Chasing Dreams, Project 2:20 - Week 6 of 12

M Easy 90 mins (7:30mm), Recovery 30 mins (8:06mm)
T Easy 90 mins (7:39mm), Recovery 30 mins inc 5X30s accelerations (7:34mm)
W 105 mins inc. 5X2miles (0.75M Easy), Recovery 35 mins (7:53mm)
T Easy 30 mins inc 5X20s strides (7:31mm), Easy 95 mins (7:12mm)
F Easy 90 mins (7:36mm)
S 145 mins inc. 10M Moderate, 10M Easy Tempo (5:55mm)
S Easy 100 mins (7:36mm), Easy 35 mins (6:57mm)

Total 125.4 miles (7:05mm)
Aerobic Efficiency 1001 beats per mile
Weight 142.83 lbs
Body Fat 11.37% (16.25lbs)
Lean Body Mass 88.63% (126.4lbs)

Fitness 83.4 Vs 79.7
Fatigue 100.6 Vs 92.3
Form -18.7 Vs -4.4 (Optimal)

Shagged. Absolutely shagged. Not sure if it is the relentless wind or the lashing rain that has contributed to my tiredness or just 'mid-marathon training syndrome' this week but it's been a struggle to get out there some days. With the alarm going off and hearing the window straining under a shower of rain bullets it would have been so much easier to say 'forget it, I'm too old for this shit'. But something stirs, something ignites me as the alarm goes. I count down from five and then jump out of bed. Just a few more weeks, you've come so far, keep going, this one is going to be it! I knew I was due a week where tiredness would be all consuming and the doubts would creep in. Can I pull this off? Why does it matter? It doesn't. It's not important at all but it kind of is. To me. I still want to be able to look back and see what I achieved. Whatever I end up running on the 28th April it will be the culmination of all these weeks training and frustrating months injured prior. I know things are going well, really well. If anyone would have told me I'd be anywhere close the fitness I'm in right now, three months ago I would have bitten their hand off like a ravenous piranha. So I have taken it on the chin this week, this is what marathon training is all about, learning to endure. I will gain so much from the week just banked, that when the going gets tough on the Embankment I am well equipped to throw some punches of my own.

Last week's Spen 20 must have taken something out of me, not least because as I write this I am only just getting full feeling back into my forearms! It was so cold! Did I mention that last week?!?!

Anyway, the plan was to get back into the miles with a couple of sessions. The wind was even more repugnant on Wednesday so I opted for my session of 5X2miles on the treadmill at 1% gradient. I'd much rather stare at the back of my garage door for an hour and forty five minutes than be battered left to right like George Foreman was in the Rumble in the Jungle. The session went well with me gradually picking up the pace throughout. The last one was by far the hardest however and I was almost certainly above threshold at this point. They averaged 5:26.5 per mile pace. Of course running on the TM is not the same as outdoors but with a calibrated footpod and with the TM set at 1% to mimic the effect of air resistance it probably wasn't too far off being 'true'.

I'd been in touch with Mike to tell him how my session went and he mentioned that one of his other runners did a 20 mile run with 10 moderate, and 10 easy tempo. I had been dabbling with the thought of doing something similar at the weekend so thought I'd give it a go with some easy miles before and after. Again the weather was hideous, but at least the wind had died down to a 'slovenly' 15 mph. I went through the first 10 miles in 60:46 and the second 10 in 57:31, so I averaged 6:05 and 5:45s for the splits. The first half felt pretty boring if truth be told and I kept wanting to up the pace but knew it would get tough later on. I wasn't wrong although it wasn't really until the last three miles that I started to grow some weighty legs. So most of it felt fine, but doing these runs fasted it was inevitable that after c1hr 40 of running fairly hard my body would start to wonder when it was going to get some energy. If you click on the link above you will see that my HR rose gradually from 14 miles onwards, reaching just below marathon HR in the last mile. I suspect this was due to me running low on my glycogen stores. I had a gel in my pocket 'just in case' but I was keen to do it on empty as I know the training stimulus is so magnified when you can. I had taken a couple of gels at Spen last week to make sure I could still stomach them so I really didnt need to on this run.

I picked up an interesting book this week called Run with Power by Jim Vance. As most folks will now power is everything in cycling from a training and racing perspective and running is gradually catching on to the trend. I'm only half way into the book but so far it has helped me understand that there may be other improvements I can make for optimal training. In fact on Sunday, I tried a couple of different strategies for my runs. Running at much higher cadence than I usually do. My cadence at marathon pace tends to be around 165-167 steps per minute and for easy runs it is in the region of 160. This is very low. In upping my cadence I hope it will help with my efficiency. It certainly felt odd to be taking such shorter strides on these runs and I certainly had to concentrate as it felt rather unnatural. The aim with power meter training is obviously to try and get more speed per watt! The power in Watts generated from my Garmin 645 and HRM-Run strap is a fairly arbitrary figure but as anyone that reads my blog will know, I like to see trends in my training so will start to look at this in a bit closer detail. It may even give me more metrics to obsess over!

So a good week, in fact no a great week. I actually feel more rested now having done 125 miles than I did for most of the week. It may also have something to do with some more runner-friendly weather being forecast this week.

Fitness is increasing and Form is moving back into the optimal zone. Aerobic efficiency is down but as I said, I think this is largely due to the tiredness I have experienced. Also, the fact that runs outside have mainly been in terrible conditions and those on the TM, even recovery runs with 1% incline seem to be coming in slightly less efficient than they would outside.