Week 1 of 20 weeks to sub 2:20?

M 9miles (6:37mm), 5 miles (7:08mm)
T Rest
W 10 miles Fartlek 2x1M (3:00), 3X0.5M(2:00), 8X100m. 5:02, 5:00, 2:29, 2:32 2:29 - 6:13mm
T 7.5 miles (6:38mm)
F 8 miles (6:41mm)
S 10 miles including 12X1min hills (2 min jog down) (7:01mm)
S 15 miles (6:33mm)

Total 69.5miles (6:41mm)

So this was the first week of training back and would include my first couple of sessions geared towards getting the legs prepared for some faster running. Mike Baxter's guidance was to ease into the sessions and start to familiarise myself with them rather than going all out.

Tuesday and only my second day of full training back happened to be a rest day as I was travelling to London with work for a conference which then resulted in me being on my feet all day. I then proceeded to have a terrible night sleep having stayed at the Travelodge in Vauxhall with ambient light and noise seeping in through the cracks in the curtains. I also stupidly had not turned off the air-con fan which meant every 20 mins it started up again but it wasn't until morning that I realised that that probably hadn't helped with the sleep either! Anyway that's enough excuses so I awoke and really was not in the best shape to be running hard but having missed a day on Tuesday wanted to give it a go. I was also only a mile or so down the road from Battersea Park which is a beautiful park to run in so thought I'd give it a pop anyway! The session was a structured fartlek session of 2X1mile (3:00 jogs), 3X0.5 mile (2:00 jogs) and then 8X100m sprints. On paper it looked like a fun session to try and if I'd been a bit fresher I would probably have relished it. As it was it turned into a bind pretty early on and I could only muster c5 dead pace for each of the miles and the half miles, when I had been hoping for about 10 secs per mile quicker. This was probably about as quick as I could go without really pushing too hard so suspect they are probably a fairly 'optimistic' current 5k pace indicator. The 'sprints' were good fun but I am probably being kind calling them sprints as they were in the 15-17 second range!

I had then intended to do a hill session on Friday but the legs were still tired and my calves were also pretty tight probably from having done Wednesday's session in flatter shoes and not being quite used to this fast pace. I did also wonder whether there may be some of the marathon still left in the legs so I made the executive decision to move the session to Saturday. This is quite positive as previously I may well have just ploughed through regardless. And again this is down to the sage advice of Mike who has reassured me there is nothing wrong with just pushing the session back a day if you don't feel ready to do it justice. The session on Saturday went pretty well but my word hills were a shock to the system. I was generating a decent level of lactic towards the end of the reps, but then I guess that's what they're for. They were really quite uncomfortable if I'm honest so look forward to doing them again in the future as I teach myself to get in the 'hurt box' a bit more frequently! The pace is irrelevant really as I haven't done them before but it'll be interesting to see how well I run them again in the future.

Then an easy 15 miler this morning which felt OK but I was definitely more conscious of my glutes than I usually am given the hill session yesterday! In the past I've had niggly glutes but today thankfully they were just tired. This hill work should see them get stronger so may help with the 'nigglyness' in time too! This next week will see me lace up the racing shoes at a midweek 10k race and I'm hoping that I should break my 32:05 PB all being well. I would struggle to go into a race scenario without giving it my all so will give it the beans on the day and see what happens!