Monday 18 February 2013

Week 5 & 6 Recovery from flu

Wow, its been a little while since I posted.  It has been a crazy few weeks, as I really struggled to get back into the swing of things since my flu.  I've been trying my best to hit all the training sessions, however, since being allowed to drink again in February, a friend  getting engaged, adn Valentines day, I have missed two weeks in a row of my Thursday recovery run.  I did organise my schedule that way, so that if I had to miss 1 run in the week, it would be that one.  However, I've recently read a very interesting article on the importance of recovery runs.  Basically it says that although we do them at a very very easy pace, we are still working out when our body is fatigued, thus increasing what our body can handle in terms of time on feet per week.

We are at the start of week 7 of my plan, so I am doing a bit of a review, not least because my half marathon is in 4 weeks, and I really want that pb.  See below for goals of weekly mileage and percentage hit:

Week       Goal         Percentage
1               24M           100%
2               25M           101%
3               22M           103%
4               28M             11%     This was the week I had flu so took it easy, and didn't train at all
5               30M             90%     Still feeling groggy from flu, but still missed the Thursday run- meeting my friend who just got engaged
6               26M             61%     Valentines day on Thursday and missed the long run (9m) Sunday to attend a leadership in running fitness course

Looking back, whilst I can accept week 4, and partially week 5's missed sessions.  I am not happy with week 6.  I feel I should have organised my week a bit better, though it was meant to be a step back week, and I didn't want to tire myself out too much for this coming week.

This does mean I need to consider some things:  Is this week's step up to 36 miles too much?  Do I try and fit in some of the miles from last week in favour of building up time on feet/miles in legs?

My inclination, given this is already a big step up week is that i just take my chips and stick to the schedule, however, I do want to run tonight rather than tomorrow for my recovery run, as my knees have beeen flaring up from squats and lunges lately.

I also have a concern that my last pace run did not feel good at all, and I think nutrition and maybe the effects of undertraining from the flu week have caused that.  I drank quite a bit of wine on the Thursday (run was Saturday).  I did the run with no breakfast- only 500ml of Sis sports drink, and during the run I only had water with me.  The tank felt empty by mile 3.  I think I stayed up too late on Friday, after a short night on Thursday.

With 4 weeks until the half marathon in which I'm going for a pb, I need to focus on nutrition/recovery and training at the right paces.  All this as well as eating properly.  In January I only ate fresh organic food, whereas I have had quite a few takeaways/grab and go food in the last couple of weeks.

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