I’ve started off the last few weeks Blog stating the past week has gone really well (sometimes its really hard to know how to start each week’s Blog 😉) and to be fair this has been the case again this week. However this past week felt like a real grind on some runs and energy levels were tested a bit with some days feeling like a real struggle to get out the door! To be fair sometimes it can be like that especially when you are trying to progress each week and push your fitness forward. Its actually the easy sessions that proved to be the most challenging aspects of last weeks training which I’ll dive into a bit more in a moment!
Weekly Recap:
Monday: 8.04 miles – 58.45
Tuesday: 2 miles easy – 5 mile Tempo -27.29 – 2 miles easy
Wednesday: 4 miles – 31.50
Thursday: 7 miles 52.43
Friday: 12.26 miles – 87.02
Saturday: 6 miles – 45.47
Sunday: Rest Day
All in all a really solid week. Was very happy with the 5 mile Tempo session last Tuesday averaging 5.29 per mile with following mile splits:
· 5.31
· 5.32
· 5.27
· 5.31
· 5.26
Very even effort throughout which was pleasing and bodes well going forward. So what was challenging about last week? Whilst I was out running the 4mile easy run you can see above from last Wednesday I actually decided what I was going to talk about for this weeks Blog and that was why sometimes the easier paced runs often feel the hardest? Wednesday and Thursday’s runs honestly felt like a grind and probably the hardest runs I’ve done in weeks even though the paces were 7.58 and 7.33 per mile respectively which is over 2 minutes slower per mile than Tuesday’s 5 mile Tempo session. This in my opinion is not a bad thing! The way I look at it and always have really is to use the days following a key session to ease the previous session’s effort out of the legs and get ready for the next important session. On the Tempo itself I actually felt really good and that’s what you want, you should want the fast days to feel smooth and comfortable and the easy days to feel like a grind. I’ve talked about the credits analogy I like to consider with regard to training load before and I like to think in a given week you are given a certain amount of credits to use and you want to use the majority of these credits for your keys sessions like: Tempos, intervals, Hills, and Long runs. The remaining credits go to your easy runs however if you end up using too many credits on your easy runs you either end up taking credits away from your most important session therefore taking away from the overall quality or you end up using too many credits and that will likely eventually lead to injury, illness etc from overload in training!
All that being said the slower pace for Wednesday’s run is more down to the fact that I had to drive down to Clare from Dublin and back in less than 24 hours and by the time I got back to Dublin Wednesday evening I had no interest in doing a run but knew I needed to get some sort of a recovery run in. I always am a big advocate of listening to your Body and all my body would allow me to get in was 4 miles @ 7.58 mile pace so I was happy to oblige and stick to that 😊 Managing the balance of training, life, work etc is something we all need to consider and sometimes if life is very hectic you may need an easier week or an easier few days to cater for external stresses and pressures!
Onwards and upwards to this weeks training. Apart from a few of the runs feeling like a grind last week have to say really enjoying my running at the moment. Its good to be progressing and improving obviously but its also really important to make sure your enjoying your running 😊
Have a great week folks 😊
Cheers,
Noel
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