On Target

This weeks entry comes from the lovely city of Seattle.

Important for me to note that fact this year, so I can review it next year.

The weather was kind this week, and a got a good solid week of training in. 

After the previous Sundays run, Monday was 6 miles easy effort on a hilly loop. Tuesday I had a slightly later start to work, so I made it tempo Tuesday. I did one mile warmup, and planned to do 7 miles at 6:50. This turned out to be a bit easy so I pushed on for 8 miles, at an average 6:44, with one mile cool down. I was very pleased with this session. It was the first time I had pushed a bit over a solid distance. 

The medium term target is the Bohermeen half marathon on March 13th. While I don't anticipate a 1:25 as per last year, if I can hit somewhere around 1:28 I would be satisfied with that. Note 'satisfied', not pleased or happy. I am coming from a pretty slow base at the moment, although I am hoping that the body will remember that it used to be able to put in a decent effort over that distance, and respond accordingly!

Wednesday was a slow (7:45) six miles over the holy loop again, and Thursday I did my speed session of sorts. Again this was two miles warmup, with 3x1 mile repeats, 6:10 pace, with 90 seconds recovery. Two miles to cool down on the way home. I really need to start adding in mile 4 and 5 to the repeats, ideally to reach 3x2 over the next 4 weeks, but again, pleased with the session.

On Friday I went out for Nine mile recovery, but the legs were a bit slow from Thursdays session. What doesn't help is that on Thursday, due to family time, my run is always after 8pm, and Fridays run was at 12pm, so the recovery time is only 15 hours. Personally, I find I suffer a bit if I don't get a 24 hour recovery. As a result, this only ended in 8 miles.

I had to do my long run Saturday as I was travelling on Sunday. 14 miles at 7:55 average. Again, as I build up the distance on the long runs, I will need to start putting a little more effort into the pace also. However, this is the first time in a very long time, that I have run seven days straight. The mileage for the week was 50, which was bang on target, but over the seven days was 63.

I am encouraged by the weeks running. As I write this, it is 5am, and I am about to hit the hotel gym treadmill. Previously, I might have just written off the day. 

I also looked back at the mileage for this time last year when training for London, and the miles were actually less on the plan for the week.

Here's hoping I can build on this good week going forward.