I need to change my training schedule

I'm already finding the transition back to GMT quite tough.  Last year, I perfected my training schedule so that it was very difficult to 'cry off' running because I didn't feel like it, whilst still being able to have a life.
It looks roughly like this:
Monday: X train and strength
Tuesday: Easy RR in the morning
Wednesday: Longer run or speedwork in London after work
Thursday: Easy RR in the evening after taking the train home
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Race pace
Sunday: Long Slow Run

I think it worked as I started the schedule at the start of December, well into the transition.  My rationale for scheduling it this was was that if I was going to miss a run, it was likely to be an easy run on a Thursday night.  At the moment, my Thursday runs are starting to get quite long at 55 minutes.

Right now, I'm contemplating the 55min run that's on my schedule for this evening, thinking it isn't going to happen.  Still at work, looking at the tall buildings of the city against a pitch black sky, that will only get darker (is that possible) by the time I'm home in about 2 hours.
At the moment, I don't have planned running on Saturdays, though I was planning on fitting in a parkrun when I can.  Perhaps I should accept that Thursday night runs aren't going to happen for a while, and jig my schedule around.

Or perhaps I should just get over it and get out there and run?

An update on week 4, and the plan for week 5

I didn't get 100% on week 4, but I was pretty close.

The long run on Thursday was perfect.  I set out in the morning in leggings, a t shirt and sunglasses and did the same route I had done at the weekend, so I only did 12 rather than 13 miles.  This time I consciously kept it slow and steady until halfway.  At halfway I sat on the same bench I had lamented on on Sunday. Well it wasn't the same bench, the same bench was covered in dew, so I sat on the one opposite it that was undercover, and I took an SiS Go energy gel.  I didn't hang around too long before I got going again, just long enough to take the gel and put the wrapper in the bin.  Then I started on my merry way back.  I had got to 6 miles in just over an hour, so hopefully should be able to get back in the same time.  By mile 8, I was really running well- when I looked down at my garmin I was doing 9min mile, so I decided to push it to marathon pace to see how I coped with it within a long run.  Although this route is flat, it is on a trail most of the way, so although I hit the pace, I wonder whether I would have found it easier on road.  When I did a 2 mile marathon pace section the day before it did sit faster than I needed it to be, although not by a lot.

I'd put the long run on Thursday as I had a gym instructor course over the weekend.  Based in a gym but with no time to work out due to the long train journey was a bit off! But in learning all the equipment I suppose I did do a fair few weights over the few days.  I could certainly feel it in my arms and shoulders by the Sunday.  On Sunday I drove, which gave me a little more flexibility on when I could leave.  We finished the course a bit early on the Sunday, so I did a treadmill run and some weights.  Only did 30 minutes but that incorporated some 1 minute hill reps.  So a shorter run than was on the plan, but better than nothing.

Week 5 looks to be a step back week- only 18 miles scheduled:

Monday: strength- I practiced some of my dumbbell exercises

Tuesday: 30 min run CD - easy run cadence drills at 44. 46 and 42 (strange the last one was less, maybe my leg turnover deuces as a I get tired)

Wednesday: 40 mins- some at pace.

Thursday: 50 mins Acg and hills

Friday: rest

Saturday: stretch and core - might do a Parkrun too

Sunday: 6 miles with 5 hills.

I'm writing this on the train into work and have just realised that although I've packed my kit, I forgot my garmin, which makes doing pace work pretty hard.  So I'll either do the 50 min run in London tonight, or come home to do the pace work at home- only problem being it's quite hard to run at pace in the dark, even with a head torch!

Week 4 of marathon training

Thankfully, I have this week off work.  I thought this would mean lots of extra training sessions, a few doubles etc.  the truth is, after my abysmal long run at the weekend, I'm trying to take it as easy as I can, and will only do what's on the plan.  I've jiggled the plan around a bit, as I have other commitments all day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so the adjusted plan looks like this:

Tuesday: 30 mins with Cd. (I also did a core circuit in the evening)

Wednesday: 40 min Acg with pace

Thursday: 13 mile LSR

Friday: rest

Saturday or Sunday: 55 min, Acg 

Given the run malfunction at the weekend, and my intention to do a long run tomorrow, I'm going to do a carbo load today, and hope that will see me through the run, which I will carry a couple of gels on just in case.

As I was conscious of the build up for the marathon, and my laissez fare approach to training over the summer. I've been putting goals into garmin connect.  You can see a week of illness really hundred my progress:

For marathon training, these are all relatively low mileage weeks, so they shouldn't be showing less than 100%.  I'm not going to beat myself up just yet, but when I'm on the 18 week to go plan, I expect a lot more yellow bars.  (The bottom half of this picture shows the last few weeks of my build up for Halstead Marathon).  Many people do multiple 50+ miles training weeks for the marathon, and it looks like I didn't even get 40+ in my last campaign.  I will be doing at least 1 more 20 miler this time, so I think it might be good to set some other goals in the plan/build up, so I don't get bored just slogging out the miles. Perhaps a 50 mile training week.

Anyway, yesterday, I did the 30 minute run with cadence drills.  I still felt a bit slow compared with how I've been running recently,but trying not to dwell on that.  For the cadence drills the first one was 44, then I hit 46, 47, 46, 45- an unintentional pyramid.  I didn't stop to walk between each one like the guide says, though I did walk between 1 or 2 of them.  They also varied between flat, uphill and downhill.  In fact the highest cadence was set on the uphill.  This is good as it shows I was shortening my stride running uphill, which is what you're supposed to do :)

Week 3 - the wall already?

I managed a couple of runs mid week.  30 mins easy on Tuesday with Cadence drills: 3.16 miles average 9:30 pace, then I did 45 mins on Wednesday in London with 2 miles at marathon pace:

Mile 1: 9:12

Mile 2: 8:28

Mile 3: 8:31

Mile 4: 9:57

4.75: 12:12 - bloody traffic lights and road crossings.

Unfortunately, I think pushing to mara pace in the polluted city set me back a bit.  Felt a bit fuzzy headed and phlegmy on Thursday morning.  So I decided to take some extra rest from running- no run Thursday or Friday.  My HR did get pretty high in the Marathon pace section, however, it did feel much easier to do than the last time I did that run.  I also managed to sit at a more even pace througout, whereas lasttime I did a lot of setting off too fast, and then slowing down by the end of the mile, only to have to pick up the pace in the second mile to remain on pace.  I think next time I do this workout, I'll set up the average pace mode in my garmin for it.

On Saturday I did park run and decided to run it with my fiancé.  I still wasn't feeling tip top, so didn't want to push it.  Need to develop some patience though.  I found it incredibly challenging to run a hilly 3 miles where the first mile was done in 8:30, my marathon pace, and the last mile was over 11 minutes.  Our time was 31:47, a personal worst for me.

Today I went out for 12 miles, I had spent the morning tracking my friends who were running the Yorkshire Marathon.  An extra special mention to @tinyrunner85 who completed her first ever marathon in 3:32:15.  As an Essex gal, I'm 'well Jel' she achieved a Boston qualifier and London good for age all in one.  I however, went out for a 12 mile easy run and managed to hit the wall at 6 miles in!?!?  I can only explain it in that I didn't eat all that much yesterday and had had a flu vaccination that had made me feel a bit woozy, added to which I had an asthma attack in the night, so didn't get the best sleep.  I almost didn't do my run at all, but was feeling inspired by the York marathon runners.

Really glad I got out for it, but after 6 miles I sat on a bench outside the pub in Wivenhoe and had to fight the urge to go in for a coke.  Then at 8 miles I just wanted to walk, so tweeted.  Got some support from @mia79gbr, which was lovely, but I was already out of fuel and started to think about what the reasons could be. At 9 miles I was almost going to ask David to pick me up, but then I saw a couple out power walking.  They were of the larger variety, and it made me think that they were probably on the start of their journey to health, and if they were out doing it in these conditions, then I shouldn't give up.  That got me to 10 miles, then I switched the garmin off.  I really had nothing.  Then it started raining and I managed to run another half mile, then I really had absolutely nothing.  Walked the rest of the way home, and about 5 minutes after I got in, it started chucking it down!!

Feeling a lot better now I've had a home made beef Wellington adm some yummy red wine, which makes me think it really was a fuelling issue.  Still, 22 miles done this week, so I'm happy.

An update

Well, I'm now in week3 of the long marathon buildup, having unfortunately missed 5 training sessions through illness.  I had a very nasty flu that even pretended to be better to the extent I went out for a run.  The run resulted in a very high heart rate and laboured breathing- only 2 miles at 10 minute miles.

The aftermath of the flu means I still require a lot of sleep so my attempt to wake up before work yesterday to do my 30 minute run failed, and I instead had to fit it in in the evening before my sports massage.  This did mean I tried out my new Saucony kit that was given me by Women's running magazine after I did a race review of the Bacchus half.  It's a half zip bright pink top with an attached led light, and it was amazing! My new favourite piece of kit for sure, and even better that I didn't have to pay for it.  I think it retails at £50, which now I've tried it, I can say that is well worth it.

Missed training sessions:

Week1

Sunday: 5 miles with 3 hills

Week 2

Tuesday: 30 min CD

Wednesday: 45 min Acg/CD 2.5-3 miles at pace

Thursday:45 min Acg/ hills

Sunday: 11 miles LSR

I did put in a 2 mile run on Friday last week which means missed mileage is in the region of 26 miles.  I do want to make this up, mindful of my 1000 miles in 2013 goal, but not all at once.  I think I will add in a few park runs, and then perhaps where I have Sunday runs that are below double digits make these up to 10 miles.

Week3 plan:

Tuesday: 30 min CD - done

Wednesday: 40 min Acg/ cd 2 miles @ pace

Thursday: 45 mins Acg/ hills

Sunday: 6 miles with 4 hills

Hopefully I can modify this by adding a Parkrun on Saturday, and taking Sunday's run upto 10 miles

Marathon withdrawal madness

Well, it's been a few days since I *should* have been running the Bournemouth marathon.  It was supposed to be my first legitimate attempt at a sub-4 hour marathon.  @mia79gbr ran it in my place and got a fabulous time, however, her feet are looking a little worse for wear.  I also have a couple of friends who did marathons last Sunday who's times were far from what they expected.  This reminds me to respect the marathon.

I've been off work for the last 3 days with a horrible cold.  Although I now know this is athlete's flu... A strain far more potent than man flu.  Seriously, I have to be extra cautious.  Last year I had a few of these uRTIs and one was so bad I thought I'd developed pneumonia.  Such is the risk as an asthma sufferer that I'm entitled to a flu vaccination on the NHS, which was scheduled at my surgery for this weekend, but another wedding, so shall have to go to another one next week.  Neither would have been in time though, and it probably better that I have a bit longer to recover from this athlete's flu before getting a vaccination.

Naturally, as I've been ill, I haven't done any running for a week now.  It seems I always tend to get sick after taking a little break from running.  So, in response, I have of course entered a couple more marathons! The Lakeland Trails one around Coniston water in July - a beautiful mini break for my birthday, and hopefully a chance to test out my camping kit (once purchased) ahead of TR24.  And the Bacchus Marathon in Surrey.  Entries opened yesterday, and I entered as soon as I knew.  I had such fun doing the half last year, and this time I will definitely do it in fancy dress.  I was thinking of going as a bunch of grapes, but if anyone has any more original ideas, I would love to hear about them.

So, it would be great to know who is doing the marathons I have planned for 2014:

Manchester - 6th April

London - 13th April

Coniston water - 6th July

Bacchus - 14th September.

Happy running people!

Week 1 of Marathon training: the Wednesday run

This run is diligently written in my training schedule as '40min CD Acg/p'.... Clear as muck isn't it?

Well CD is the cadence drill described yesterday.  Acg stands for acceleration glider drill, which I will describe below.  p denotes that a section of the run is done at marathon pace.  Jeff Galloway, you are lucky I bought  the book! Usually I would see a run as complicated as this in a training plan and decided not to follow the plan as its too complicated.  However, I'm sure I will get used to this,  as the sessions repeat every week.

So, copying from the book:

"On Wednesdays, run 2-4 miles at race pace.  After an easy warm up, run 4 Acgs.  Then run a mile segment at 8:30, and run a second mile with a total time of 17:04, and continue at the same pace per mile for 1-2 miles.

This drill is a very easy and gentle form of speed play.  By doing it regularly, you develop a range of speeds, with the muscle conditioning to move smoothly from one to the next.  The greatest benefit comes as you learn how to 'glide' or coast off your momentum."

Instructions:

"1. Start by jogging very slowly for about 15 steps

2. Then jog faster for about 15 steps - increasing to a regular running pace for you.

3. Now, over the next 15 steps, gradually increase the speed to your current race pace.

4. OK it's time to glide, or coast.  Allow yourself to gradually slow down to a jog using momentum as long as you can.  At first you may only glide for 10-20 steps.  As the months go by you will get up to 30 and beyond... You're gliding!"

He then goes on to describe key concepts that will help this drill, but I'm not going to type them out- perhaps get the book if your interested, however,the overall purpose is to improve your form, as you will be learning to move at your marathon pace whilst using as little energy as possible.

For me, this workout was a bit much after a fairly gruelling few days at work.  As I try to do for marathon training, Wednesday is my 'sorta long' run day, and to allow my adequate time to eat/ stretch and recover as well as going to bed at a reasonable time, I do the run in London straight after work, and get food to eat on the train home, so that my run+dinner time results in my arriving home not much later than if I had got home and gone for a run and then eaten, however, it does allow me a crucial extra hour to 'come down' from my run so that I can get to sleep, and I slept exceptionally well last night, so it must have worked!  

I struggled to get the hang of the acceleration gliders- part of this was because there were so many people on the streets of London that I had to be cautious about maintaining momentum in case I bumped into them.  I managed to do 2 of them working off the end of a cadence drill.  It might be worth swapping Acgs to a day that I don't run in london to save from fear of bumping into people.  However, what I did succeed on was running at pace.  This was tough as I had some tightness in my left leg caused by a knot in my glut, so I wasn't running very smoothly, but paces for the run were like this- mile 1 is always a bit off, as I'm coming from the city down to the river, so the tall buildings always mess with my garmin.  There's no way I was at that pace in my warm up!

Mile 1: 8:17

Mile 2: 8:26

Mile 3: 8:31

Mile 4: 9:54

Mile 4.37: 14:43 (traffic lights take a very long time to change in London!)

All in all, I'm quite happy I managed marathon pace for 2 miles, but I'm exceedingly happy that I have 6 months to work toward maintaining that pace for 26.2 miles in Greater Manchester.  What was good to see is my heart rate was fairly steady at the rate I would expect it to be during a marathon,  so I'm confident that if I execute the training well, I can do this pace.  Just have to believe! :)

What is a cadence drill?

Hello, well, I said my training would be quite technical to get started, but also promised to tell you what the technical aspects were, so that you weren't left in the dark.  This morning was a 30 minute run with a Cadence Drill; a workout taken from Jeff Galloway's book, Boston Marathon: How to Qualify

These steps are copied verbatim from the book:
1. Warm up by walking 5 minutes and running and walking very gently for 10 minutes.
2. Start jogging slowly for 1-2 minutes, and then time yourself for 30 seconds.  During this 30 seconds count the number of times your left foot touches
3. Walk around for a minute or so
4. On the 2nd 30 second drill, increase the count by 1 or 2
5. Repeat this 3-7 more times, each time trying to increase by 1-2 additional counts.

Galloway then goes on to explain how this drill will cause numerous adaptations that make you a more efficient runner, which is perfect for me!  I've built up my speed, as demonstrated in my shorter races, now I need my endurance to get my desired marathon time.  Part of this is increasing fitness, which is a given with any training program followed correctly, but the other, is running more efficiently.  Not wasting energy.

If you are a running book fiend like me, the popular 'Born to Run, by Chris McDougall' wont have escaped your notice.  Whilst it is known for promoting the barefoot running movement, something I was sucked into quickly upon reading, tried it, got injured, and stuck to what I know, which is cushioning!  The other important factor he talks about is running form.  Many studies show that the running cadence of elite athletes is typically around 180bpm.  So if they followed the above drill, they ought to get a count of 45.  I did the drill 5 times, and got the following counts:

42, 45, 45, 47, 48

What I found when trying to increase my cadence is that my stride shortened, and a lot more of the effort came from the area around my pelvis: strong hip flexors.  If we are trying to increase efficiency, surely this makes sense.  It will take a while for me to explain this succinctly, but if we think of levers for a moment, in using my glutes and hip flexors to provide more energy to move my legs, I am applying a force very close to the pivot (my hip), and thus creating a greater outcome at the other end of the lever.  Essentially, the extra effort in the pelvic region is allowing me to increase the number of steps I take.  If I get used to this, imagine what a difference 12 more steps every half a minute in a marathon can make (the difference between my lowest and highest cadence above multiplied by 2 to take account of the steps of my right leg).

Anyways, enough of my babbling.  Galloway recommends doing this drill at least once a week, although I have it in my schedule twice per week.  Best to do it on an east run day, when you're not going to be bothered about stopping to walk in between the drills.

Why not give it a go?  Tell me how it works out for you...