26 March 2011

Week 1 of 13/15 Marathon Training

Monday:

AM -- 3k up, drills + 1k worth of strides/jog; 6 x 1k Intervals at the Canal loop - splits: 3.51, 3.52, 3.51, 3.53, 3.46, 3.40 - total 6k of work averaging 3.49 pace; first 4 reps at 10k pace off 90secs jog, last 2 reps at harder effort off 90s walk; highest HR 182 bpm - 2k down. Total 13k in 62

PM -- 5k recovery in 30 (5.47), 5mins gym work

Tuesday:
AM -- 10k easy in 53+ (5.21), Keppel Marina 1k loop, very cooling after the rain and the run felt effortless
PM -- 10mins core work

Wednesday:
AM -- 3.5k up, , drills + 1k worth of strides/jog; 10k continuos Tempo run in 40.40 - av pace 4:04 min/km (last k at 3.54); av HR 172 or around 90% Max; circled my usual 1.3k Canal loop about 7x - jog a bit then 4 x 100m hill sprints, walk rec then 3k down. Total 18k in 82+

PM -- 1 hour yoga stretch class

Thursday:
AM -- 10k easy in 54 (5.23), Keppel Marina 1k loop
PM -- 2 reps of James Boag beer with calamari for recovery at pub watching WC cricket

Friday:
AM -- 6k recovery in 34+ (5.42)
PM -- 10mins gym work

Saturday
AM -- 30k long run in 2.26 (4.52), home-holland rd-ulu pandan rd-clementi rd - upper bukit timah rd and back, did 1-3mins pick-ups every 5mins

Sunday -- OFF

Total 92k for the week

Week in Summary:

A good week with a couple of good workouts and a 30k long run. After medicore training in recent weeks, this is the first time that I am able to pull together some decent sessions. This week's mileage is also the highest in 6 months, so it's been a while !

Made a couple of tweaks. Initally, I was trying to replicate my training for last year's Seoul Marathon (3.03) under Coach SW by doing interval, tempo, medium long run, and long run, so that's 4 sessions in a 6-day running week. However, work is a bit more stressful this year and coupled with ageing legs, the structure is not that doable at this moment. Therefore, I made a little tweak by incoporating the tempo run inside a medium long run (currently still 18k, but this will increase to 21+ over coming weeks). The nice thing about this is that it gives me 3 easy days within a 6 day cycle to tackle the two workouts and the weekend long run. I also found having 2 easy days before a long run helps a lot!

Another tweak that I made is inserting some pick-ups in the long run. I often struggle during long runs, both physically and mentally (maybe because I train solo). One day I came across Charlie Speeding (london marathon champ) training log and saw that he often did long run with 1, 2, 4 mins fast pick-up every 5mins of steady running. So this morning, after a couple ks warm up, I ran 5mins ez, 1min pick-up, 5mins ez, 2mins pick-up, 5mins ez, 3mins pick up and repeat. At this juncture, my pick-ups were more like medium effort (around 4.30 min/km pace) instead of fast effort to keep them aerobic. But they were sometimes challenging especially when the pick-up portion happened at the hill ! The good thing is that I am not so bored doing my long run anymore !

Plan for next week is to do around the same number of ks. I will travel overseas for work for 2D1N, but I don't think it will disrupt my training.

1 comment:

Ewen said...

Ha! I could match you with the James Boag cross-training, but that's about it.

I like the look of the more spaced out hard/workout days. Also the pick-ups within the long run. Will be interested to see how it goes compared to last time.