Another week comes to an end and so to does a week of training. It may be over half way through the year, but it’s not too late in the year for me to start a new weekly blog series (I hope)! This week was the first week of my Summer Speed Training, where I’m introducing a couple of sessions every week to try and encourage my average pace to increase a little bit. I did a brief video on YouTube taking you through a few things I was planning for this training cycle, as well as a little behind why I’m adding in certain elements. However, in this blog it’s all about exactly what I did this week, a sort of personal training diary that might help you in your training.
MONDAY: The first day back to training and I chose to take on a speed workout. Initially I was going to run this outside on a little 2km circuit round my block, but for some reason I didn’t have the energy to go outside in the morning. So I pushed the session back and did it on the treadmill instead, choosing a similar workout on Zwift instead of following my watches commands. The workout was 30 minutes long, including 2 sets of 3 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute at a fast pace. Once the fast intervals I set my treadmill to the highest quick setting it has and then added a few extra increases. I needed to stop for a little breather on the second 3 minute interval but apart from that I think I did pretty well. I find that Zwift workouts have quite long and slow warmups so average pace feels a little low at 5:33min/km, but each interval was a little above 4:30min/km (except the one I had a breather on!). Overall a good start to speed training.
TUESDAY: A gentle long run is what I’m scheduling on a Tuesday, however, this week I left it out to ensure I wasn’t doing too much too quickly. So instead I spent the day on the sofa reading books instead!
WEDNESDAY: I did a gentle 7km on this day, running my local little circuit early in the morning. This was simply to get more miles in the legs so whilst I want to aim for <5:40min/km I’m not hung up on making sure it’s definitely below that pace. On this particular day I ran the 7km in just under 41minutes, an average pace of 5:50min/km.
THURSDAY: REST DAY! Not much to say about my activity, only that I took myself out for a little 30 minute work in the evening.
FRIDAY: The first day of the Garmin down debacle, so I don’t really have the full exact run down for you. I did hill reps today, switching out the session that I hadn’t transferred to my watch, as it was easier to do manually without constantly looking at a watch. For the hill reps I did a gentle run over to a little hill, it’s a 400m climb at about a 6% grade and ran and down this 3 times. I was aiming for four but on the 3rd climb I was 20 seconds slower than my first attempt so figured it was about time to head home before my legs were done. Once finished I ran back home, needed to run back up the same hill (just a different road) on the route. The average pace was 6:27min/km which includes all the hill reps and all the rest I did at the top and bottom of the hill. I can only wait for the moving time to finally be available to know how much my effort was actually turned into pace.
SATURDAY: Park run day, HAHA, or not! Instead a 5km run around the outside of the park. I had wanted to go into the park but the overnight rain had made the grass fields little bit waterlogged. The run outside isn’t quite 5km as I swear it used to be (has that happened to anyone else, where your route is now showing up as shorter as it once was?), but I finished it up by running 4 100m sprints, my version of strides. I take a little rest between each sprint before going again, on the run each stride was about 22 seconds, which I think will only get better as I get used to them.
SUNDAY: Instead of taking a complete rest day I took to the treadmill and did a 50 minute walk over on the new Paris Zwift course for runners. I definitely didn’t need to do this, but I felt like I didn’t want to miss out on the last chance (at the moment) to explore the course a little. I spent the last kilometre trying to get a good screen shot of the course, but it didn’t really work out!
Overall: I really enjoyed this first week back into training. I think that I could have gone a little harder in my two hard workouts of the week, and that’s something I want to work on. My endurance when it comes to being in a higher heart rate zone isn’t very high, which leads me to kind of give up during higher intensities. Once I’ve overcome this I’m definitely going to believe I can try pushing myself. Next week the intensity gets a little higher, with another run, more evening walks, and some strength and conditioning. I am ready, I just need to hope Garmin is!
If you want to be updated a bit more regularly about my progress be sure to follow me on Instagram and Strava, as I post pretty much every time I run over on there. I’ve also recently started up a YouTube channel to try and help other runners learn a little more about the activity.
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