Week 10 of 13

3 weeks left !!!

Monday:
9k+ easy in 50 (av 5.30), treadmill

Tuesday:
15k easy in 1h20m (av 5.20), Singapore River

Wanted to do a speed session, but body wasn't ready! Legs like lead and had no strength.

Wednesday:
9.5k easy in 50 (av 5.16), Keppel Marina 1k loop, included 6 strides

Thursday:
3k warm up with strides
Fartlek (padang cricket field)
3 x 800m @ 10k effort (90secs rec) + 1600m @ HM effort (90secs red)
3k cool down
Total 15k in 71 (4.44)

Did the workout on grass in order to reduce the stress on tibia. Tried to do a minimum of 4 sets. but stopped after 3. My legs were like lead and 10k and HM paces were slower by about 5-10secs per km!

Friday:
35mins recovery (5.42), treadmill

Saturday:
15k easy in 76+ (5.06)

An aborted long run. Super humid weather and my legs are still toast. Decided to cut my losses.

Sunday:
18k easy in 93 (5:10)

A re-dux long run, but legs still felt shitty. Felt lethargic, no strength at all and calf tendon was sore. Another stop loss

Total 88k for the week

Week in Summary:

A crap week. I only managed to do one workout and no long run! Legs were like lead and body felt knackered. Everytime I go out for the run, the shin bones were burning like hell. I had my tendon massaged and it was ok for a week, but it flared up again during the weekend. I think the cumulative pounding and fatique over this training cycle has trashed my muscles, connective tissues, and joints. The 'deal legs' feeling resulted in me doing lots of easy 5+ min pace this week.

My body was lethargic all week and seems to reject fast running at all. I eat meat regularly so I don't think my iron was lacking. Presumably doing ferritin test is too late at this stage with only 3 weeks to go. I think I simply get saturated with months and months of hot weather training. Frequent heatwaves and high humidity have taken their toll on my body. I am not recovering well on day to day basis.
I am contemplating to take a few rest days this week in order to let the body and legs recover. It's frustrating that I can't do hard sharpening workouts in a very critical period. And now there are only 3 weeks left !!!

To optimize whatever time left before the race, my plan is to do a down time this week, then training hard next week, and finally a very drastic taper during race week. Hopefully my training in the last 3 months are sufficient to allow me to still run a decent time. But first thing first, I need to find my legs and back !!!!!