Early Bird

As mentioned last week, I’ve switched my easy runs to the morning wherever possible. In the past, I’ve had a tendency to see “45min recovery run” in my plan and blast round the parks at warp speed after work. This is neither sensible nor helping my running in the long term. By switching the run to the morning, I’m allowing extra recovery time before the next key session and also freeing up at least two evenings a week, as well as making sure the pace is correct  (there’s no way I’m blasting anything first thing in the morning). 

 A down side is that on weeks where I have double-run days, I’m getting up at 6am at least four mornings a week, but in reality that’s only 30mins earlier than usual. Not the end of the world

To suddenly have free evenings without running is very strange but most welcome. You sit on the couch thinking “there’s something I should be doing”. I like it so far, although I’m very conscious that this is easiest time of year to do it. The weather is warming up, the mornings are light and the conditions generally pleasant. Project forward six months when it’s pitch-dark, bitterly cold and rubbish, it’s going to be a bit more of a challenge. But we’ll come to that in due course. Hopefully by then it will be a habit.

So do you run with the Lark? Or does the thought fill you with dread and horror?

 
 I can recommend it, it is a big change from what I’m used to, but its serving me well. I’ve got a night off tonight, might go out for dinner. Fancy that.

Small Steps

You find me in a buoyant mood, dear reader.

The period of reflection I went through after VLM has come to an end. The weather is slowly but surely improving and my lungs are being busted on the speed-work sessions associated with the summer months. I love speed work.

When thinking about the rights and wrongs of London, I realised that there were a lot of things I could have done better. If Nick my coach is doing everything in his power to get me to the start line in good shape, it had to be said that I didn’t feel I was keeping up my end of the bargain.

Rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, rather than a ‘Big Bang’ of changes, I just tweaked my daily routine in subtle ways and have found I’m getting results already. Here’s how:

- Less Wine – I know, it kills me to admit it, but I was drinking too much wine, and there are A LOT of calories in wine. Someone once described to me that every large glass is the equivalent of eating a doughnut. I’ve had a lot of Doughnuts over the last few months. I’ve swapped (most but not all) the wine for Lime and Soda Water and the odd single glass of my favourite peaty Islay single malt instead. It’s nice to have one glass of that and savour it than down a bottle of red between us and think “where did that go?”

- Morning Runs –I’ve been very guilty of looking at the easy morning runs in my plan and doing them in the evening. I know full well the purpose of doing them before breakfast is to get the body more efficient at burning fat. This came back to haunt me in London so now there are no excuses. Up with the lark, quick cup of coffee and out I go. By switching easy days to the morning, I’m also getting an extra 12 hours recovery before the key session the next day. Good job all round.

- Running easy, on Grass – I find it so hard to run easy, but you don’t need to be winning Gold Medals on every run. I need to slow down man! - “Make the easy sessions easy so the hard sessions are hard”. By switching my easy runs onto the grass, I’ve started using previously unused muscles, brought control back into my running  and slowed down to a good pace for easy running. Also I thinking about the lower impact on my joints.

- 5-a-Day keeps the Physio away – I was not eating enough fruit and veg – in the rush to eat carbs I was loading up on rice and pasta (white), neglecting the vitamins and minerals from fruit and veg. So I make a conscious effort to by Wholemeal and  get the 5 F&V in – it makes your cooking a lot more interesting as well. Watching Secret Eaters over the last ew weeks has given me a few home truths about how I fuel my body to excess and lesson have been learnt.

- Down to the core – I’ve been very lazy at doing my core and strength work. I’m not where I want to be, but I’ve made a start by joining the #plankchallenge and #plankaday crew on Twitter. It’s easy to fit in a couple of minutes in your day to do a Plank and anything is better than doing nothing. Eventually it will become a habit and I can progress it further.

These are all little changes, but already I’m feeling better after a couple of weeks and so hopefully over the summer and beyond can start reaping the rewards. None of the things above take more than a couple of minutes of extra thought a day.

What little changes could you make to make yourself feel and train better?

Trot On

Apologies for the slightly protracted silence. To be honest, I’ve struggled to mentally process the events of London. Whilst being happy with a 30 minute PB, the fact I didn’t get my intended goal of 3:15 hit me harder than it should have.  There we’re lots of reasons but the whole thing could probably be summed as “great day, terrible race”.

 I‘m not here to dwell on that. These races come and go, the only thing you can really do is work out what went well, what went wrong and what you can do to improve for next time. Anyway, there’s a summer of speed work before the preparations begin for the Autumn. Yes, I’ve signed up for another Marathon. Favourite of my coach Nick, Steve and myself will be having a little European jaunt to Frankfurt at the end of October. I’m quite looking forward to it actually. There’s a little group of us going who I think are of roughly a similar speed. That will help motivation if nothing else. Should be a good night afterwards as well :D But I’m not going just for that!

This week has also marked a welcome return to normal training patterns, newly kitted out in shiny white and correctly-sized shoes. I’ve noticed a marked improvement in the foot trouble I’ve been having for the last few weeks. I think it’s going to be a long process to rid myself completely of pain, but I’m definitely heading in the right direction.

I’ve had a couple of really good sessions already this week. The 5x5mins, 90sec recovery threshold session on Tuesday was a proper baptism of fire! The heat was already on with the car temperature reading 23 degrees! I worked hard at that session, but also made an effort to keep my concentration on the job at hand. Believe me, I can find it quite hard at times. I made a pact with myself that even if the reps were getting really tough I wasn’t going to let it beat me and would dig in. I just wanted to know that when the question was being asked “Can I do this?” I would be able to answer emphatically on my own terms “Yes, carry on”. Yes, it’s going to hurt but I’m better than the hurt. Trot On. 

If I can get that right at Frankfurt – I’ll achieve my goals

Have been pleased with the speed in my legs after all that marathon training. It’s going to be a good summer.

I correct myself.

I’m going to make it a good summer.