Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Thursday

Short Tempo Run

Decided against the club session last night as I want to avoid the hilly sessions for the moment. Instead I went with this tempo run. As I haven't done much pace running of late I went with a fairly conservative 2 Miles @ 8 min pace.

I figure 8 min pace is about right for my current level of fitness and 2 miles should be more than manageable.

It went well, held the pace ok, and could have added another mile or so if needed.

2 Miles Easy (9:15, 9:02)
2 Miles Tempo (7:54, 7:49)
1.6 Miles Easy (9:30, 9:13)

Total 5.6 Miles @ 8:46 m/m

Monday

6.1 Miles @ 9:16 m/m

Plenty of energy for this after taking Sunday off. Standard 6 mile loop with an easy enough pace the whole way around.

Tuesday

8 x 400m

Session last night in bushy park eerily similar to the track session on Saturday. This is done completely on grass and I'm pretty sure the loop is more than 400m. Times were a good bit slower than on the track but the effort (in terms of HR anyway) were about the same.

Thought about adding on an additional 2 but left it at 8 in the end.

Total 4.7 Miles.

Days Running|15/30
Sessions|5
Long Runs|0
Races|0
PB's|0

Month|2013|2014|2015|2016
January|7|0|191|73.5
February|10|53|196|104.1
March|7|111|207.9|70
April|26|154|165.2|74.9
May|69|121|219.7|
June|75|93|257.4|
July|67|212|151.2|
August|101|233|132.7|
September|85|261|31.6|
October|4|179|63.6|
November|13|28|17.5|
December|6|163|21|
Total|471.2|1606.2|1654.8|322.5

Firedance wrote: »

No joke insertion - see you Sunday though and not promising there won't be any them

I tried my very best to convince tang we were missing out on your amazing coffee but to no avail..

Verry jealous of your mileage -.I know you're probably feeling frustrated but mine is zero if that helps at all !!!

Nah, that doesn't help at all but I do know what you are going through. I'm not frustrated by lack of mileage as much as by the lack of consistency.

It seems every time I get some solid training together I get a setback and then I'm out for a week or 10 days and it's another 2 weeks before I get back to where I was but I'll keep plugging away.

Not getting pissed off about it, just trying to do the rehab and progress with the training!

Now, where was I?

Sunday 8th May

7.5 Miles @ 9:35 m/m

This was the day of the famous Grand Canal Run, beautiful day for it but I was feeling the effects of a long weeks training. After the first few miles really started to feel the effects of the heat and was happy enough to just get through it.

Tuesday 10th May

Took Monday off (as I had planned) but the calf was very, very sore. Kind of came out of nowhere really as it was fine during the run on Saturday and Sunday. Anyway, was better by Tuesday so went down to the club session.

During the warmup the calf felt very tight, too tight so skipped the session and went for an easy run instead. It was very wet, but not unenjoyable.

5.1 Miles @ 8:49 m/m

Thursday - Club Session

The shin was/is still giving problems. All related but seems like the smart move was to take a day off on Wednesday and just go do the session on Thursday.

Club session was a fartlek run. Still struggling with fitness so was good to get this done. 2 laps of about 2 miles each. Worked hard on these but happy to get through them.

Saturday - Track Session

12 x 400m off 1 min recovery - Struggled to hang onto the group I was in, I should probably have dropped down to a slower group but a good session nonetheless.

Splits were as follows:

93/90/89/91/94/94/97/96/97/94/96/89


Most of the rest of the weekend was taken up with the Terenure race, Friday evening, Saturday afternoon and evening, all day Sunday from 8am to the afternoon.

Even if I'd found time for running I wouldn't have found the energy. Few drinks last night in Terenure.

not a great week training but not much to be done about it. 3 runs, 2 sessions, 16 Miles.

Wednesday

6 Miles @ 9:32 m/m

Got out at lunchtime for this. I've been looking at my cadence a bit recently. As its reported on Garmin I generally get around 150-155 for most of my runs. I decided to try out the metronome feature on the watch so set it to 170 to see how it would go.

With traffic etc I wasn't really able to work off it all that well so just instead tried to keep the cadence as high as I could and really try to get it higher than usual.

I kept this up for 3 miles, and for the last 3 miles reverted back to just easy running. Got home and uploaded the run. Cadence by mile was 154/155/154/154/154/155

So no difference whatsoever.

Thursday

Club Session

Session is the normal fartlek lap but doing 1 min hard, 1 min easy. Found it harder than I was expecting but was probably going to hard on the recovery bits, which is a common problem for me. Godd session though.

Total was 6 Miles

Sunday

10 Miles @ 9.25 m/m

Long run with the club this morning. It was tougher than I thought it would be. Haven't done one of these in a while so it's good to get it under the belt.

A good weeks training, 5 runs, 3 sessions ,one long run and 33 Miles or so.

Dubgal72 wrote: »

3 sessions AND a long run? :eek: Are you sure you need three sessions in a week? Do they form part of a structured progression or are you just doing them because they are there? Great to see you getting back Adrian but we want to see you stay back....

Interesting observation. I would have thought the long run was an easy run essentially?

You are possibly right on the 3 sessions, something that I do quite a lot. The Thursday session is supposed to be a little less intense than the other two but maybe it could be dropped altogether, but on the other hand often the Tuesday and Saturday sessions are very similar so maybe one of those should go, for a few weeks at least until the volume justifies this sort of intensity.

Your feedback is as ever gratefully received.

Agree that the long run will take something out of you, I guess that is the point of it but I assume you also agree that it is an important run and one that we should try to do every week if possible?

A downfall of my recent training has been my inability to get a long run in, though there were good reasons for it I think it is something I should try to get to as much as possible.

As for the other sessions, I'd agree it looks like lot of intensity and probably too much much at the moment as you say my fitness is still not 100%.

I can understand that from a training point of view that building a base might be more important than running sessions every second day.

However from an injury point of view I don't think there is any issue with running hard at least a couple of times per week. At least that is the advice I've been given on the subject.

The point on base building is well made but at the same time I'd like to keep some sessions in there given how helpful they are in building fitness. I've a few races coming up and these will also help move along the fitness.

I've spoken to a lot of people regarding the track session the day before the long run and most seem to think that a sharp session the day before shouldn't have any negative impact but I guess opinions will vary on that.

The other point is that while my training hasn't been overly consistent I still have managed in the region of 400 miles so far this year so not coming off a base of zero either.

Dubgal72 wrote: »

Well I'm not an expert, it's only my inexpert eye....

A long run should be at easy pace - that's the 'easy' bit - but 10 miles is 10 miles, it's going to take something out of you, no matter what pace you run it at. As you are still building fitness and recovering/rehabbing, I would have thought that you should be reasonably fresh for a long run. I thought, from other training plans, that a session followed by a long run would be for an athlete at a certain stage in their programme and with a specific purpose.

The three sessions per week on offer by the club may not be intended to be all completed. Have you asked any co ordinator at the club what their purpose is and how they fit into a longer term structure? Are these sessions targeting a particular distance range?

Three sessions a week and a long run (I would count that as four key sessions) means a very quick turnover and not much space for recovery and adaptation. It also means less time for building your aerobic base, the foundation on which all your future work is based. If this is weak, your edifice will crumble, surely?

Look, I may be wrong. What's important is that you are enjoying it but I can't help feeling your enjoyment will be more if you focus on building a stronger base before rushing into several sessions a week.

Interesting, seems like the general advice then is that either the Saturday track or the Sunday long run but not both.

Wednesday

4 Miles @ 10:17 m/m

Slow recovery run around UCD. Started off with the idea of normal easy pace for about an hour but was feeling the effects of Tuesdays session so let the body dictate the pace and the duration. Some sort of construction going on the far side of the campus meaning my normal route got messed up and I ended up running through the center of the campus which I normally avoid.

Followed this up with a trip out to Irishtown to have a look at the graded. I was thinking, nice summer evening, watch the races, take a few photos, shout on the various boardsies and clubmates. But no, firstly cold evening, secondly got drafted in to help with the officiating and realised fairly early on that cheering anyone on was seriously frowned upon. With that attitude its no wonder they find it hard to get volunteers.

Also the track is in a mess, can't believe thats only there a year or so.

Thursday

6 Miles @ 9:20 m/m

Lunchtime run, a lot fresher than on Wednesday, usual work route. Still easy pace, decided against doing a few faster miles.

Friday

6.4 Miles @ 9:33 m/m (with back pack)


Heading to see The Boss tonight so only chance for a run was on the way into work. I decided to bring all my clothes etc in yesterday so wouldn't have to carry much but still needed to bring a few things so had the bag but not too heavy.

There are a few different route options, went up through Churchtown, Dundrum, Goatstown etc on this, so happy to get this out of the way early.

Option for a session in the morning or not depending on what time I wake tomorrow!

Sunday 10 Miles @ 9:15 m/m

The weekly long run with the club on Sunday morning. No issues with it this week, kept easy and quite enjoyable. Hopefully I can start making this a regular thing from here and start building the distance out once Dunshaughlin is out of the way.

Ideally I wouldn't be running the track session the day before this so I'll need to address that once the long run gets longer but for the moment it seems ok.

Days Running|21/31
Sessions|9
Long Runs|2
Races|1
PB's|0

Month|2013|2014|2015|2016
January|7|0|191|73.5
February|10|53|196|104.1
March|7|111|207.9|70
April|26|154|165.2|74.9
May|69|121|219.7|128.6
June|75|93|257.4|
July|67|212|151.2|
August|101|233|132.7|
September|85|261|31.6|
October|4|179|63.6|
November|13|28|17.5|
December|6|163|21|
Total|471.2|1606.2|1654.8|451.1

Firedance wrote: »

Glad you enjoyed it Adrian, I didn't know you were running or would have kept an eye out, it was very warm!! perfect spectating weather

Yeah was fairly warm alright, I took the opportunity to take on water and throw most of it over my head at one stage!