03 January 2010

Off-season

Some stats to start with:

Ran 3650k total for the year of 2009 (av 10k/d). Also passed 20,000k of lifetime mileage since I started running six years ago at age 33.

The stats above just showed how little natural talent I have :(

This week marks the end of my off-season training. For the whole of December, my training load is only about 60% of normal, with lots of rest days. My body and legs are still not entirely fresh and springy, but my fitness hasn’t eroded much either, so I guess they balanced out.

Training this week:

Mon – 2k ez, 15k Tempo in 60:00 (av 4:00 min/km) in HK under cool conditions (see previous blog post). I reckoned I could carry on at this pace for a half-marathon distance (85 mins pace). But thenI would feel less guilty to claim a PB in a training run for 15k rather than a common distance such as 21k. Anyways, this timing is faster than of all my currents PBs, therefore, I will use to set my training paces. Makes me wonder if I continued to stay in Australia, how much faster I could get since I can run at this pace presumably on regular basis?

Tue – off

Wed – 35mins easy run on treadmill (av 5:20)

Thu – off

Fri – 20k long run in 97:00 (av 4:50), aerobic progression 20mins at 5:10, 5:00, 4:50, 4:40, and last 17mins at 4:32 pace. In line with my earlier blog about ‘secret weapons for 2010’, I did the long run without breaks and at moderate paces (instead of easy) to optimize calorie burning. The continuous nature of the run plausibly resulted in de-hydration, heat buildup, and cardiac drift as evidenced by the jump in HR from 140 bpm to 180 bpm at the end (note that 180 is higher than my tempo HR!). Will run without any breaks/water for runs up to around 90mins.

Sat – off

Sun – 4k ez, 10k at medium effort on a cross country course in 45mins+ (av 170 bpm). Decided to piggyback on MR25 club runs since it was my first time doing the route; even then I had to wait for some runners to ask for direction. Overall, a good outing at pretty solid pace although, I found the trail too rocky for my liking.

Total 59k for the week.

Will resume SW’s on-line coaching next week. Let the hard work begins !!

3 comments:

trailblazer777 said...

Great 20k, and the sunday session looks awesome, as does the 15k of course. That should give you the confidence to move towards 79-85minute targets for the Half, and a solid sub 3 Marathon. Many people would love to have your PB's, me included. Sue there is some training and racing adjustments and refinements to make, but you are doing that, and thats what we all need to do to improve, and to snare the sub 3. I think its more about coping with the heat and humidity, racing in cooler weather, and having the confidence and guts to really maintained hard sustained attack in big races. The coaching with SW is still in the infantile stages, and hasn't really had time to bear a lot of fruit IMO, so could see some big improvement in 2010, maybe the 15k is a small indicator of the big leaps of progress around the corner. Hope you don't get to dehydrated out there, IMO finishing with a HR of 180 and dehydrated seems a bit savage, and maybe unnecessary, but I'm not fully understanding what you are trying to do there. Burning fat is good, and maybe learning to survive on smaller amounts of fluids, but dehydrating as well? All the best as things move up a gear next week.

Ewen said...

If you could race regularly in Australia (or some other place cool) you'd improve by quite a bit. Even the 15k in 60 would probably be 57:30 - 58 for a cool race, and sub-84 for the half.

Anyway, hope you can keep up with Sean's demands ;) Good luck, and thanks sincerely for your last comment on my blog.

Epi said...

That 15k is similar to the long tempos I did when in sub 1:24 Half form - bodes well for a great 2010.