the morning and 6.2 miles in the evening – adding a couple of extra miles to the scheduled amount for the day. I have been feeling pretty fresh after my recovery run days – and seem to be recovering more quickly. I need to wear my heart rate monitor to bed to test this theory out (but slightly worried about my marriage).

On the way to the gym on Monday evening I checked in with Phil the physio who seemed pleased with the knee – no swelling, no pain, no problem. Phil filmed me doing some clumsy hopping about and drills in the car park and told me I needed to build more drills into my training if I wanted to strengthen things up and avoid getting injured again. Good advice I am sure – just need to find somewhere to do the drills that won’t lead to embarrassment.

I nearly went to the club intervals session on Tuesday but ended up working too late so I did my scheduled interval session on the treadmill. I have been tending to prefer more fartlek style reps on the treadmill (it feels daft walking) so I went for an hour of running – alternating between 6:50 and 5:20 pace as the songs on my headphones changed. I set the playlist up so that the rest songs were short, and the effort songs were longer and at the right tempo. Good session – and the 10 miles passed in bang on an hour.

Wednesday was another recovery double (3 mile / 7 mile) – but, again, I added a bit extra on the morning to top up to just over 6 miles, and then tried an open air 6.5 mile recovery run home in the evening. It felt good to be outside again – although it felt a bit too hard at times on the hills.

Thursday was supposed to be a 12 mile progression run but given the week was getting a bit high mileage, I dropped a couple of miles in exchange for a hard treadmill session. I set the treadmill off at around 6:20 pace and progressed through my threshold zone to a hard, near race-effort last couple of miles at around 5:25 pace (148bpm) – finishing the 10 miles in 58:40. I was pretty shattered at the end but it felt good – especially when the young lad limbering up competitively on the treadmill next to me caught sight of the 'end of session stats' on the treadmill screen.

Friday went basically the same as Wednesday with a double recovery run: morning on the treadmill, evening on the roads and trails. Again, I over-ran on the scheduled miles – just over 11 in total compared to 8 on the schedule.

The plan for Saturday was a short early morning 5 mile run, giving time for some decent recovery ahead of Sunday’s scheduled 24 mile long run. But, with the kids having a rare weekend off sport / music etc, the opportunity to give the knee a hard tempo test at a parkrun seemed too good to miss.  I didn’t want to race at 100% so I decided to go to Hillsborough rather than Endcliffe to avoid it all getting too competitive.  The run went well and I managed to drag my tired legs round in 17:18 – running all but the first half a lap on my own. I was a bit disappointed with the time – knowing that I would have been a lot closer to sub-17 before Xmas added a few pounds that I haven’t shaken off yet. The phrase that went round in my head as I warmed down was ‘a bit fitter but a bit fatter’ – this marathon training thing makes you very hungry and I am probably over-compensating. Not got long to get that under control now – got about 2 kgs to lose to get to race weight (69kg) before the big day.

Obviously Saturday night involved a 50^th birthday party with loads of beer, cake, chocolate and cheese. So much for self-control then!

Sunday morning involved some pathetic attempts to rehydrate ahead of a head-clearing 19 mile jaunt with Deb down the transpennine trail from Rotherham to Rother Valley and back. Deb  jogged the last mile to her mum’s house to hit the 20 sub-8:00 miles in her schedule, but I peeled off down the canal and picked the pace up as planned. I was tired but found it pretty easy to progress to around 6:20 pace in the freezing rain (just get it done), before jogging the last half mile to Deb’s mum’s house for boiled eggs, bread and soup. An evening nap was required at 5:30 before the traditional Sunday evening family ritual of homemade pizza (blue cheese, red onion and hellishly hot habanero peppers) and ‘The Voice’.

And, so another week of returning optimism with just over 85 miles clocked, and some decent quality work too. Plan for next week is much the same, but with a proper preparatory race on Sunday (Norton 9). The Grindleford Gallop looms large the following Sunday. I was not going to risk it, but maybe I could actually control the adrenaline and do it at 95% without breaking something? I mean what could go wrong....