Reflecting on the Week - 1st March

Distance: 63.6 km
Time: 9.06
Elevation: 461 m
Fastest pace: 3:14/km
Max HR: 182 bpm

This week felt like proper training. The big one was the 30 km session on Saturday, that went 10 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 - each split getting faster. You do not blag 135 miles in a desert. You build it, one session at a time.

I’ve written about this session in the past, it’s a great one - I highly recommend it. Adjust the splits and distance, but take the essence. First up, it’s daunting - you get a healthy dose of apprehension, you know the first bit will be easy, but until you hit that penultimate split you don’t really know how things are going to pan out. For me, to have a 5km final interval at 4:15min/km is a “manageable” but not easy prospect. And each interval is 5km, that’s plenty of time to think about things. So you get a good bit of mental fortitude building up. I love it.

The Dads’ Dawn Dawdle was a nice contrast. Easy pace, early doors, a few of us bumbling around the lanes having a chat, a good way to tick off an easy run give the mind a bit of space.

I also squeezed in an evening weights session and a pilates class. The strength work bit back with some solid DOMS that rolled into Saturday’s run. Not disastrous, but a useful reminder that the order of sessions matters when the training load creeps up. That is the theme for this block really: get the work done, but get it done in a way I can repeat next week, and the week after that, without the wheels coming off

A good solid week. Happy with that.