01 November 2009

Season ain't over yet

Really envious of Clown & Epi who have finished their running seasons and are heading to Everest Base Camp.

My running season is not finished yet, with SCSM half marathon in 5 weeks time.

Did 280k in October – lowest monthly mileage in a while. This was a function of doing 3 races (3k, 21k, 10k) within a span of 20 days and the associated pre-race taper and post-race recovery. My monthly average between April and September was 350k+, hence this month was 70k short. I do feel that I have lost some ‘oomph’ from the drop in mileage (presumably endurance). Note that these races are my personal choices, and the coach just wrote the program around these events.

Hence, I am quite happy to see the training ramping up back to my usual 80-90k range over the next few weeks. The Coach’s plan is a bit different to the prep for Melbourne HM, emphasizing more on endurance this time around. Will be doing mostly 90ks a week and only taper in the last several days. Long runs have now been extended to 32k.

Another change from the last prep was shorter fast-sustained runs (tempos). Last time, I did a couple of 10k sustained run at HM pace – which took me around 40-41mins. In general, I think they were useful sessions and I was able to run at this pace during the race (unfortunately, the pace slowed in the second half, hence the reason for adding mileage and longer long runs) This time around, most speed workouts are 20-30mins in total duration and they will be in long intervals format with long breaks in between.

Therefore, some new tweaks in training (more mileage, short tempos). Let’s see what happens on Dec 6!

M: 18k easy (4:53)
T: 12k easy (5:00)
W: 2.5k wu, 6k sustained run @ 4:01 pace, 5x100m hills, 2k cd
T: 7k very easy (5:30) + core strength
F: 12k easy (5:00)
S: 5k easy (5:10), 21k moderate(4:40), total 26k
S: off

Total 86k for the week

2 comments:

trailblazer777 said...

It will be interesting to compare the two. Hope you get some good results.

Ewen said...

Looks like some useful tweaks there. The long intervals with long breaks should suit the Singapore climate better than long tempos (easier to recover from too).

I'm also a big fan of the 'late taper' as it's hard to get a long taper perfect so aerobic condition isn't lost.

With the drills, you could probably slip them in on the very easy day or even late in the off day.