Just an easy 30 minutes on the plan today before the XC tomorrow.
I was also off work today, so headed to the gym first to do some light weights with more of a core / arm focus. Unfortunately, it ended up being surprisingly tiring and so the easy run did feel harder than I would have liked. I told myself to just step back off the pace a little and focus on enjoying the surroundings. As I started at the gym, 30 minutes gave me enough time to do a lap around Pittville Park, which was just stunning in the frosty wintery landscape.
Tonight’s session was a ‘Running Jo Fartlek’ which is 6 x (2m 30s on, 2m 30s float).
I’ve done this before and (no offence Jo, as I know it’s a favourite of yours), find it tough. I’m trying to establish a new, athlete-led (ie. not coached) session for the Cheltenham Harriers on a Thursday evening.
I think a lot of the runners would benefit from a second session, but also selfishly, to give me more people to train with as solo reps are just not the one. So far (we’re only two weeks in…) this has been going well and there has been a small group of us turn up each week. Unfortunately, it does take far more time as I would previously warm up from the front door whereas now we meet at the track, which is too far for me to run.
The weather has been so cold, so I just couldn’t face getting all my cycling gear on to freeze to death on the way over, lock my bike up, sort kit etc etc… As the session was a little nearer home, I decided to jog over, so did a longer warm up than I would usually do.
The session itself went ok. Ok, but not great. I don’t know if it was GPS error, or the cold, or the longer warm up, or general fatigue, or me just not trying hard enough, but I couldn’t hit the target times Jo had set for me (~3:35/km for the efforts, 4:15/km for the floats). I felt like I was running hard enough (RPE 6-7 for the efforts, RPE 5 for the floats) but I’d look down at my watch and it would say 3:55-4:00/km. Maybe today just was not my day.
Regardless, it’s another session ticked off and some more hard running banked.
It’s very easy to think ‘oh, that wasn’t a perfect session so it’s worthless’ when you’ve got out, banked some miles and ‘ran hard for a bit’. And I do believe that no one session makes a difference. It’s getting out there, day after day, session after session, which is what makes the difference.
Since I told my Coach that I had entered London, the main thing that seems to have changed in my training is my Wednesday run. This has increased from 45 minutes to 60 minutes, and I’m sure will increase further as we head towards the sharp end of things.
Unlike some people, I cannot ‘see’ what’s coming. I use Training Peaks for my training, but Jo only makes the next 3-4 weeks visible for me. Whether she does this for everyone, I don’t know. But for me, it works.
I don’t really like knowing training sessions in advance. It freaks me out. I’m used to it now I’ve run with the Harriers for three years, but at Southampton AC, we would never know what was in store. We’d turn up on a Tuesday evening and find out. It suited me and so does this.
On the plan today was a 60 minute easy run. Usually, I’d want to do this before work. It gets it done. And by this, I don’t mean it gets it out of the way. I mean I have prioritised it before the daily stresses or worries of work take over and any lunchtime runs I might be planning fall by the wayside. However, it’s really dark and freezing cold at the moment, so I did do this at lunchtime to get some sunlight and fresh air.
I got out 20 minutes later than planned as I was putting off going out into the cold, but I did really enjoyed it once I got out the door. My legs felt tired at home after last night’s session. I wasn’t doing so well on Rob and my self-defined ‘fatigue test’. This measures your fatigue based on how ‘spritely’ you can get up the stairs. As we have a loft conversion and so have two steep-ish stair cases to tackle, it’s not unknown to be crawling by the time you get to the top.
My legs felt tired on the fatigue test (to be expected), but fine on the run. In fact, pretty fresh. I am really struggling to slow down my easy runs though. They feel easy, but I think they are too fast, averaging around 4:30-4:40/km. I think they need to be more like 4:45-5:00/km. Maybe I’ll slow down naturally as the miles build. Maybe I’ll have to constantly consiously slow myself down.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Given Monday’s are now strictly for rest, I headed to the gym this evening.
Hmm. Not my best.
To be honest, I flapped around a bit. I didn’t really know what to do, and I’m not great at the gym at the best of times, though I know it’s important. I’d seen a video from Eilish McColgan earlier in the week with some good exercises for runners, so I worked through them and did some leg press as prescribed by the Physio. The exercises consisted mostly of cable work, which actually was really good and it felt quite hard. But it wasn’t my best, or most focused session, and all things considered, probably wasn’t a particularly effective use of my time.
It’s the first Tuesday of the New Year which means, drum roll please, Cheltenham Harriers’ Track Tuesday is back!
It was freezing!*
*Though not quite cold enough to freeze my car shut with my bike in it, which happened last week as we headed out to training, and which was the reason for yesterday’s bike-shed-measuring-exercise.
So it was pretty tough to leave the relative warmth of the house and cycle off into the dark.
But it was lovely to see everyone again. Jo was there, in her four coats and Michelin-man puffy trousers, telling us shivering runners how she was ‘too hot’. Lucky her.
The session was a good one, a sort of k-reps / 200m-reps sandwich.
3 x 1 km [90 seconds] @ 5-10k pace 2 x (5 x 200 m [60 seconds] @ 3-5k pace 3 x 1 km [90 seconds] @ 5-10k pace With [3 minutes] between sets
The track, especially on the 200m bend, was icy-as-hell, though.
I got myself in a great group for the first kilometre reps, working with Harrison, Stew and a new guy, Dom, who had just moved to Cheltenham a few weeks ago.
We knocked them out, clocking 3:33, 3:30, 3:30. The 200s were faster (37-38s) and then we finished with another consistent set of kms in 3:29, 3:30, 3:31.
Unfortunately, Stew and Harrison mis-read the session, and only did one set of 200s, but Dom kindly stuck with me and did the second set. We worked well together, me leading, him pushing me on, with him giving me a stop-start background to his move to Cheltenham during the recoveries.
I really, really enjoyed this session, despite the cold. So Day 2 of marathon training was a good one too, it turns out.
Fortunately for me, Monday is my rest day so actually, Day 1 also turned out to be pretty straightforward. I don’t know what everyone is complaining about, this marathon ‘thing’ is easy!
Usually on a Monday, mainly because I have some extra time (which I now realise is because it’s a rest day), I go to the gym. However, yesterday’s non-official-marathon-training-but-feels-quite-like-marathon-training-long-run had been a 26 km Mixed Pace Long Run:
1 km Warm Up
4 x (3 km Steady (4:40-5:00/km) 2 km @ Marathon Pace (4:00-4:10/km) 1 km @ Threshold Pace (3:45/km))
1 km Cool Down
So my legs were pretty battered and needed a proper rest. I have also decided that, as rest is really important, during marathon training a rest day is a rest day is a rest day.
I’m actually pretty bad at rest days. Rather than revelling in a night lying on the sofa, catching up on the Traitors, I get fidgety and go to the gym (which includes 20-30 mins of cycling there and back), or go for a long walk or something equally ‘unrestful’.
Rob often says that rather than having a daily step goal, we should have a daily step maximum, we do so much.
But today, rest I did.
Instead of running, Rob and I had a ‘fun’-filled evening consisting of ‘renewing the mortgage’. Tell me more, I hear you shout. If that doesn’t sound fun enough, we then froze our butts off measuring our drive in the dark so we could order an Asguard Bike Shed before their 10% off New Year Sale offer ended tomorrow. Cue a lot of associated panic about whether our bikes would fit (me) and which side the hinges should be on (also me). I know, we really know how to party on a rest day.
In my head, Marathon Training officially begins today.
Why? Maybe because we’re now in the right year, 2025. Maybe because there’s lots of ‘Training for a Spring Marathon?’ content popping up all over my Instagram.
I shared this with Jo on Training Peaks and was promptly informed marathon training officially starts on Monday (6 January), 16 weeks out.
In which case, I’ll put my feet up for a few days…*
*My partner, Rob has just read this for the first time, laughed and shouted , “Put your feet up? That’s not true!” I wrote this in a sarcastic tone, but apparently that didn’t come across on the page. So in case you weren’t sure, this was completely sarcastic. I have a double pyramid session tomorrow and a 26km Mixed Pace Long Run to do on Sunday, despite ‘not’ yet Marathon Training…
