Training Week 18 Recap

Hi guys,

Happy Easter everyone! I've had a pretty non-eventful Easter weekend so far. I'm actually looking forward to next weekend, where I'll be running the Rotterdam Marathon and going on a short trip through Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Suggestions on what to see and do there are always welcome!

Anyway, a week of rest is followed by a week of pretty hard running. I've cut short the volume in order to maximise the quality of each session. Let's see how I managed.

Tuesday

Type: Threshold

Time and Distance: 40 mins, 7.95 km.

Detail: 10 mins at 11 km/h pace. 1 x 10 min at 14.0 km/h pace, with 3 mins recovery at 8 km/h pace. 1 x 8 min at 14.0 km/h pace, with 3 mins recovery at 8 km/h pace. 1 x 6 mins at 14.0 km/h pace. Purpose was to find my threshold pace.

Thursday

Type: Continuous hills

Time and Distance: 39 mins, 7.7 km.

Detail: 2 sets of 6 hill reps at threshold pace. Recovery of 3 minutes between sets.

Saturday

Type: Long

Time and Distance: 96 mins, 16.6 km.

Detail: Kept the pace and intensity easy the whole way.

Total Weekly Distance: 32.25 km.

Comments: My first week back into running, and also my first week out of 10 weeks of pre-training before I commence the 16-week training programme designed by the FP Run Club. Anyway, how do you spell pain? C O N T I N U O U S - H I L L S. That is probably the hardest running session I've ever done! And I'm still feeling the effects after that run. Unlike the conventional hill session where you run hard up a hill and jog/walk/recover on the way down, continuous hills requires you to run hard up and down a hill, preferably at your threshold pace. The basic idea is that you gain strength, and build running economy and lactate threshold at the same time. This week has placed heavy emphasis on threshold running, which is the key to going faster for longer.

Improvements: It's going to be more of the same for next week. However I also have the Rotterdam Marathon next Sunday, and it's prudent that I don't do myself any damage with these threshold runs right before a 42 km long run. I may have to tone down the intensity of those threshold runs to ensure that I'm reasonably fresh for the marathon. Again, Rotterdam is just going to be another training run, where I need to make a huge conscious effort to go slow!

This week has really challenged my earlier beliefs of running and training. After my conversation with George Anderson from the FP Run Club he advised me not to be tied down to the pace I should be running at, and rather focus on the intensity of training. Pace is always going to vary. It will vary whether I have a good or bad day. It will vary whether I run uphill or downhill. And it will also vary on the weather conditions. Trying to run at a specific pace when it's hot, the course is hilly, or when I haven't fully recovered from a previous session, is likely to lead to over-training, burnout or injury.

Instead, George introduced me to the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE), which allows me to continually assess intensity and ensure a level of exertion that is comfortable or challenging. Training according to intensity is closely linked to training at your target heart rate zone based on your maximum heart rate, e.g. exercising so that your heart rate is between 85 - 90% of your maximum heart rate. At the moment I don't own a heart rate monitor, but I'm thinking of getting one. Does anyone have a favourite? The heart doesn't lie; the harder you work, the more your heart works, the more intense your training is.

The caveat that George mentioned is that maximum heart rate is unique for every person; using the basic formula of 220 minus your age is not going to apply to every runner. So, exercising at a specified zone based on a percentage of your maximum heart rate may not necessarily lead to you exercising at the right intensity based on the RPE scale.

Having said that, I'm still going to record the paces, times and distances that I run in training, but for each session I'm going to pay less attention to the pace I should be running at and focus on perceived intensity instead.

So for my effort at Rotterdam, I'm going to aim for a 6/10. Hopefully that will lead to a sub 4-hour time, but I won't be too disappointed if I go over that, even by a long way! Look out for some photos of Rotterdam (and Amsterdam) very soon!

Happy Easter everyone!

Aaron

Training Week 17 Recap

Hi all,

These training week recaps are starting to become a bit of an addictive habit. But it's even more problematic if you haven't got any training to report! That's right - I've done absolutely no running this week! :-)

The only recap I have to make is that I'm heading into a new direction in my training. After the Reading Half Marathon, I reflected on the experience and decided that I'd get a lot of benefit if I got a running coach who could put me on the right path. I joined the FP Run Club, which is part of the Full Potential coaching company. It's something I haven't done before or even considered in the past so I feel like I'm gambling or going all in here but, at this stage, anything is worth a try!

On Friday, I had a great conversation with George Anderson, one of the FP Run Club coaches, and in that initial coaching call he gave me a bunch of training ideas which I can incorporate immediately. After answering his questions, and also from checking up on my progress from my past tweets, he believes that I'm comfortable over long distance, but my threshold and strength could be developed further. Therefore he immediately prescribed threshold runs and continuous hills to build these areas up.

George also stressed quality over volume, and in saying that I definitely feel that the volume of running I've been doing lately has curtailed my other activities. Now that is part of being a serious runner, but I have a few other things going on outside of my running. Perhaps if I could cut back on volume and really (and I mean really) make every mile count, then I could strike a decent balance between training and my other activities. When I first started out on this journey, I was prepared to put in the volume. It's natural to commit to something fully when you start out on something new. But after I ran the Reading Half Marathon I concluded that the volume of running I was putting in wasn't bringing the desired results. I also felt that in those 16 weeks I didn't really have a life, and I couldn't really continue doing this for 26 more weeks. This is definitely not being defeatist - it's just a new approach to my training, which I am seriously hoping it will pay off in the long run!

I'm very excited with this new approach laid out before me, and starting this week I will be back into training.

Best,

Aaron

A step in a different direction

Hi guys,

This afternoon I had the pleasure of chatting to George Anderson on the phone for roughly an hour, talking about my training direction and my focus. The conversation was very enlightening and George offered ideas that I probably wouldn't have considered had I been training on my own.

I recently joined the FP Run Club, which is an online coaching resource combining the experience of the UK's top running coaches. George launched the FP Run Club a couple of months ago to support marathon runners wanting to achieve their goals. He also offered two free coaching calls to his Twitter followers (ah, good ol' Twitter) if they signed up to the FP Run Club within a particular time. I quickly jumped to the opportunity.

On the phone, I told George about my goals, my training direction and what I've normally done in training. He also took note of the event I'm preparing for (Berlin on September 26th).

George commented that September 26th is still a fair bit of time away. What he was really getting at is that the running programmes offered by FP Run Club have a maximum length of 16 weeks! At the time of writing, I have exactly 26 weeks to Berlin. The 16-week running programmes are designed with time goals in mind, from just finishing a marathon to sub-3 hours which is what I want to follow. The rationale is that extended periods of training would more likely be more harmful than good, such as peaking at the wrong time, or picking up injuries as a result of prolonged training. This leaves me 10 weeks of running to no programme, so what am I to do?

On the phone, George recommended 6 weeks of hard running, followed by 2 weeks of taper prior to starting the running programme. Since I actually have 10 weeks to go, I'm going to make this 8 weeks of hard running, followed by 2 weeks of taper. George also recommended that I drop the long run and hard intervals entirely, and devote most of my focus on hill work and threshold runs. After noting down the pace and distance of my recent long runs, he suggested that I limit the time spent on my feet to around 90-110 minutes, instead of going as far as 150-180 minutes. The extra volume will most likely lead to injury, and since I'm already accustomed to running long distance, I'm already running to my strength instead of addressing my weaknesses. My weakness, which I've alluded to in my earlier post, is speed endurance (the amount of time where high speeds can be maintained).

I mentioned that my 5 km splits in the Reading Half Marathon were averaging between 22-23 minutes. George advised me not to look into it too deeply, but agrees that if I want to break 3 hours this year I would need to lower my 10 km time to around 35-38 minutes if I were to run a 10 km race. The only way to get faster over shorter distances is to increase the quality of my threshold and hill runs, and not focus on volume, which is something I've been guilty of (by association!) over the past couple of months.

Two key workouts that George proposed include:

• Threshold running
• Continuous hills

I'm already familiar with threshold running, having done forms of it in training already. George defined over the phone what he believes threshold running is, and I'll be trying to incorporate that definition into my training.

Continuous hills is a whole different workout for me. Also known as Kenyan hills, which was popularised by the Kenyans, who are of course the world leaders of distance running. Looking back at my past training schedules, hill workouts have been very few and far between. So I'm keen to include hill training as a regular run in my training programme.

As to the frequency of training, George stresses quality over volume. I've already known this, but looking at my past training recaps, I've been emphasising volume over quality instead. For the 10 week period, George recommends at least a continuous hills session, a threshold session and a long run session, with some recovery runs thrown in. I'm not sure what's in store in the 16-week training programme, but the 10 week "preliminary period" is designed to get me in the best possible form to allow me to undertake the 16-week sub-3 hour training programme. Without the long run at this stage, I'm using these preliminary 10 weeks as a means of improving my times at shorter distances, and I mentioned to George that the kinds of running workouts in this period is similar to training for a 10 km race (just without the faster intervals).

Lastly, I mentioned to George that I'll be running the Rotterdam marathon in April and the Copenhagen marathon in May. These will be like my marathon long runs, so to speak. As I expected, George advised me to take these slowly and run for the experience.

Overall, this was a very fruitful discussion with a top running coach, who has given me something new to focus on. I can't wait to get started again.

Itching to get the running shoes on,

Aaron