Zombie Run

It has been a tough week.  You know how you feel when you get to half way in a marathon and there is that  good feeling about how far you have come but then a short while later you realize you have just as far still to go.  Now imagine that at half way it was compulsory to increase your pace by a third!!! That is what it has been like this week. After two weeks of three games a day in the World Cup, it reaches game 33 of 64 games and the last round of Group matches and the schedule is upped to four games a night and I am turned into a walking zombie.

So this has been a bit of a quieter week training wise. Only 46k.

This did include a 10k this morning at the BRRC which I completed in 44:05.6. My split times for the two laps were 22:02.8, 22:02.8. Exactly the same down to the tenth of a second. How amazing is that. I am pleased with that time but it was tough but is just the sort of hit out I needed before the Half next weekend. Three months ago on the 28th March at the BRRC 10k champs I did 48:35, so a 4:30 improvement in three months and all off just pure base building and no speed or tempo training at all.

By September/October with some decent faster training I might just be approaching some decent times again.

In the meantime I have to survive the World Cup and work for the next two weeks :-(

Triple treat

Well my third 100 K week in a row. This one was quite different from the last two. I am on leave so have been running from home and because of the hilly nature around my way, any run is more of a challenge than my normal flat as a pancake runs by the river.  It also was more difficult juggling a time for my long run. The Australia - Ghana match was on at midnight Saturday night, so I didn't fancy getting up early Sunday morning for that, so settled on running on Saturday afternoon but had to start at 2:30pm in order to get the 31.5k in before it got dark. I think it has been a good achievement to be able to keep up the training and to see every World Cup game so far. But boy am I getting tired. Will have to be careful not to get run down.

Two in a row

Basically the same week of training as last week gives me two 100 K weeks in a row.

My runs through the week showed show improvement despite my feet swelling up again for a few days. My long run on Sunday was an almost an identical time to last week which was slightly disappointing.  Whilst I will enter a few races this year I am not really targeting any in particular as I really just need to build up the endurance base before I can get serious about a top performance.  Still I am tossing up whether to do a few weeks with some speed work prior to the Gold Coast Half or just continue with the base building which will be of more benefit to me getting through the Brisbane Marathon on 1st August without too much of a struggle. The beauty of my situation at the moment is in the end it really matters little which way I go.

I am now on two weeks annual leave and will be watching all the World Cup games I can in that time.

Scott, I am impressed with your memory. I did in fact turn my ankle on a giant seed pod about this time of year in 2008 and I did go on to run 3:12 at GCM that year.  This year though something around 3:40- 3:45 will be closer to what I will be capable of.

A Ton

After rolling my ankle last week, I had three days off to let it recover. On Monday, I went for 9.5k to test it out and it seemed OK whilst running but still a little sore when I cooled down.

On Tuesday, I went for 13k and again it behaved itself but I was still a little wary when doing a turn on that side. This was the last day for entry to the Doomben Half without a late fee and I looked at this year's course and saw the number of 180 degree turns and thought that doesn't look ideal for a dodgy ankle. I also discovered that what I thought had been the last day had suddenly changed to being no longer applicable, so I made the decision to pull the pin on the event and just concentrate on steady base building for the rest of the week.

For the rest of the week I ran  Wed 14.5k,  Thur 13k , Fri 18.8k and this morning 31.5k. After such a tentative start to the week, I have managed to post just over the 100k for the week, something I haven't done since December 2008.

If I don't want the marathon on 1st August to be too much of a struggle, I am going to have to put in quite a few more 30+ runs over the next 8 weeks.