I’m amazed at how fatigue has snuck up and hit me like a brick wall this week. As a result training changed to focus on recovering in time for the upcoming half marathon.

Addressing fatigue

This week I struggled through my training sessions. Fell well off my 2km rep target times and 15km at 4:38/km pace not a chance, withdrew at 6km in.

I’m surprised at how sudden the impact of fatigue was this week. I thought I had been training through a healthy amount of fatigue and managing it. But it was a big week last week, and I think the 15km time trial followed by fast finish long run was enough to just tip me over the edge.. building on top of the high mileage training, hill repeats, tough cross country runs, etc. !

So how to get back on track? First step reduce immediate training load. Which meant withdrawing from Bundoora cross country. I’d like to say this was a hard decision.. but it wasn’t. With how my legs felt this week there was little hope of racing well and with Gold Coast half marathon only 2 weeks away the priority is to freshen the legs up.

Addressing other factors – sleep, stress, diet. One thing that Chelsea picked up on is that I might not be consuming enough carbohydrates to support the training load. Looking back over what I was eating (thanks myfitnesspal) my rest days were around 200-250g of carbs and training days 300-350g.

Chelsea’s advice is to eat 100g of carbs 3 hours before training and 225g of carbs immediately after training. Additionally according to Racing Weight Cookbook by Matt Fitzgerald for a weekly training volume of 5-6 hours daily carb intake should be 2.75-3.25g/lb. For me this works out as 363g – 429g per day – much more than I have been eating.

So that’s a new focus and the past few days I have eaten 348g, 338g and 372g of carbs – focusing on healthier and low GI options with some examples being brown rice, sweet potato, wholemeal bread, fruit and vegetables, beans.

Additionally a focus on usual recovery activities with cold water recovery at Werribee South beach, massage and radox bath salt. I’ll also by monitoring resting heart rate, HRV and body weight to keep an eye on things.

These next two weeks were already lower volume for the taper for Gold Coast marathon. So I’m pretty confident that I’ll be good to go in 2 weeks!

This week

Tuesday 2km rep session which I completed but times were dropping off.

Wednesday a visit to the podiatrist. Addressing some soreness I have around the metatarsal for my big toe, left foot. It’s the second time this year I’ve had an issue with my left foot. The first time I had some foam arch support added to my shoe and given some strengthening exercises, and that seemed to work.

But now that a left foot issue has come up again will most likely be going down a more permanent solution of some kind of orthotic. At the moment I have some foam arch support and heel wedge in my shoe as a trial. After doing two runs with it the trial adjustment I’m not totally sold but I guess we’ll see.

Thursday a poor attempt at 15km half marathon target pace.

Friday and Saturday rest days. Followed by 70-90 min run on Sunday, I finished up at 88 minutes. The Sunday run was ok, no problem completing the run but my legs still felt a bit tired.

Running

1%-ers

Coming up

Officially registered for Melbourne Marathon!! Even though I have been planning and training for this, it suddenly feels a lot more real once registered!

• 2 July – Gold Coast Half Marathon
• 8 July – Sandown Road Relays (6.2km)
• 16 July – Game of Thrones Season 7
• 16 July – Albert Park Road Race (10km)
• 15 October – Melbourne Marathon

Summary