20 Weeks to Sub 2:20 - W/C 3rd December 2018

M Rest
T 50 mins inc 3X5mins (3:30) - 6:48mm
W Easy 80 mins (7:24mm), Body Pump (45mins)
T Easy 65 mins (7:57mm)
F Easy 45 mins (7:33mm)
S 100 mins inc 4X18mins (3:00) - (6:11mm)
S Easy 70 mins (8:14mm)

Total 58 miles (7:12mm)
Aerobic efficiency 1094 beats per mile
Weight 148.93lbs
Body Fat 13.96% (20.8lbs)
Lean Body Mass 81.7% (121.6lbs)
Water 60.16% (89.53lbs)

Fitness - 40.1
Fatigue - 62.8
Form - -23.9(Optimal)

Where to start on this journey? Some readers will know that the past couple of years have been, to put it mildly, fairly crap. I'm not going to go into that again now as I've wasted too much mental energy thinking about it. This is about the future. My future in running. And the hope that I am not quite 'done' yet. 

I have been back running consistently about three weeks with weekly mileage of 53, 46 and last week's 58 miles. For anyone that knows me, this is a lot lower than I have done in the past (upto 140mpw at one stage). But crucially it's a starting point and something to build from. I don't think I'll ever get back to the mileage that I did in the past. Firstly, because it was probably the reason why my body broke down and secondly, dare I say it, I think it was too much for me and lead to a bit of mental burnout as well as physical. 

I have recently added the really cool Strava extension, Elevate which allows one to track their fitness and fatigue over time. It does this by doing some cool calculations in the background, based on heart rate reserve. Essentially it woks out a stress score for each run and then plots a pretty chart. The one below is from when I ran Toronto Marathon. You can see through August my fitness (purple line), and fatigue (yellow line) were building which is what one would expect as this is when I was making the biggest gains in fitness, and the training load was greatest. Then from September it seemed to plateau, which meant that I wasn't really getting any fitter, but just maintaining the high level of fitness I had built up. The orange line is 'form' which is essentially fitness minus fatigue. If it's a positive score then it means you are fresh and if it is negative it means you are either in the optimal training zone or overload and run the risk of blowing it. You can see towards the right of the graph, as I tapered down the fatigue line diminished quickly and lost a bit of fitness due to running less but the freshness makes up for that. 

The second chart is where I am now, based on the last three weeks training. I am in a nice spot with regards to my training being in the optimal zone. I will ensure that if it gets close or into the overload zone I will take a rest day. 

So the past few weeks I've been doing a two or three sessions a week. Almost exclusively o nthe Treadmill. I figured it's best to do them on the TM as the impact is less than bashing out reps or hard runs on the Tarmac and if anything feels suspect I can easily just stop and step off the 'mill. Last week I did 3X5mins with 3:30 mins walk recovery. It was nice to be running fast and I ticked the efforts off in 4:51, 4:51, 4:48 pace. Naturally the TM is a little flattering on pace due to lack of wind resistance but they show that I'm not super unfit. Talking of pretty charts, here's the one from this session. I managed to get my HR up to around 200 during the last effort which is essentially my max, so I was definitely working in the right zone!

Saturday, I did more of a marathon type workout which was 4X18 mins (3:00). The first two felt very comfortable so I decided to lift the effort a bit on the third and fourth. The pace for the efforts was 5:49, 5:49, 5:42, 5:38. The last one most certainly did not feel like marathon effort and this is supported by the fact that my HR averaged 185 in this last effort, something that I'm more likely to see in a 10 mile race or half marathon. So what shape am I in at the moment? Aerobically I am probably in about 2:34 marathon shape ( on a Treadmill), albeit there is no way I could run that at the moment, as the legs just don't have the muscular endurance having just got back into regular training. 

My weight isn't too bad and I'm not that fat which is quite nice. I would hope that losing 8-10 lbs over the next four months will be possible and see me at a decent, healthy race weight. Aerobic efficiency is at 1094 beats per mile, which is about 150 off where it needs to be for me to be sure I'm in excellent shape.

So what's the plan? I want to train consistently until February and do a few of the main XC Championships before shifting to building up to London and finally getting that sub 2:20 monkey off my back. I would expect my training to go no higher than 80mpw before next February.