Back to the grind

Monday, 4^th March – 14.5km Easy Run

The legs were a bit DOMSy for this one with the quads in particular being regretful of the faster stuff yesterday! Nothing too bad though and managed to get a good distance run in this evening.

Managed to get a hold of a few pics from the HM yesterday:

Halfway point (Photo courtesy of Peter Mooney)

Tuesday, 5th March – AM: 5.1km EasyRun, PM: 10.7km with 5 x 600m intervals

A long threatening comes at last! I woke at 6:55am and decided to get up and head for a short run. For some reason the GPS failed to record the run but it was pretty non-eventful anyways.

Then in the evening I stopped off in the Phoenix Park on the way home from work to take advantage of the flat Furze Rd. and the bit of daylight now available in order to do a set of intervals. These were my first VO2 intervals of this training cycle so I limited it to 5 reps of 600m. Ran the first two with the jacket on but discarded it in the car for the final three. Things were tough towards the finish of each rep as I think I was going too fast this soon. Finished off with a nice easy 5km loop.

Wednesday, 6th March – Rest Day

This evening was the first rainy day in a fortnight and it was utterly miserable outside. I’d planned to go for a run regardless but I just got lazy on the couch and claimed a rare rest day.

Thursday, 7th March – 17.0km EasyRun with 4 x 600m @ VO2 and 2km @ MP

I felt nicely refreshed this evening for the first few kms. Early on I decided I’d throw in another few 600m intervals to build on the Tuesday session. These took place outside DCU on Collins Avenue but the weather was very drizzly with an Easterly breeze blowing. I also had to negotiate two traffic crossings and several pedestrians so not ideal situation. Regardless, the first three all came in around 3:51/km pace but the fourth resulted in a 4:02 pace. There were mitigating circumstances but by that stage I felt it was enough of the faster stuff and then continued on for another 7km of easy running before a final 2km @ MP (4:34/km) to finish off another good session.

I know most people suggest only one VO2 and LT session each per week but I think I’ll start mixing up the Easy runs with segments of these sessions just to keep the leg strength building all the time and get more quality out of the quantity. I’ll be sure to keep an eye on any niggles or signs of overtraining too though.

I’ve also started adding in a few upper body weights exercises this week as well as some Paula Radcliffe-endorsed, marathon-specific lower body workouts which should all hopefully help with the running. Time will tell.

Week 10 Summary (so far):
RTW:   4 from 4 days
DTW:   47.3km
DTY:    793.0 km