Week 14
I noticed recently that my 45-minute morning runs have been feeling easy. I think I’ve been concentrating so hard on gently recovering my fitness (after two weeks off for injury and illness in February) that I didn’t realise when I had reached it. My pace had been dropping regularly but now it’s levelled out. My foot’s been feeling good. After my run last Wednesday, I hopped in the shower and realised that I didn’t feel winded at all. In fact, I couldn’t tell that I had just been on a run. “That’s probably not good,” I thought. “Am I falling into the dreaded junk miles trap?” I decided to shake things up. For Friday’s run, I pushed myself to see how fast I could go without too much discomfort. I also threw in a couple cadence drills for fun. To my surprise, I knocked nearly a minute off my pace per kilometer. I could definitely feel the effort afterwards, and I was even a little sore the next day. It felt good. On Sunday, Eileen and I went for a run in Canberra with a view towards doing some speed intervals. Again, this was definitely pushing me out of my comfort zone. I gave myself a few days to recover, then went out for my normal run yesterday. I ran the whole thing at what I considered to be a comfortable pace, and afterwards I discovered I was still 30s/km faster than I was during my “junk” runs. Obviously I can run at this faster pace, but I just needed to prove to myself that I could!
April 2: 5.42km
April 4: 6.06km
April 7: 5.81km
Total this week: 17.29km (10.8mi)
Total in 2010: 281.61km (176mi)
To meet my goal of running 1000km in 2010, I should be at 269km right now. So I’m still ahead of schedule. This weekend will see me doing my second-longest run of my entire half-marathon training plan: 19 kilometers (12 miles). That’s only just shy of the actual race distance! Wish me luck…
5 responses
Nice work upping the pacing! There’s nothing like seeing all that hard work starting to pay off. I’m also trying to avoid the ‘junk miles’ but am also proactively looking to up my ‘joy miles’ where I just run somewhere nice for the pure joy of it and the time and speed can go hang. No need to wish you luck with the long run – you’ll nail it.
Awesome work Kris! I am sure you’ll be fine on your long run on the weekend, you’ve certainly prepared enough for it.
Kris, Good luck in your 12 mile run although I’m sure you won’t need it. Glad your training is starting to pay off. Be careful not to do your push runs too close together though, that is a recipe for injury. Allow at least one easy day after each hard effort run.
Your amazing & determined & wishing you HEAPS of luck in your race not that you need it 🙂
yay, good for you in upping your pace a bit. i knew you could do it!