Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Madrid Marathon Week 5/18

The good news is that I seem to be getting fitter - my resting pulse continues to come back down and my % fat has leveled off and will hopefully follow. After last week's debacle, I ran very conservatively on Monday and my speed session on Tuesday went according to plan (5 x 1,000m @ 3:25 - 3:30 /km). But I fell back into my old habits on Friday and Saturday, running at a pace oof 4:15 - anything slower just feels inefficient and boring.

I don't know whether it was as a result of this or something else, but my supposed long run on Sunday was a complete disaster. I think that I didn't eat properly the day before because it started off OK, but I felt drained after just 8 kilometres!! It was also an unusually hot day (20 degrees in January!) and I was a bit down in the mouth as my wife was going to Mali - not the safest place in the world right now - and my upper back and neck had locked up on me. My back usually gets better with running, but I cannot deny that my back problems are linked to increases in training volume. This time it locked up on me suddenly and surprisingly, during me run on Friday, as I turned to spit. Maybe it was a punishment for unhygienic behaviour.

I reminded myself that this training period and Marathon were a kind of "dry run" for the Chicago Marathon and that it was important to learn from the mistake and move on. As the plan I am following has a "long run" (referring more to the pace at which it should be run than the distance) every other week, I decided to do a switcheroo and run it instead the following Sunday. It might make more sense as I did jump straight into week 4 of the plan without much of a warm-up.

Monday: 10 km @ 4:51
Tuesday: (speed) 5 x 1,000m w/ 500m recovery @ 3:23, 3;29, 3:24, 3:26(?), 3:28
Wednesday: -
Thursday: (tempo) 10 km @ 3:54
Friday: 11.3 km @ 4:16
Saturday: 10 km @ 4:14
Sunday: supposed to be 20 km @ 4:17, instead was 10.5 km @ 4:27
Total kilometres: 63.4

VO2 Max (Garmin): 62 ml/kg/min
Resting pulse (average): 39 ppm
Fat (average): 7.6%

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