First week

A big congrats to Epi who ran 2.57 at Perth C2S today !

In the current edition of Run 4 Your Life (R4YL) magazine, there is an article on one of Coach Sean’s elite athlete (65mins 21k). The article also has 3 weeks training diary of this athlete and his training partner’s (13:25 5k, 62mins HM). What I found interesting is that both the elite squad and mere mortals under his coaching have largely similar training structures. The only differences are the elites run doubles and do 3 workouts + 2x 90-120mins runs per week. I told Coach that I can only run on either Sat or Sun as I need the day off to take care of the bub (otherwise Mrs Sling won’t be happy since she needs a break too). Hence, he prescribes 2 quality sessions a week and 2x 90-120min runs for me.

Some of the quality sessions are surprisingly similar. In the magazine, they did 8k + 10x100 hills, while Sean scheduled 6k + 10x100 for me this week. The difference is that they run the 8k in under 24 minutes, while I completed my measly 6k in 24+ minutes LOL.

For my first full week training under Sean, I give myself a score of 7 out of 10. I completed all the sessions, except had to cut short my weekend long run since I was feeling sluggish and tired. Mileage wise, I told him that a weekly mileage of 80 is a sustainable and manageable range for me However, he gave me some ‘bonus’: 87k this week, 93 next week, then 97 the following week!

So far, I found the quality sessions are the most difficult aspect of the program. Sean’s prescription is to do 5-6mins reps at 5-10k pace, 6-15mins reps at 10k-15k pace, and 15-30mins at HM pace. However, I ran them about 5 secs/km slower than the above range. First reason is that I am not (yet??) fit enough to blend into his program, and secondly, I’ve been doing some of the runs during mid-day where it is terribly hot (I do midnight and morning feeds for the baby, hence unable to train in the morning). For instance, he scheduled 15-15-8 minutes on Thursday and according to the above, my paces should be around 4:00 or under for the 15s and low 3:50s for the 8. My average paces turned out to be 4:05 for the 15+15 and 3:53 for the 8 (I think I won’t be able to nail the 8 if the 15s were faster). Another workout that I did was the aforementioned 6k hard + 10 x 100 hills. I ran them at 4.04 pace during lunchtime (35c heat index) and felt drained afterwards. Did only 6 hill reps before giving up.

For easy days and long runs, my pace is also slower than what he suggests. His suggestion is about 5min pace for most runs but I generally do mine 10 secs slower. But easy days are supposed to be easy, right? The R4YL article shows that his elite athletes do their recovery runs around 5:00 min pace, so why I can’t run slower? LOL. Let’s just hope that Coach is still happy when he evaluates my training log!