Week Seven Of Training

Week seven of training saw my first week breaching thirty miles in one week, with a Long Slow Run that was considerably longer than I had planned.  It also saw much too much in the way of recovery runs and "junk miles" and too little threshold training.

First run was Tuesday, when I ran some recovery miles after the Alloa Half Marathon.  That was a fairly unexciting recovery run round Dalgety Bay, with a short detour off the road and onto the coastal path.

That should have been followed up by a threshold session on Thursday, but I realised that I hadn't brought my towel with me.  Running is fine and well, but spending the afternoon in an office without having washed properly is hardly the way to win friends and influence colleagues.

So I went out on Friday instead.  This was a simple run out to Aberdour and back - no threshold work - but with the wind in my face on the way, the first few miles were hard work.

Saturday dawned bright and early, and I went to the Falkirk Parkrun.  I had previously said that I was going to avoid Parkrun for the remainder of my training, but it's very easy to go to and lots of fun.  However, the problem was that I said I was going to have a leisurely run... but when there are all those others around it's hard to stick to a gentle pace.  I ended up doing the 5km in 23:56 - a good minute and a quarter slower than last time, but still better than my previous PB.  Maybe that counts as gentle.

What was nice about that was getting to run in short shorts - it's lovely when the weather is good enough for that - but the problem was that they keep getting caught between my legs, and I end up having to pull loads of fabric out from between my legs while running.  Elegant, it ain't!

And so then came Sunday.  I was planning a sixteen mile run, but by the time I took the wrong exit from the canal and tried to find my way home, it ended up as being almost seventeen and a half miles.  To my surprise, I feel okay this evening, but it started to give me a feeling for what the real deal is going to be like...

Plans for the Long Slow Run in the coming few weeks are:

01-Apr	10 miles
08-Apr	13 miles (maybe Heaven And Hell half marathon)
15-Apr	16 miles
22-Apr	13 miles
29-Apr	17 miles
06-May	20 miles

and then we're into the taper... which is actually quite frightening...

19 - 25-Mar 2012

Number of runs	Four
Links	- Tuesday - 4.87 miles (644 cal) - Friday - 5.20 miles (628 cal) - Saturday - 3.08 miles (360 cal) - Sunday - 17.44 miles (2054 cal)
Total mileage this week	30.59 miles
Calories burned this week	3,686
Total mileage since start	204.19 miles
Calories burned since start	22,218