Category Archives: Training

Bristol Half Marathon Training: Week 1

by Ben

When I sat down last winter to plan for this year, there was one thing that dominated my thoughts: a sub-90 half marathon. With two training cycles to improve on my 1:36:37 from last year’s Burnham Half, it seemed a realistic, if difficult proposition. Unfortunately a fall on the coastal path scrapped off my entire spring, so I’m now coming into the autumn a little unsure where I should be setting my target. In my heart I’m still aiming for sub-90, but in reality, I think that has become something of a pipe-dream now.

My current bible.

To give myself the best chance though, I am following a set training plan for the first time. Previously, I’ve always looked at a few and then built myself a plan, loosely based on what I’d seen, and planned around a number of club runs and similar that I did. But, I hadn’t really seen the improvements that I wanted. A couple of people that really inspire me, and have seen massive improvement in their running are Teal, from Miles to the Trials, and Matty, from Running Matters. Both have used the Pete Pfitzinger/Scott Douglas plans from Advanced Marathoning. Clearly, as I’m not doing a marathon, that isn’t any use to me, so I have opted to use a plan from Faster Road Running: 5k to Half Marathon, by Pete Pfitzinger and Philip Latter. (Hopefully all the good stuff doesn’t come from Scott Douglas!)

The plan I am using is the lowest mileage of the half marathon plans; but even this is more than I have typically done in the past. It builds from 31 miles per week up to 47, while I have typically trained from about 20 to 35 miles per week during half marathon training in the past. As a result of this, there is more ‘slow’ running than I have done before, which is a bit of a worry – will I get quicker if I’m running slower? On the other hand, I typically perform relatively better at 5k and 10k than the half marathon, so hopefully getting significantly more distance in my legs will help to counter that. Of course, the plan does have plenty of targeted quicker running as well, particularly in the second meso-cycle, when most weeks have both speed intervals and tempo runs.

So, introduction done, let’s have a look at week one:

Monday: Rest
Tuesday: 6 miles General Aerobic + strides
Wednesday: 8 miles Endurance
Thursday: Rest
Friday: 7 miles Lactate Threshold
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: 10 miles Endurance

Immediately, by mere consequence of being an ‘impersonal’ training plan, this threw up lots of variations from my typical training – I normally try to run parkrun most Saturdays, but I’ve always accepted that this doesn’t fit in brilliantly with training. I almost never run on Fridays, and the concept of a run with two purposes (general aerobic and strides) has never featured in my training.

Monday:
Rest – Nailed it. After a race on Sunday, I was more than happy to take the day off on Monday. I would have liked to have got a decent stretching and rolling session in, but you can’t have everything!

Tuesday:
This session was a combination of two types of running, and it wasn’t entirely clear how this should be achieved. Reading through a few section of the books, I interpreted that the 6 mile session should be made up of 5 miles ‘General Aerobic’ aka ‘Easy’ running, followed by 1 mile of 100 metre sprint repetitions. Due to work and home commitments, I did this first thing Tuesday morning, an unusual time of day for me to be running. The five miles of easy running went okay, although I always struggle to get going in the morning, but then my watch crashed as it tried to go into the sprint reps. This was less than ideal, and I ended up basically doing a fartlek session of ‘I’ll sprint to that lamp-post’, ‘I’ll jog gently until that tree’, and so on. Distance wise, I ended up very slightly short, but I probably didn’t get full value out of the reps by doing them in such an ad hoc fashion, so that’s something to work on for next week. All in all though, an okay start to the week.

Wednesday:
This session, an 8 mile endurance run, which is repeated most weeks, is one that works out pretty well for me: our club meets on a Wednesday evening, and the groups that I run with do around this sort of distance. This week, it ended up slightly short, about 7.6 miles, which normally I could add on to easily, but as we had a club committee meeting after, I didn’t. Running with a group meant that it was harder to keep my heartrate and pace as consistent as I would like, but overall, a good solid mid-week medium-long run.

Thursday:
Rest day.

Friday:
Although I’ve done some threshold, or tempo, running before, I have to admit that it’s not a session that I’ve done anywhere near as often as I should have, and it’s through this training that I think I’m most likely to make improvements. As such, it’s the session that I’m most keen to get right. Described as a 7 mile LT (lactate threshold) run, most of this run is actually at a gentle pace, with two quicker intervals: 14 minutes and 12 minutes at LT pace, with a four minute jog between them. I ran this session based on heart-rate, and like on Tuesday I ran before work in the morning.

The two hard intervals are consistent with each other, but I think they need to be a little bit harder yet.

How did it go? I’m not really sure. My gut feeling is that I didn’t run hard enough – I was at the top-end of the target heart-rate band for the entire LT intervals, but it didn’t feel particularly tough. Looking online, the common consensus seems to be that this should be ‘comfortably hard’, and around 10-20 seconds slower than 10 km pace. My pace was 7:45 in both intervals, compared to my 10 km race pace of 6:53 (from the Round the Tor 10k). Looking at this, and the advice online, I’m going to try running this session to pace next time, and see how that feels, and look at where my heart rate is, and then make a judgement for the rest of my training.

Saturday:
Rest day – no parkrun for me. I’d been tempted to get my volunteering count up, as I’m not far off being able to claim a purple 25 t-shirt, but I didn’t get my act together in time! Mowing the lawn and painting the shed were pretty hard-work, but probably don’t count as ruining a rest day!

Sunday:

Club running

The last time I ran further than 10 miles was the Exmoor Stagger, last October, and although I did run 9 miles a couple of weeks ago, I decided to run with our club’s ‘Sunday All-Stars’ to help me get over the mental barrier of double-figures. It was a good, friendly group, and I didn’t even really notice the distance. We stopped a few more times than I would like – once I’m out I just want to keep running, rather than stop for photos and the like, but that’s the trade-off for running in a group! My heart-rate was right at the bottom of my target band, but given the step-up in mileage, I was perfectly happy with that. A pretty solid run.

Summary:

I was quite concerned about the mileage, particularly given I’ve had a couple of quieter weeks due to a cold, but my body seems to have coped reasonably well. I need to work on including more stretching and rolling sessions during the week, so that my muscles don’t get too tight. My key ‘takeaway’ from the week is the tweaking that I want to do to the LT session, and maybe, depending on how that goes, a tweak to my general heart-rate bands. This coming week I’ll be going ‘off-plan’ very slightly, to fit in the fourth Yeovilton 5k race of the season, and some parkrun tourism for my birthday on Saturday, and as a result I’ll have to sacrifice the LT session to allow those hard runs to fit in.

Early summer speed

by Ben

Spring is generally considered to be marathon season, while the summer is dedicated to shorter distances. With both marathon and half marathon distances out of the question for me this spring thanks to yet another winter injury, I always knew that my first races back would be quicker, shorter distances.

My ‘training’ started again gently in March, with a number of runs aimed mostly at building some confidence and clocking up some miles. But I struggle to run without definite aims in mind, and there was no way that an autumn half marathon was going to get me going in the short-term. So, I had a look around, considered how far I was running (up to 4 miles) and decided to book the Brean Down 5k on 3 April.

In all honesty, this didn’t end up being a goal, so much as part of the journey. For those that don’t know the area, Brean Down is a headland between Burnham on Sea and Weston-super-Mare in north Somerset. The race starts by the beach and climbs up to the top of the headland, runs along and down to a fort at the end, before climbing back up to the peak and dropping all the way back to the beach. Off-road. It clearly wasn’t a course on which to get a PB, but that’s fine, as I was hardly in any shape to get a PB anyway.

Grimace, grimace, smile for camera, grimace.

The day before the race, we travelled up to Kingsway parkrun, where Lolly kindly ran with the buggy to allow me to put down a more realistic benchmark for my training; 21:59. Two minutes off where my next target, and more like three minutes off where I’d like to finish the year. But at least I had an idea.

At Brean Down, I ran pretty well; my legs were tired from the hard effort the day before, and they certainly weren’t prepared for the hills, but I enjoyed pushing myself around, and getting the buzz of the race. It was also pretty nice to get a medal to add to my collection! Time was pretty irrelevant, but I came in quicker than I’d been targeting, finishing in 24:56.

After that race, I built my training up more, putting more structure in place. While I still wasn’t running from an actual training plan, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to be doing. A couple of runs in the evenings, parkrun, and a “long” run. Which was 5.5 miles of hell that first week. No idea why, it was just a bad run.

“This is so easy, I can do it with my eyes shut.”

Another chance to set down a benchmark followed soon after; the first race of the Yeovilton 5k series. I’d been meaning to race in these for a while, but this year I let myself give it more importance, and I’m planning to use it through the summer to benchmark my progress. I’m going to be pretty pissed off if I don’t go sub-20 at one of them!

I don’t tend to run all that well in evening races, though I do really enjoy them. Still, I managed to prepare relatively well, with a shorter day at work, and a mid-afternoon meal. I didn’t really know what to target, other than quicker than the 21:59 I’d run at Kingsway. With that in mind, I changed the settings on my watch to km pace (I usually use miles) and decided to aim for around 4:20 per km, which would give me a time of somewhere around 21:40, which seemed reasonable.

My pacing was dreadful. Perhaps unsurprising, given that the races are known for having a fast field. I started too far forwards, and found myself drifting back for the first kilometre. After that I steadied myself in the pack, but obviously everyone around me was pacing badly too, and we struggled to maintain our pace. All that said, I was chuffed to come around in 21:07, within a minute of my PB.

After Yeovilton, I had two and a half more weeks of training before my next significant benchmark, the Glastonbury 10k. But I’ll cover that in another post…

Getting into cross training

by Lolly

Look at any running information for long enough and you’re bound to read about the importance of cross training. Essentially, this is just other exercise that helps with your running, or helps to even up body areas that running doesn’t target. This has always been a bit of a sticking point for me – I can never seem to get momentum for running and other exercise at the same time.

When we did our Leadership in Running Fitness course at the end of last year, the trainers talked about the need for regular stretching workouts as part of any running training plan. Secretly, I felt a little bit smug at this, as just a couple of weeks earlier I’d started a new stretching and flexibility class, and this time I was determined to make it stick.

Studio 22 is a dance fitness studio, and was the place I decided to try when looking for a new start. I was attracted by the range of classes, and the decent class prices. My desire to stretch out my muscles combined with a wish to stretch out my comfort zone, and so I found myself at X-TND & Flex. Stretching my comfort zone was putting it mildly.

Rolling out the tight spots

I was asked about my flexibility goals. An obvious question, you’d think. But as someone who has never been associated with the word ‘flexible’, it was difficult to answer. And with that I entered the world of biomechanical releases, muscle rolling, belly breathing, and the splits. Yep, the splits. It is fair to say that I had never been close to doing the splits, and this did not change that evening.

For some reason I persevered, and slowly but surely I started to have a bit more of a clue what I was doing. You could even start to tell that I was attempting to do the splits. With the extra confidence it was time to add something else in, this time Ballet Fit.

Ballet is not something I did as a child, but it’s hard to deny the obvious fitness benefits. For me the biggest challenge was (is) balance. Oh and grace. And maybe a bit of flexibility. Ok, so essentially it’s a class that targets a lot of weak spots for me. As you’d therefore expect, I was rubbish at it.

Of the many things I’ve learned at Studio 22, a key one is that it’s ok not to be good at something, as long as you try to get better. There’s no way that you can expect flexibility and balance to magically improve, they are areas that need work just like running.

The burning question is, of course, what impact has all of this had on my running? Well, I’ve still not cracked the art of balancing exercise effectively. I’ve certainly been doing a lot less running than I was before, even with my short runs to and from the Studio each week. But it’s actually good news.

All the leg stretching and strengthening means that I no longer ache after a flat-out parkrun. And they feel pretty good during the run as well. I find myself checking my posture against any reflective surface I pass, which has helped my running form and day-to-day aches. As for my pace, it’s fair to say that there’s no indication I’ve been running less. In fact, my pace is up there with the best it’s ever been.

For me, the secret to cross training now seems clear. Find something that you actually enjoy, and stick with it. Studio 22 is the place that this has worked out for me, and I can feel the difference on the odd occasion I can’t make a class. Now I just need to get out running more, to really reap the benefits.

Release!

In case it wasn’t obvious, I’ve never taken a camera to a class, so Ben took these at home…

I have not been asked, or paid, to write this post, and I pay full-price for all classes at Studio 22.

A Streak and a Stampede

by Lolly

After a 6 week absence, with very few runs in between, I returned to running Longrun Meadow parkrun with a time that showed my drop in fitness. The thought of running the Stoke Stampede 10k two weeks later was not a pretty one. When I’d signed up for the race, it had been as a target race. I wanted one more shot this year at improving my PB. With two weeks to go, I’d struggled with 5k and was completely out of the training habit.

Back home I checked my Garmin stats and discovered I still had 48 miles left to run to hit my goal for 2015, with a mere 19 days left to do it in. Not going to happen. Ben commented that if I ran 5k a day for the rest of the year then I’d manage it easily. It was a good laugh, but somehow I couldn’t shake the idea.

The next day I got ready to go for a run. Ben asked how far I planned to go, and the answer was simple. 5k. It felt rubbish, but I went. The next day I had an exercise class in the evening. The route I took to get there was slightly longer than usual, and I checked my watch carefully on arrival to check the distance. Heading back I took a slightly longer route. As I took an extra loop around my estate it became clear I was already addicted. I HAD to run 5k every day.

The breakthrough in my streak came at the end of the week on parkrunday. I was volunteering, and wore my kit under my coat and hi-viz. After parkrun I swapped into my trainers (wellies are essential at this time of year) and tried to work out a good route. I clocked in 4 more miles and, importantly for my self-belief, did so at 9:31 min/miles. Pretty much a minute a mile faster than my mid-week efforts.

My mindset had changed from “can face going for a run today?” to “when will I go for my run today?” The only difficulty was working out the route. Oh and December weather. One day it rained straight in my face to the extent that my contact lenses got knocked out of line.

The test was Christmas Day. Day 14 of my run streak, and a return to parkrun. The puddles covered most of the course, and were up to my ankle in places. It was brilliant. I finished in 29:11, almost 2 minutes faster than on Day 1 despite the worse conditions. Day 15 was a recovery run, in preparation for the race.

The Stoke Stampede is a popular 10k race in Stoke St Gregory. Popular to the extent that it sold out of places this year, as everyone always raves about it. Ben ran it back in 2013. I knew very little about the course, other than that it was on country roads. Then Ben mentioned there were hills, which I’d suspected, and that there was a small loop and a big loop, which was useful to know. The thing I really didn’t know was how the race would go.

I started way too fast. It was really hard to wait far enough back, and with the downhill start and excitement of the race it was really easy to get carried away. Slowing down was a difficult but necessary task. The nature of the course means you pass the cheering crowd three times: near the start, after the small loop, and just before the end. This was gratefully received support, even if my daughter didn’t spot me first time.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, at about the 4 mile mark I got really tired. It became much more of a struggle and so I just settled in to a pace that felt comfortable. Some of the country lanes felt very quiet, with little noise other than feet and jingles. Yes, I’d worn a jingle bell hairband. That might be why there was rarely a runner close by.

The few spectators that were dotted around the course were great. I’m pretty sure I’d have stopped to walk on the hill up to the 8k mark if it wasn’t for the support from the top of it.

When I returned to the village for the final push I was tired but pleased. I felt better than I’d felt on a tough run for months. I finished in 56:34, so sub 9 min/miles. Faster than I’d run for over 2 months, while going further than I’d run for a month. Whatever my original plans had been when I’d entered the race, I’d done myself proud.

Even better, just over a mile into the race I’d hit the milestone that I’d thought there was no chance I could achieve.

goal complete

Yesterday was day 17. We went for a walk up Brean Down in the morning, and I ended up carrying our daughter back down the steps. Annoyingly, not in a carrier. My afternoon run was hard work.

Today I woke up with sore legs, and my left quad has yet to improve. Tight, sore, painful on movement, they would all describe it. The moral of the story is that running is good for you, taking a toddler on a day out without a back carrier is not.

run streak.PNG

My run streak has given me everything I needed it to. Fitness, confidence, and a renewed love for running. It’s the love for running that means I’m breaking my streak and not heading out today. Not today. But in a couple of days’s time I’ll be back out again. And again. And again.

It’s a run, not a race

by Lolly

A few weeks ago, my half marathon training was flying along. Fitting 10 miles in on the way to volunteer at parkrun seemed perfectly reasonably. My pace was holding as the long runs increased. And then, I stopped running.

The edge of a cold combined with stress to make curling up on the sofa seem much more reasonable than going out for a run. The problem was, the longer I took off exercise the more sluggish I felt. I missed a whole week from my training plan. Thankfully it had been a recovery week, but it still meant changes to my planned mileage in future weeks.

Tentatively I started back going. By the time parkrun got around last weekend I really felt I had something to prove. The conditions were tough and I didn’t feel 100%. It didn’t matter, I gave it my all and knocked almost half a minute off my PB. In hindsight, perhaps I shouldn’t have gone for it quite so much.

My normal style involves lots of overtaking.

I spent the rest of the weekend feeling ill and sorry for myself. It took until Thursday for me to feel I could go out for a run. Amazingly the 4 miles went smoothly, and although I was careful not to focus on my pace it remained inside my normal training band. While I was by no means feeling completely better, the knowledge that I would get at least one run in over the weekend was a huge comfort.

In this house, Saturday is parkrun day and, because of Ben’s race plans, it was once again my turn to run. This time I knew I had to take it easy. In the last 18 months I’ve talked to an awful lot of people about the power of parkrun. About the support you receive from other runners, from volunteers, and from spectators. And about how it doesn’t matter how fast you are, because it’s a run not a race. Yesterday I needed to remember that.

While I didn’t ease off completely, it still felt like I was going slowly as I saw familiar faces off in the distance. Near the end I had so much in my legs that it was tempting to kick on for a strong sprint finish. But that’s not what I needed to do. I needed to run 5k in a way that would make me feel stronger, and wouldn’t need me to spend the rest of the weekend recovering.

Not a typical half marathon training schedule.

After all the disruptions in my training, I’m a little apprehensive about my half marathon. I have to face the fact that I won’t be as prepared as I had hoped to be. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be ready. Six months ago I ran my first sub-30 parkrun, putting all my effort in to reach the massive milestone. Since that day, I’ve yet to run a parkrun that hasn’t been sub-30. And that includes yesterday’s effort.

If I can keep running to how I feel, I’ll be ready for that race.

Training summary: 10-23 August

by Ben

Back when I was training for my first half marathon, I found it useful to write a summary every week, or every couple of weeks. It served both to hold myself accountable, and to help me organise my thoughts and analyse what worked well, and what didn’t work so well. With a few big races coming up, I thought it might be useful to do it again. So first off, let’s have a look at the raw figures from the last couple of weeks:

Very much a tale of two weeks! Last week was meant to be a recovery week, so the mileage was meant to be low. But, well, not that low. I didn’t have a solid schedule, but the aim was to hit around 15 miles across four runs, all at pretty easy pace. We were going away over the weekend, so the plan was to do some parkrun tourism. The week started pretty well; I finished work pretty early on Tuesday, and drove up to the Quantocks to get some miles in. I live right in the middle of Taunton, so while there is plenty of countryside around, I have to clock up a few extra miles getting out of town, and even then things are pretty flat and dull. So having time to jump in the car and drive 20 minutes up the road to run on some pretty stunning trails is great. I had only been planning to run four miles, but enjoyed it so much that it ended up being five, and I could have happily kept going for more.

Much better than town streets…

The rest of the week ended up being quite stressful and tiring, both at work and home, and I just kept putting running off. Because the weather was looking pretty awful for the weekend, we cancelled our hotel for the Friday night and therefore didn’t engage in any further parkrun tourism, which was a bit of a shame. We had still been planning to go to our local parkrun, but in the end we didn’t really wake up early enough (which with a 22-month-old, is a rare achievement!) Saturday afternoon, evening and Sunday were spent travelling to, socialising at, and driving back from a family BBQ, which just left time for a pretty lacklustre four miles on Sunday afternoon. That run was one of my least enjoyable for a while, but I did see a shrew, which was a first!

I was keen to put a line under that week and begin this one strongly, and an interval session at the track with my running club was the ideal way to start. I’ve been trying to push myself quicker over the last couple of months, now that I trust my knee again, so rather than play it safe and run with group 2, I opted to run with group 1, even though I knew it was probably too fast for me. We were scheduled to be running one kilometre repeats, and group 1 were aiming for about 3:40 per km. I managed my first two at 3:46, but then trailed off during the next two, also taking longer rests than scheduled, hitting 3:50 then 3:55. For the fifth repeat, I’d completely gone, physically and mentally, and I “trotted” around to complete 800 metres at a much slower pace than I was meant to be hitting. Nevertheless, I knew that was a risk with running with a faster group, and I’m happy enough with the result: I ran three good intervals and one pretty decent one.

I kept thinking we couldn’t keep climbing. We did.

On Wednesday, I joined up with my running club’s group 1 runners again as they skipped the normal one hour club run from the middle of town to go do 12 miles along the Herepath. The Herepath is a circular route in the Blackdown Hills on which our club run an annual half marathon (plug). I’ve never done much running down there as I don’t really know my way around, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. Well, almost perfect: I just had to keep up with group 1! As you can see from the graphic, the route is pretty hilly, and it was by far the toughest run I’ve ever done. The pace was quicker than I could find comfortable, and once the climbing and the terrain was added in, my legs were certainly feeling the strain. But all that said, it was probably also one of the most enjoyable runs of my life, and it’s given me some confidence ahead of the Exmoor Stagger in a couple of months.

The next day, I trotted around for a couple of miles just to keep my legs loose; not much to say about this run really, other than the fact that my legs felt awful!! I took Friday off (I very, very rarely run on Fridays) before a buggy parkrun on Saturday.

Looking attractive during my sprint finish…

I told myself that I’d take it easy. That for once, I’d be content to trot around near the back, rest my legs and not push too hard. After a nine-minute first mile, I then ran around 7:40 for the next two, and was running 6:30 pace for the last 0.11. It was not easy. The problem is… because I start at the back for safety reasons, I then start to gently pass people. Passing people then gets a bit addictive, and rather than just settle in at a comfortable pace, I just keep trying to pass people. My legs feel pretty good, and even though my heart and lungs are screaming that it’s hard-damned-work pushing a buggy around that quickly, my legs don’t seem to understand. Or something like that. Anyway, it was a good enjoyable run, even if I did go a little bit fast.

On Sunday I wasn’t really sure exactly what I was going to do. With my 12 mile run earlier in the week, I didn’t need to do a long run, but I did need to get out for something. In the end, I settled for a tempo run, which ended up being three laps of our parkrun course to total five miles, with an extra couple of miles to get there and back, acting as a warm-up and cool-down. I’m a bit split on tempo runs: I can see the obvious value, but on the other hand, they are mentally tough. Obviously, that’s sort of the point: if I can’t maintain a steady pace for five miles, what hope have I got for a half-marathon? On the other hand, I found today’s five miles at half-marathon pace pretty tough, and it just sets me thinking: “If I struggle doing five miles at half-marathon pace, how can I do 6.22 miles at 10k pace next weekend, and 13.1 miles at half-marathon pace in a month?” Of course, for those I won’t have had quite such hard weeks in preparation, and the race adrenaline will carry me through too. That aside, I was pretty happy; I ran five miles with the quickest mile being 7:30 and the slowest 7:35, which is consistency that I’m proud of.

Next week I’ve got the Battle of Sedgemoor 10k, so I’m hoping to do a medium-long distance run early in the week, and then complete one or two gentle runs to keep my legs fresh, before kicking on with distance again the week after.

A little bit about… recovery weeks

by Ben

[Disclaimer: I am not a qualified coach, and this post is only based on advice I have received, and my own experience. What works well for me might not necessarily work well for you.]

This week, I can’t rave about a successful tempo run, or setting a new elevation record. I won’t be extending my long run, or running a set of intervals. In fact, this week my running is extremely dull. That’s because I’m on my recovery week. A few people have asked me what this is and why I’m doing it, so I thought I’d write a bit more about it here.

Unfortunately a recovery week is NOT all about relaxing on the beach…

Essentially, a recovery week is exactly what it sounds like: a whole week of recovery! Unfortunately though, this doesn’t mean that I’m sat on the sofa the whole time. (Or at least, I’m not meant to be…) Much as after a particularly tough race you might want to take a few days to recover, probably including a low intensity workout, a recovery week comes after a tough few weeks.

For my own training, I tend to include a recovery week every fourth week. After three tough weeks of training, normally including the full variety of hills, speed and distance, the body is fatigued. To continue to train at the same level increases the risk of injury or illness, so I scale everything back for the following week. Normally, this would be a total distance drop of around 30%, so if I’ve been totalling 25 miles a week, I’ll drop down to around 17 or 18 miles. Within that, each run will be easier. That’s not to say that every workout will be at a “recovery pace”, but I won’t be conciously pushing myself to run fast: just comfortably.

In addition to the lighter workload, I try to include more “mat work” – core exercises, stretching and foam roller sessions. It is also a great time to get a deep tissue massage, as it’s best not to get these shortly before harder workouts.

Recovery is not just important for injury prevention though; it is while the body is not exercising that it strengthens; without effective recovery exercise sessions and training plans will only make the body weaker, not stronger. Personally, I hate recovery weeks: I feel like I’m not achieving anything. But I know that it is helping my body improve from the last three weeks of pushing myself, and will leave me rested and better able to push myself over the next three weeks.

So, how can you incorporate recovery weeks into your own running? Firstly, don’t feel you have to do exactly what I do! That’s just what I’ve found works best for me. In fact, at the moment while I’m still essentially in rehabilitation for my knee injury, I’m dropping about 40%. You might want to cut back more often, but by less (maybe every third week, but only drop about 20%), or less often, and by more (perhaps every sixth week, but cut back 50%).

Sticking to recovery for a whole week isn’t always very easy, particularly if, like me, you enjoy parkrun on a Saturday: sticking to a slightly gentler pace rather than chasing a PB on rested legs can be tough. But, for me at least, it’s worth it over all!

Fortnight’s Training Review: 17 Feb – 1 Mar

by Ben

This post originally appeared on Ben’s old blog, Running From the Physio.

Due to various goings on, I didn’t run as often as normal in the fortnight leading up to my half marathon. This was partly planned, as I was scheduled to taper before the race, and partly unplanned, as I missed a number of the scheduled runs for a few reasons: mostly laziness. Therefore, rather than post two pretty short posts, I’ve gathered them together into one.

Tuesday: 3.01 miles @ 8:31 min/mile
Back to the evening for this Tuesday run. I had some issues with my left knee (as always), but they really only bothered me towards the start of the run, and faded away as I was going. The pace was pretty easy over this distance.

Wednesday: 2 miles planned
I dropped this run, due to a combination of long hours at work, and some sort of a bug. I would obviously have preferred to have run it, and stuck to my schedule, but being the shortest of my runs, I wasn’t too bothered to lose it.

Thursday: 6.35 miles @ 8:29 min/mile
Having missed the run the day before, I was briefly tempted to lengthen this one to seven miles, but given that I was feeling a bit down because of the bug, I resisted the temptation. The run itself felt pretty good, pretty easy.

Saturday: Parkrun, 5km (3.11 miles) @ 8:38 min/mile
I had always intended to run this one relatively easily. Being the weekend before my inaugural half, I didn’t want to suddenly injure anything, and I also wanted to make sure that I my legs weren’t too tired. My slower pace was further enforced when I found myself running with my friend’s 10 year old son. To be fair to him, he normally tears around the course at a pretty good lick, certainly sub-8 minute miles, but today he didn’t seem to be feeling too good. His Dad got stuck further back with another child, and it was actually a very good excuse to take it easy!

Sunday: 8 miles planned
I would love to blame this entirely on some sort of a bug, but mostly I just felt tired and lazy, and didn’t go for a run. The tiredness might have been caused by a bug, but really? Lazy.

Tuesday: 2 miles planned
Lazy, lazy, lazy.

Wednesday: 4.06 miles @ 9:40 min/mile (unplanned)
Lazy… oh no, hang on! I missed Tuesday’s two miles, and decided that I would get whatever mileage I could face done and Wednesday and call that it. I knew I had a busy day planned on Thursday (I worked over 12 hours in the end) and so couldn’t rely on getting anything further done. I took a nice, easy, slow trot around the block.

Thursday: 5 miles planned
As mentioned, my long day at work saw for this run!

Weekly Training Review: 10 Feb – 16 Feb

by Ben

This post originally appeared on Ben’s old blog, Running From the Physio.

Something of a return to form for me this week. After only completing three of my scheduled five runs in the previous week, I hit 100% again this time around. But that said, all was not quite as rosy as it might have looked: Tuesday and Wednesday were two of the least enjoyable runs I’ve done. I can’t really pinpoint a specific reason, but I just did not enjoy them in the slightest. Over the weekend, we were up in Telford for a wedding, so I completed the Telford parkrun with my wife, before a shortened “long” run on Sunday after travelling home. That said, the mileage for the week was still in excess of 20 miles, so although I never ran more than 7 miles in one go, I guess it was okay.

Tuesday: 2.20 miles @ 9:31 min/mile
This run did not particularly start well! Having played football the night before, I didn’t want to get out of bed. Having achieved that, I then discovered that it was raining and horrible outside, and wanted to curl back up in bed again. Somehow, I overcame that too, and found myself actually outside and going for a run. Which was something of a surprise! So much of a surprise in fact that I forgot which way I was meant to go. As a result, rather than a 3 mile run, this turned out to be a 2 mile run. Still, other than that it was… well… horrible. I basically spent the whole run wishing I was anywhere other than out in the rain and cold running. (Yes, yes, I know… world’s smallest violin etc. etc.) Anyway, I did it, the miles are recorded, and sometimes that just has to be enough.

Wednesday: 3.09 miles @ 9:25 min/mile
On the bright side, I managed two runs pre-work in a single week for the first time ever. On the negative side, I found this run about as enjoyable as Tuesday’s. On the bright side, I remembered to effectively go the wrong way again, and therefore cancel out the previous day’s mistake.

Thursday: 6.35 miles @ 8:39 min/mile
After a couple of pretty miserable runs, I decided midway through this one that I was just going to push and run a bit faster. For most of my half-marathon training, I’ve been plodding around at a pace around 9:30, in order to minimise the risk of injury. I hate running within myself though: I love running quickly. And so, I decided that all things considered, I wanted to enjoy this run. I did. I meant to slow down again for the last mile or so, but I didn’t really manage it.

Saturday: Parkrun, 5km (3.11 miles) @ 12:19 min/mile
As I mentioned at the top, it was a bit of parkrun tourism for me this week. Not only that, but it was my wife’s first parkrun! Normally, my wife has the task of looking after our baby daughter during the parkrun, but as we were staying in a hotel full of our family this weekend, we were both free to run together. As an added bonus, it was Telford parkrun’s first birthday, so we got to sing “Happy Birthday” at the start line, and had cake at the finish! Although the pace was obviously less than I would usually run, I actually think it did my legs a bit of good, flushing them out a little bit. Most of all, I was extremely proud of my wife for running the whole course, the furtherest she has managed since pregnancy.

Sunday: 6.27 miles @ 8:44 min/mil
We spent Sunday morning driving back from Telford to Taunton. As a result of that drive, and the weekend itself, which was pretty stressful and tiring, I didn’t feel that I could face a proper long run on Sunday. I headed out on my four mile route, but turned off towards the end, and did something that I very rarely do: just ran where I felt like! Ah: turn right here, how about through that park there, ooo: let’s go that way. It was fun, maybe not very practical to do very often in a proper training plan, but something I might try and repeat when I’m not so precious about getting everything as scheduled. I enjoyed the run in general, and my pace reflects (and maybe causes) that.

Weekly Training Review: 3 Feb – 9 Feb

by Ben

This post originally appeared on Ben’s old blog, Running From the Physio.

After a few weeks of solidly getting all of my runs achieved, and being genuinely enthusiastic about getting out for them, this week has come as a bit of a shock, and is the first real blip. All told, I only completed three of my scheduled five runs, which is disappointing, but it could be worse: I did my longer distances, so in terms of building for my half-marathon I should be okay, I just need to be wary of letting my body sufficiently recover.

Tuesday: 3.09 miles @ 9:35 min/mile
Amazingly, this is three weeks in a row now that I’ve managed a run before work on a Tuesday. Despite just being 3 miles at a slow pace, this was a pretty tough circuit. I played 5-a-side football on Monday night for the first time in a few weeks, and so my body was still trying to recover from that when I hurled it into this. It also meant that this was the fourth day in a row of exercise. But all that aside, the run was a pretty solid one, and I got around.

Wednesday: 2 miles
Missed a run for the first time in just under a month. I got quite down-heartened about this in the evening, but the fact is, the weather was horrible and I wasn’t feeling particularly well. It’s always a shame to miss a run, but I’m a bit more philosophical about it now!

Thursday: 6.35 miles @ 8:58 min/mile
The important thing was that I got back out again on Thursday. Despite missing the run the day before, I felt very tired during this run. I definitely had the edge of a cold or something, and working 22 hours across Monday and Tuesday probably didn’t set me up particularly well for an energetic week. Pretty happy with the pace around this, considering how I was feeling.

Saturday: Parkrun, 5km (3.11 miles)
Amazingly, given the horrible weather that has been with us more or less constantly since mid-December, this was the first time that the Longrun Meadow parkrun has had to be cancelled. I would have liked to have got out and done some miles anyway, but the weather was pretty terrible, and I had things to do around the house, so it never happened.

Sunday: 11.38 miles @ 9:39 min/mile
The furthest I have ever run – again! While last week I crept over my previous distance record, this time I surpassed it by over a mile. I got out pretty early, hoping to avoid the worst of the weather, but in the end the day was a lot better than forecast, so I probably was out in more rain than I needed to be! Still, it certainly wasn’t bad weather, and I felt pretty good. My left knee was a bit painful during the run, and certainly gave me trouble through the rest of day, but it doesn’t feel too bad. Worryingly, I was quite short of breath at the end, which is not something I’ve ever really experienced while running before, especially at this sort of pace. It might be connected to the edge of a cold I have – hopefully it isn’t anything more serious than that.