Training diary might be something of an exaggeration – on both counts. My ‘plan’ at the moment is to spend most of January just getting back into a pattern and rhythm with running, building my mileage back to a decent base. Only once since my marathon back in July have I run anything approaching a decent weekly mileage. In reality, primarily due to illness, I’ve simply not run during that time.

My aims for January are to build up to a 40-50 km weekly mileage consistently, ideally with a long run in the region of 16 km. Although I’m not planning on focusing on my speed, I would expect my 5 km times to come down towards 20 minutes naturally just through improvement to my general fitness.

Tuesday: parkrun double

Lolly blogged here about our parkrun double, so here I will focus more on my personal effort. I planned ahead to push during the first of the two; Penrose. The course is a mostly flat out-and-back, and I figured I could set a relatively representation time on it. I got caught up in congestion early on during the run, but cleared it to set 4:31 for the first kilometre. The second kilometre was the most consistent in terms of pace, and was nicely quicker too; a 4:14. A small climb at the turnaround point slowed me down a little in the third, but I was cracking along quicker than I’d expected irrespective; 4:24. The second half was a slog; I’d predicted to my brother before the run that I might be around 23 minutes; it was pretty clear that I’d be sub-22. In the end, I held on for a 21:21, which clearly significantly exceeded my expectations.

On the other hand, I was a little worried that I had destroyed myself for the second run. I jogged back along the course to run in with my sister, who was running her first ever parkrun, and this nicely acted as a cool down for me.

After a 20 minute drive, we arrived in Heartlands with around half an hour to spare. I had every intention to take it easy and jog around in something like 24 minutes. It’s fair to say that those plans fled out the window pretty early, when I hared off along with the front pack. I really enjoyed the course, which was fun as it twisted and turned through the gardens. My pace throughout the run was more consistent than earlier; registering 4:12, 4:16, 4:12, 4:16 before a drop to 4:31 for the final kilometre. Not a surprise really! Still, I was pretty chuffed with another sub-22 finish; 21:44. In fact, Strava suggests that my pace was quicker at Heartlands than Penrose, but the distance discrepancies resulted in a slower time. If I put those two times together (and it’s clearly not this simple) I’d be delighted with a time of 43:05 for a 10k!

Thursday: General aerobic

Weirdly, this was my biggest success of the week: getting out for “just a run”. If I want to get back to decent weekly mileage, then I need to be able to just go out and run, particularly for these first few weeks. I’d originally hoped to be able to get out and run somewhere more interesting – maybe the Camel Trail near Wadebridge where I was working. Unfortunately, work took longer than I’d hoped, and by the time I really had a chance to run, it would have been too dark, so I just headed home for a plod around Taunton. Nothing much to report, but I did gently speed up as I went along, and averaged 5:25 per kilometre for just over six kilometres.

Saturday: Woolacombe Dunes parkrun

With some childcare at home (thanks in-laws!) we were able to get out and about. We targeted Woolacombe Dunes, as it looked like one that we wouldn’t be able to run with the buggies (confirmed). It was a tough course – I’d put it as the toughest parkrun course that I’ve done, harder than any of Lanhydrock, Parke or Mount Edgcumbe. Again Lolly has blogged about this one, so I won’t go into too much detail on the course, and rather focus on my run. After a 1.6 km warm-up (ahem, it’s a slow transition from imperial to metric), I was just about able to change my shoes in time for the start.

A downhill start played into my hands, and after the first kilometre I was still running with the leaders after posting a 3:54 opening kilometre. The sand dunes were hard work, followed by the beach itself, which slowed me to 4:44 and 4:41 for the next two kilometres. It go slower yet as we climbed back up the dunes to get off the beach, and then continued to climb back towards the start/finish. This was compounded by another descent, which was fun, but of course added to the climb! 5:41 and 5:37 for the final two kilometres reflected both the hills and my fitness by this stage of the week! A time of 24:55 doesn’t look like anything special on paper, but I’m happy that I couldn’t have gone much faster on the day.

Sunday: Minehead RC M2BL Leg 2 Recce Run

Snappy title, eh? Each year Minehead RC put on a club relay. I ran it last year, and blogged about it. In the couple of months leading up to the relay, there are a number of club-organised (or semi-organised) recce runs. Although I’m not running leg 2 myself, it’s nice to get out with others, particularly to see routes I haven’t done before, so I was happy to get along to this run. (It would probably be good to recce my own route at some stage though…)

My legs were pretty broken after four hard effort parkruns in the last week and a bit (dating back to Trelissick parkrun last Saturday) and it was a pretty hilly route. My legs weren’t helped by the fact that I opted to run most of the route at the front with Matt, pushing myself more than necessary! It was a lovely off-road route with some good company, and better still for being further than I’d expected, giving me a nice 13 km distance.

Weekly summary

This week generally exceeded my expectations. I ran the parkruns harder and faster than I thought I would, and I accumulated a much higher total mileage. In fact, if I ran this every week, I’d more or less hit my 2,000 km target for the year. Over the next couple of weeks I intend to stick to much the same. Ease the overall mileage up a little bit, but mostly just keep getting out there and running. I’m working away from home for a couple of nights, which adds its own challenge, but if I can get two midweek runs in, then I’ll be in a good place come the weekend.