Not a bad week, still managing a sore left leg but getting through training ok, with some further adjustment to come. Re-focusing on nutrition and getting back down to a better racing weight.

This week

Monday a reasonably easy 8km @ 5:20 target pace. I ran at lunch and did laps of Carlton Gardens which I hadn’t done in some time and had forgotten how much effect the hills have here. Just to show it here is my heart rate in red and the green line is the elevation. I kept my pace consistently around 5:20/km but you can see there is a fair difference in effort going up the gradual and inclines and back down.

Tuesday a bit of a frustrating morning have another driver hit my car on the way into the city. Fortunately it wasn’t bad at all, just some scratches on the rear bumper. It was more just annoying as I ended up running late to my physio appointment and then having to organise for the car to be repaired.

Physio I had more treatment done through lower back, hamstring and glutes. Which got my left hip moving better. I don’t have to do the flossing exercise anymore as that seems fine now, the difference between my left and right leg for that test is gone. Laura did suggest revisiting my rehab exercises from 2-3 years ago as they’re still relevant.

I also tried out a new glute/hip flexor release and strength sequence which I came across on a forum and thought it was good. Another group of exercises to add to my library.

Wednesday I had the last race of the Sunset Series at the Tan. The plan for this one was to complete as a training run, running 8km at 4:46/km. This didn’t really go to plan I found I was working hard to maintain the pace, and the second lap going up Anderson Street hill for the second time got me good having a slow km there. Overall I averaged 4:50/km which isn’t far off the mark but I was working a lot harder than I should be for that pace.

Thursday I worked from home as I needed to drop off the car in the afternoon to be repaired. In the afternoon I had training at the track, and with no car decided to just pump up the tyres on the road bike and commute down on the bike. It’s just over 6km from my house to the track so not a bad ride.

The session was 4×400 in 1:37, 4×200 in 41 which all went well. Brigitte shared this Werribee track 200m segment from Strava after we ran last 200m rep together. And I noticed I have run this 200m segment 3155 times.. bloody hell!

Friday rest day. I went and got a massage at the chinese massage place near work which was nice.

Saturday down to Werribee Mansion for 1km rep session. 4 x 1km in 4:37 with 60 sec jog float. The session went pretty well, all reps on target. Later went down to Werribee South beach for some water recovery. Not sure it did much though the water was warm.

Sunday nice to be back to doing a long run, with fun runs and tapering it must be 3-4 weeks since I’ve done a proper long run. 90 minutes at the You Yangs running with Mechelle and Tom. We did Great Circle Drive in the opposite direction to usual (Chelsea if you’re reading this it was all Mechelle’s idea 🙂 ). The verdict is that it was easier. I had instructions to run no faster than 5:40 pace, and I averaged 5:43, so all good there.

I’ve had fun this weekend getting around in mum’s car “Zippy”. Here’s a photo of Zippy visiting the You Yangs.

My left leg has still been sore throughout the week. It’s mainly feels bad during the warm up and then not that noticeable during the session, I guess once things I have warmed up it’s not too bad. Similar when I first get out of bed it’s sore to walk but get’s better after moving around a bit. So still a frustration but at least it’s not stopping me from training.

Running

1%-ers

Body weight and nutrition

One focus I have at the moment is getting down to a better racing weight, while still fueling my training well. So a new focus on nutrition. This was something I was doing well during marathon training but dropped off after that, which is fine but it’s time to get back on track.

Principle 7 – Travel light: Gravity does not ever give up. One or two kilograms can make an incredible difference to an athlete’s performance. – Chris Wardlaw

This time last year I weighed 60kg and marathon race day I was at 61kg. Post marathon I’m sitting on a little over 63kg. Ideally I want to be back around 60kg, I could even go a bit lower than that and still be in a healthy weight range.

I’ve started monitoring my food intake again with myfitnesspal. Just making some small changes can make a big difference to body weight and also with properly fueling and recovering from training. The basic principles without getting into all the detail is eat less on rest days and easy days (low fueling requirements) and eat a good amount of carbohydates leading up to high intensity sessions and long runs (2 hours+) and good amount of protein and carbohydates as soon as possible after.

I started this week off at 62.7kg and finished on 62.3kg which is pretty much exactly what I want to see. 0.5kg is a nice healthy amount to drop in a week.

Coming up

Next week introduces some further changes to the program. Mainly slowing everything down a bit more and some session structure changes. My coach Chelsea monitors my heart rate for different sessions and basically I’m still working too hard so slowing things down until I’m hitting the right zones.

Hard to know the exact reason why I’m not hitting zones.. but it’s probably a combination of things.

• 21 April – XCR kicks off
• 1 July – Gold Coast Half Marathon

Summary