Evening folks,
Here is my training recap for week 23. This was a great week! Let me tell you why.
Tuesday
Type: Continuous Hills
Time and Distance: 81 mins 26 secs, 17.8 km.
Detail: 5.5 km warm up. 2 sets of 7 hill reps (400m up, 400m down) with 3 mins recovery. First set was 22:53, second set was 23:18. 1.1 km cool down.
Thursday
Type: Intervals
Time and Distance: 45 mins, 8.47 km.
Detail: 15 mins warm up at 10.5 km/h pace. 4 x 800m at 15.5, 15.7, 16.0, 16.3 km/h pace with 3 mins recovery at 8.0 km/h pace. 5 mins cool down at 10.5 km/h pace.
Saturday
Type: Long
Time and Distance: 120 mins 50 secs, 24.6 km.
Detail: Kept it easy and conversational. Focused really hard on breathing and proper form.
Sunday
Type: Recovery
Time and Distance: 30 mins, 5.23 km.
Detail: 30 mins on treadmill at 10.5 km/h pace at 1.0 incline.
Total Weekly Distance: 56.1 km.
Comments: This, I believe, has to be the best week quality wise. I was really happy with my long run yesterday. At that pace it seems to be a little on the fast side for me, almost close to my last year's marathon pace. Yet I still kept it easy and conversational, and it really did feel like that. The trick was just a slight tweak in my technique and breathing. Okay, I basically focused all my attention to these two areas, and I believe that made my long run much easier. Compare with last week's long run where I struggled through the same distance in more time, this week was pretty much a breeze. I have to owe it to my change in technique, which has really been hammered home to me recently.
Improvements: After this week's encouraging results, I'm going to pay a lot more attention to my technique on every run I go on. Continuous hills, threshold runs, intervals and long runs - you name it. Will still maintain the quality of these runs for next week.
This basically feels like a rebirth to running, having gone back to the beginning, examining the basics, looking at areas for improvement, and applying them in training. And honestly, it feels like it has paid off. I don't have much time to blog about this now, but I will definitely visit this area on technique in a separate post. This isn't something to ignore because a few tweaks in your running technique will definitely yield positive results. It worked for me this week!
Cheers!
Aaron
