Quite possibly the hardest workout I've ever done

Ok, so the title is overstating it, it wasn't that bad, but it was a toughie.  First, apologies, I've been neglecting the blog lately, a lot is going on in life and I will divulge more at a later date, but for now, I'll update on my running.

Last week was a relatively low mileage week, then this week ramped up again.  I did 29 total, and have been adding in more and more resistance work, which is paying dividends in my running and my body shape :)

Tuesday was my 30 min easy run- I didn't bother with the cadence drills this time, mainly because it was so cold I didn't want the walking breaks between them.  Then when I got home I did resistance work that encorporated the strength programme in P&D as well as kettlebels.  I think I overdid it a bit on the kettlebels as my hamstrings were still sore on Thursday.  Suffice to say I didn't run on Wednesday.  Thursday, it was very cold again, so I retreated to the gym for a 50 minute hill session on the treadmill followed again by resistance work.  This was awesome, I had #willpower, will I am's album blasting in my ears, and was really pumped after.

Friday, I did the session I should have done on Wednesday, which was 60 minutes with 3 miles at marathon pace.  I felt really strong during the marathon pace section.  Really glad that I'm already encorporating race pace into longer runs.

Saturday, I had my gym instructor assessment and I passed with distinction for the preparation and merit for the practical :)

Today I did another workout form Jeff Galloway's book, which involved 2 mile repeats.  Galloway had a very complicated explanation of how he wants you to do this, but I simplified it to 2 miles at 8:10 pace , followed by 7 minutes rest.  The programme sets 2 or 3 repeats at this stage,  but feeling overconfident from passing my exams, I decided I would go for 5 repeats.  This would get me closer to the high mileage I was aiming for this week.

Reps were as follows:

Rep 1: 8:04 avg pace

Rep 2: 8:05 avg pace

Rep 3: 8:08 avg pace

Rep 4: 8:15 avg pace- this one felt like the first mile was all uphill and my leg muscles started to tighten considerably during this rep- ie fatigue.  I knew it wouldn't be sensible to push it any more, as I didn't want to get an injury, just for the sake of another rep.  My body was teaching me that lesson about not building up too quickly

Rep 5 ended up a jog walk at 10:15.  Still, I did 8 miles at faster than marathon pace, when all my training lately has been marathon pace or slower.  12.92 miles in 2:11:28, not bad given the 7 minute walking breaks!

Trumpeting elephants?

So, elephants are my favourite animal.  I even have a. Cuddly elephant with a lavender pillow belly that I can warm up to keep me warm in winter, so when I was planning my route for today's 15 mile run, and I read the route instructions about it passing close enough to Colchester zoo that you could hear elephants trumpeting, I was sold.

First I had to get to the starting point of the route though.  The route is here: http://www.essexwalks.com/walks/layerdelahaye.html#page=page-1

I figured it was about 3.5 -4miles from home giving me a perfect 14 -15 mile run.  When I got to Gosbecks road and saw this sign,

I assumed the starting point car park would be really obvious and on Gosbecks road.  I got my map out to try to figure it out an just couldn't see a car park, nor could I see it on my iPhone maps.  After much looking and trying to figure this out, a man came out of his house on the other side of the road and asked if he could help!  How kind!  I showed him the map, and he pointed me back to the main road.  I was only about 500m short of the car park.  He said that it was a lovely route especially this time of year with the autumn leaves.

I'd never been here before, but for a brief history lesson, Colchester is Britain's oldest recorded town and was a key settlement for the Romans.  As such there are many roman ruins in the town, and Gosbecks is an archeological site where a rather impressive fort, and amphitheatre were excavated.

I started on the run and took some pics.  Loving the crisp and brightness of the day:

In the next picture you can make out the tops of the buildings of Colchester Zoo.  I didn't hear the animals on my way out, but on the way back I certainly heard some exotic sounding birds:

I put the camera away and got on with following the route.  I passed a couple walking, sensibly in wellies and they told me it was really sloppy where I was about to go.  Having just passed through a muddy patch I thought it must be the same and nothing I couldn't deal with.  I was wrong though, this was the kind of mud that let's you sink in further than ankle deep and then tried to steal your shoes:

Had quite a few muddy patches to go though, and the route instructions were clear.  I gave in to the fact that those purple trainers I've had my eye on will now need to be bougt for my spring marathons and these relegated to just my winter training shoes.  I've probably already done 100 miles in them, and I tend to need to replace them at 300 miles anyway, so not too fussed.  At least they started off grey, so once cleaned, the brown they will become won't be too noticeable.

The route instructions were so good, they even described a path to the ruined st Mary's church, which is on private land, but obviously quite interesting.

From the Essex walks website: "The church itself is of Norman origins, with much of the north wall built during the 14th century. The upper part of the tower is Tudor. The church fell into disuse in 1598, and by 1768 was a ruin."

The next part of the run went to the Roman river and though the Roman River nature reserve.  Here I did indeed see some nature, I thought I glimpsed a weasel, then several pheasants, a heron, and of course a squirrel.  Nowhere near as tame as the ones in castle park though.

On the next part of the run, I got a bit lost.  I think the trees down from last weeks storm meant that obvious paths weren't so obvious, but I found my way back to the route, and ran past the pub they recommend as a refreshment stop:

Back through the reserve and back to Gosbecks park.  The sites of the amphitheatre and fort are marked out in the grass and there are signs up too:

Back to the car park and along the roads home.

This was a lovely run!  The parts in the woods and nature reserve were really muddy and so I had to walk quite a lot of it.  I managed to complete the 15 miles in 3 hours, taking on water and 2 SiS Go gels, one of which with caffeine.

29 miles run this week- it feels like I'm in marathon training :)

Becoming a fair weather runner

Lately, I’ve not been myself.  The stresses of life are getting a bit too much for me at the moment and the usual relief I get from running isn’t there as for some reason, I’ve recently become a fair weather runner.  After a fairly sleepless night, when the alarm went off this morning at 6am for a run, I turned it off and rolled over.

I’ve been thinking about this all day.  My goal of 1000 miles in 2013 is important as it means I can say yes to doing what I love, running, and say no to all those other things you feel you have to do out of obligation but have no interest in so doing.  So why the bail?  209 miles left to go and I want to make it a really tough challenge?

Who knows?  I have been getting gym envy recently.  I gave up my gym membership a year ago to help toward wedding saving.  When I spent the weekend in that lovely health club, it made me think about how I would like to be in that environment again, with the option to go for a swim, sauna or steam room for some relaxation.  What I really like about the gym is the ‘health club’ facilities, which is why I liked ROKO so much.  Unfortunately, the current nature of my working life means I only want to join a gym that has one near work and one near my home, which gives me a choice of LA Fitness or Fitness First.  How I would love to have a Virgin Active near my home.  I used to be a member of one a long time ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed the club- attending almost every day.

I’m curious about some of the classes.  I previously had thought they were for people who didn’t have any particular goals other than staying fit and healthy, and that they couldn’t be beneficial to my running programme, however, some extra muscular strength and endurance is surely only going to be beneficial for running a marathon.  Mo Farah’s recent string of success he attributes to being much stronger, so I’m going to try out Bodypump and see if it suits me.

Do I become one of those runners though?  I know that so much of what I get from running is about being outside in nature.  The sunrises, sunsets, rainbows, squirrels, changing leaves, rivers, other runners enjoying the country side.  Can I get the same from running on the spot on a machine that despite making it easier by having a moving belt beneath your feet actually feels much much harder because you don’t have the air rushing by you to cool you down??  I’m starting to think that the incentive of a swim/sauna/steam room after a run on the treadmill might be a much nicer experience than my mid-week runs in London after work have been.  Will the treadmill provide as many benefits in terms of fitness gains as the outdoors would though?

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.