I spent most of this week dealing with a cold which limited my training. Thankfully started feeling better towards the end of the week and was able to put in a reasonable run at the Burnley Half Marathon.

Burnley Half Marathon

Sunday was round 9 of the XCR’17 series with the Burnley Half Marathon. With still carrying the cold slightly it was rather hard to get out of bed. I pressed the snooze button multiple times and got up coughing and wondered should I really be doing this. But I got up, had a shower, got dressed, ate my strawberry jam on toast and made my way to Burnley.

My race plan was just to take it easy and see how I feel. Easy ended up being roughly 5:00/km pace. There ended up being a group of us running at this pace, so it was nice to be able to run with Phil, Tom and Mechelle.

At the 8km mark Mechelle was the first to leave the group. She sped up slightly to move out of the way of the bike passing and never slowed down. Around the 10km mark it was my turn to separate. Coming down a hill my pace picked up slightly, very unplanned but I ended up pulling ahead a little while still feeling comfortable.

The rest of the run I pretty much just ticked along at a steady pace. Once I hit 20km I picked it up for the last section which is a slight down hill so it makes for a nice finish. 4:31/km for 21km split, and 4:18/km for the last 290m.

Shout out to all the Western Athletics runners who ran PBs! Some very good runs from Mechelle, Sharon, Brigitte, Steph and Tom just to name a few!

This Week

I first got the cold on Friday the previous week. I wasn’t feeling too bad that weekend, but after my Sunday 30km run I felt wiped out and my cold worsened the next day.

My program worked out pretty well here as Monday and Tuesday were already planned rest days. So i was able to really just focus on resting at home. I did get out for a short walk on Monday just to get out of the house, but the weather was miserable. Tuesday I did my foot exercises and some foam rolling, just to get something useful in.

Wednesday I was still at home unwell. Decided to try an easy run but it just felt like too much effort. I managed 5km then stopped and walked a km to recover and relax. Then jogged the last 3km home very slowy.. 6:18/km.. which effort wise felt pretty much like a normal easy run.

Thursday was my last day off work. Wasn’t sure if I was going to try running again today or not, but I was starting to feel pretty good in the afternoon. There was no chance of doing my planned hill reps session, but I drove down to the You Yangs and went for a run. Felt ok sitting at an easy pace and ended up being quite a peaceful and enjoyable run.

By Friday I was finally back at work and feeling better although still carrying a cough and runny nose. I felt good enough to try my threshold session, and it actually went quite well. Ran to Princes Park and did 4km threshold in 4:39/km average.. target was 4:40.

Saturday planned rest day before tackling the half marathon. The one thing I did was some mobility exercises. I’ve gotten into the habit of doing this fairly often now. I feel like there’s two main things I need to work on in my supplementary work and that is:

1. Mobility/flexibility – if everything can move freely it means I can run faster and with less effort.
2. Hip strength/activation – make sure the glutes are strong and firing properly as I often end up with overworked quads/hip flexors. And also that the hips are stable and reduce hip drop which puts more stress on other muscles.

Running

1%-ers

Coming up

Coming up this week we have the Princes Park relays. Something quite a bit different a short and fast 3.2km lap of the park. Following this Sharon and I have our last “super run” 3.5 hours!

Only five weeks to go now until Melbourne Marathon!

• 16 September – Princes Park Relays
• 15 October – Melbourne Marathon

Summary