Hey guys, long time, no post. Sorry about that, but I'm still plodding along.
After a two-week rest following the half marathon in May, I ran conservatively in June, just trying to get back up to speed after the layoff - without getting injured!
I was successful in that — well, got back up to distance, the speed seems to be gone forever, although one can hope — managing to do a steady diet of 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100-minute runs in July. Plus the usual Wednesday night club interval workouts (typically 1000m x 6).
One slight change in the training regimen — I decided to take two days off a week, instead of one. So Thursday and Friday, after the Wednesday intervals, are rest days.
The week is something like:
Saturday: 90 minutes or a tempo run (starting at 6k easy, 6k tempo, working up to 10/10). The tempo run is designed to help get me in shape for a 10K race in October, and is a "hard" workout, which is one reason for the two days rest.
Sunday: 100 minutes, working up to 140.
Monday: 80/90 minutes
Tuesday: 60 minutes
Wednesday: intervals or 5,000m time trial (last wednesday of the month)
Other than tempo and intervals, all runs are at an easy pace.
"Easy" by the way, is very easy these days, as you've probably heard about the Japan heatwave. I like the heat, but running in the afternoon is too much even for me — 35~38C (38 = 100F), and that's in the shade! And it's humid as well. So I've taken to eating dinner at 4:30 (work? who works?) and running at 9pm.
The club intervals are of course at night — 7:30.
Speaking of the interval workouts, my legs are fairly tired each week, even with cutting back to 60 minutes on tuesday, but I've been working hard and running them pretty well. This week's 6 x 1000 was done in 4:28 (need one to get loose), 3:57, 4:02, 4:03, 4:08, 4:00 (about 4min walk interval).
And that was at 32C/60% (at night 32 actually feels a bit cooler - a bit).
It's fun, as I had four others to run with at the head of the "B" group. Fast guys, and women, are in the "A" group (4 mins and under). We have 30 or 40 in each group.
The time trial the week before, however, was done in 22:03. That's partly due to the heat and partly to the fact that I'm just slowing down. It didn't seem that slow! (If you're working hard and feel like you're running a 20:00 pace, but the time is 22:00, that's not a good sign.) Hopefully I'll be able to get some speed back by October.
So that will be the schedule for the next two months, maybe I'll post again in September to let you know how things are going.
Hope you are all running well!
By the way, speaking of the Tokyo heat, Brett Larner ran the Olympic marathon course the other day at 7:00am - two years before the event. Very interesting. If you don't read his blog, it's at
http://japanrunningnews.blogspot.com/2018/08/running-2020-olympic-marathon-course.html
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