YTD - 475 k
Like many people around this time of year I have had a big fortnight on the work front. 12 days straight and 110 hrs later and I got a 3 day weekend. During this time because I was working away I didn't have an opportunity to train much. I managed 1 session in the 9 days which is certainly not ideal leading up to the c2s.
On Tuesday in what felt like sub zero temps I left work at 5.20 pm and headed for 2 laps of the 2.4 km fitness test track we have at work. I didn't have much daylight left so I cracked straight on with the session and decided on the run to do 2 x 2.4 km time trials as such. Not wanting to go flat out my time trial was more specific time orientated and aimed to complete the track in under 9 mins but not excessively under. I intended to have a 5 min rest between the two sets and after a 9 day break I was pleased that i comfortably achieved what I set out to do and ran 8.56 and 8.58. The last set I needed to run 1.22 for the last 400 m as I took it too casual from the 1200 m turn around but I managed.
Having Friday and this weekend free I squeezed in 3 days of training. My intent was to do a long run today but my wife got called into work at late notice so I had to quickly head out before lunch and do what I had for the previous two days.
I have a 8.85 km loop from home that I have been running since I moved here in Dec. During the summer I struggled with lack of fitness and the dry heat. It has a long gradual hill that just exhausted me everytime I ran it. My slowest during this time was 44.18 which is shocking. I now run it comfortably in less than 40 mins.
My weekend efforts saw me run it in 37.00, 37.51 and 36.33. My loop PB is 36.23 so I was suprised that I achieved that result today. Yesterday my legs felt heavy after friday's run, today my legs felt like they were back energy wise but my quads were a little sore and are still now. I don't mind however and in fact I am glad because that proves that I achieved something that will benefit me, I put my body through some distress and that can only be a good thing especially when distress doesn't coincide with injury.
That's all, until next time
Happy Training!
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
I did it!
YTD - 445km
And I must admit with ease aswell.
My aim was to run a relatively longer session and I achieved that with a steady 76 min run over undulating and at times very hilly terrain. 30% of it was on trails and I felt good the whole way.
Estimated about 16km and I felt as though I could have gone another 5 -10 km without too many issues. I woke up with a tiny amount of soreness but that was to be expected.
I also ended up doing an interval session and a short run throughout the week aswell. Not much else to write about just enjoying the training and hope it continues until the C2S next month.
Happy Training!
And I must admit with ease aswell.
My aim was to run a relatively longer session and I achieved that with a steady 76 min run over undulating and at times very hilly terrain. 30% of it was on trails and I felt good the whole way.
Estimated about 16km and I felt as though I could have gone another 5 -10 km without too many issues. I woke up with a tiny amount of soreness but that was to be expected.
I also ended up doing an interval session and a short run throughout the week aswell. Not much else to write about just enjoying the training and hope it continues until the C2S next month.
Happy Training!
Saturday, July 03, 2010
The Lone Trainer
YTD - 455 km
Over the past 8 months I have left a state that I called home for 10 years and moved back to Victoria. With this relocation came a new job or rather a new role and a massive scenery and climate change for my family. Furthermore it has also seen my training become a very lonely and solemn affair. I have nobody that I can call a training buddy or even a club that I have found that even compares to what I had come to take for granted in Queensland or more appropriately Brisbane.
Don't get me wrong I understand that I am comparing apples and oranges in regards to what is available in the two cities but I didn't think that I would notice much difference and if I did I didn't think that I would care that much.
I do enjoy the solo training session, myself versus nature versus a stopwatch that seems to click by a little faster every year I get older, however there are always times when you need the social interaction or just some company to enjoy this great sport of ours.
I am probably being a little dramatic and really the fact that my work takes up most of my time lately that I can't even train at a respectable hour anyway makes my little whinge completely uncalled for anyway. I'll will have to suck it up wait for it to heat up, wait for the days to be a little longer and then maybe I will have more of a chance to stumble across a group. Maybe I will just wait another 3 months and begin the track season again and I will get my full dose of social interaction with people that enjoy what I enjoy.
So what has come of this loneliness I hear you ask, well my inability to pace myself. My garmin has died and with no-one to chat to and run casually I find myself running every session as a tempo or worse a full on aerobic onslaught. Trying to PB my training routes is a problem that has entered my sub conscious. Before I know it I am sitting on 4 min k pace for the bulk of my run.
'why should I practice running slow? I already know how to run slow. I want to run fast....'
Emil Zatopek about interval training.
Not quite in his league and I wish I could train at a high intensity all the time and achieve great results but the sad reality is that I can't and need to slow down. This phase I am going through now has stopped me from undertaking any significant distances and although I am not currently training for a long race even running beyond 70 mins has been few and far between.
Next weekend I will attempt a longer run and during the week leading up to it I will be making more of a conscious effort to stick in the high 4's - 5 min/k pace. Hopefully by writing this down it will help in getting rid of this disorder I have caught.
Fingers Crossed!
Over the past 8 months I have left a state that I called home for 10 years and moved back to Victoria. With this relocation came a new job or rather a new role and a massive scenery and climate change for my family. Furthermore it has also seen my training become a very lonely and solemn affair. I have nobody that I can call a training buddy or even a club that I have found that even compares to what I had come to take for granted in Queensland or more appropriately Brisbane.
Don't get me wrong I understand that I am comparing apples and oranges in regards to what is available in the two cities but I didn't think that I would notice much difference and if I did I didn't think that I would care that much.
I do enjoy the solo training session, myself versus nature versus a stopwatch that seems to click by a little faster every year I get older, however there are always times when you need the social interaction or just some company to enjoy this great sport of ours.
I am probably being a little dramatic and really the fact that my work takes up most of my time lately that I can't even train at a respectable hour anyway makes my little whinge completely uncalled for anyway. I'll will have to suck it up wait for it to heat up, wait for the days to be a little longer and then maybe I will have more of a chance to stumble across a group. Maybe I will just wait another 3 months and begin the track season again and I will get my full dose of social interaction with people that enjoy what I enjoy.
So what has come of this loneliness I hear you ask, well my inability to pace myself. My garmin has died and with no-one to chat to and run casually I find myself running every session as a tempo or worse a full on aerobic onslaught. Trying to PB my training routes is a problem that has entered my sub conscious. Before I know it I am sitting on 4 min k pace for the bulk of my run.
'why should I practice running slow? I already know how to run slow. I want to run fast....'
Emil Zatopek about interval training.
Not quite in his league and I wish I could train at a high intensity all the time and achieve great results but the sad reality is that I can't and need to slow down. This phase I am going through now has stopped me from undertaking any significant distances and although I am not currently training for a long race even running beyond 70 mins has been few and far between.
Next weekend I will attempt a longer run and during the week leading up to it I will be making more of a conscious effort to stick in the high 4's - 5 min/k pace. Hopefully by writing this down it will help in getting rid of this disorder I have caught.
Fingers Crossed!
Sunday, June 20, 2010
ADF Cross Country
YTD - 420 km
Yet another long absence from posting but this hasn't been the case for my training. I have been training consistently and although I am struggling with the cooler temps once I am out there I am running well.
I have registered for the City 2 Surf which seems to be a regular routine for me to enter every two years. Not sure why but I ran in 2006 and 2008 and now this year. I am hoping to achieve a PB in this event and is my focus for the next 7 weeks. I hope to get close to 56 mins which is over 2 mins faster than I have ran the event before.
I have also just returned from Canberra after competing in the ADF Cross Country Champs at Stromlo. Great Event, the weather was pretty good although the wind was a little strong which made the event alot tougher than it should have been. I am unsure how I went place wise, certainly not in the podium standings but I ran 29.05 for the 3 x 2.5 km loops of the Stromlo track.
That's all for now
Happy Training!
Yet another long absence from posting but this hasn't been the case for my training. I have been training consistently and although I am struggling with the cooler temps once I am out there I am running well.
I have registered for the City 2 Surf which seems to be a regular routine for me to enter every two years. Not sure why but I ran in 2006 and 2008 and now this year. I am hoping to achieve a PB in this event and is my focus for the next 7 weeks. I hope to get close to 56 mins which is over 2 mins faster than I have ran the event before.
I have also just returned from Canberra after competing in the ADF Cross Country Champs at Stromlo. Great Event, the weather was pretty good although the wind was a little strong which made the event alot tougher than it should have been. I am unsure how I went place wise, certainly not in the podium standings but I ran 29.05 for the 3 x 2.5 km loops of the Stromlo track.
That's all for now
Happy Training!
Sunday, May 09, 2010
4 Month summary!
Mth - 30 k
YTD - 270 k
Wow my life has turned upside down since moving to Victoria. I have been working now for about 4 mths here and on average working 10 hour days. A few times a month I will at least be working a weekend day if not all weekend. That probably doesn't sound like much but when you have worked for 12 years and then move to another place thinking that not much will change it is a rather rude shock.
I have been training but rather sporadically since my last post. I have not been able to get time off for the event I wanted to do in May which was disappointing but in hindsight I wouldn't have been able to train as much as I would have hoped to anyway. At work I have a few students that are pretty keen on running and although some of them are not what you call dedicated to train for events they are dedicated to train for fitness and regularly conduct interval training after work. I have been participating in some of their sessions which has given me some motivation to get back into training.
Over the past few months I have found a few tracks around home that include varying terrain, currently I have two loops that I do on most occassions when I want to see what my fitmess is like. Of the two loops one is about half the distance but has alot of hills. In january when I first discovered it I ran it in around 18.30 now my PB is 16 flat. The second loop which I have measured out is 8.85k, I think my worst time for that was over 44 mins with my best being 38.40. If I can break 40 mins for this I am travelling ok.
The shorter stuff comes alot easier for me and currently I am focussing on trying to get as close to beaking 8 mins for 2.4 k as possible. This is the fitness test for my employment but the track they run on has a long gentle incline that totally destroys you from 1600 - 2100 m. My best so far was in Feb with a 4 min out and a 4.17 back. A recent interval session that I did saw me do 4.03 on the return leg with 1200 m of intervals under 1.20 per 400 m under my belt before that. So I believe I can improve on my 8.17.
Sub 8.10 is my aim for the next one, the over 30 course record currently stands at 8.46 as my 8.17 didn't get recorded, however the under 30 record stands at 8.07. It would be nice to get under my younger competition but in saying that the fella that ran that time is starting to get his fitness back and is capable of sub 7.40 on a flatter track.
Last week saw me run the Nail Can Hill run. 11.3 k up and over the big hill in Albury. Hard work if you don't train on hills which is what I did. I felt good on the flat but the hill killed me. I struggled and had nothing in my legs. I had organised a team from work and even though I had a shocking run I managed 51 mins with another team managing 48. The next two across the line were 52 min and 57 mins which got us 2nd place in the business / corporate category which was a pleasant surprise.
In the coming month or therabouts I have requested leave to compete in the ADF Cross Country Championships in Canberra. If it gets approved then I will be there on the 18 Jun running around Stromlo. In the next fortnight I am thinking of doing the 10 k at Mt Beauty, some of the students at work want me to do the half but I haven't trained for that distnace and I have other things on the go at the moment and 21 k doesn't really benefit them.
Anyway that's all for now.
Happy Training!
YTD - 270 k
Wow my life has turned upside down since moving to Victoria. I have been working now for about 4 mths here and on average working 10 hour days. A few times a month I will at least be working a weekend day if not all weekend. That probably doesn't sound like much but when you have worked for 12 years and then move to another place thinking that not much will change it is a rather rude shock.
I have been training but rather sporadically since my last post. I have not been able to get time off for the event I wanted to do in May which was disappointing but in hindsight I wouldn't have been able to train as much as I would have hoped to anyway. At work I have a few students that are pretty keen on running and although some of them are not what you call dedicated to train for events they are dedicated to train for fitness and regularly conduct interval training after work. I have been participating in some of their sessions which has given me some motivation to get back into training.
Over the past few months I have found a few tracks around home that include varying terrain, currently I have two loops that I do on most occassions when I want to see what my fitmess is like. Of the two loops one is about half the distance but has alot of hills. In january when I first discovered it I ran it in around 18.30 now my PB is 16 flat. The second loop which I have measured out is 8.85k, I think my worst time for that was over 44 mins with my best being 38.40. If I can break 40 mins for this I am travelling ok.
The shorter stuff comes alot easier for me and currently I am focussing on trying to get as close to beaking 8 mins for 2.4 k as possible. This is the fitness test for my employment but the track they run on has a long gentle incline that totally destroys you from 1600 - 2100 m. My best so far was in Feb with a 4 min out and a 4.17 back. A recent interval session that I did saw me do 4.03 on the return leg with 1200 m of intervals under 1.20 per 400 m under my belt before that. So I believe I can improve on my 8.17.
Sub 8.10 is my aim for the next one, the over 30 course record currently stands at 8.46 as my 8.17 didn't get recorded, however the under 30 record stands at 8.07. It would be nice to get under my younger competition but in saying that the fella that ran that time is starting to get his fitness back and is capable of sub 7.40 on a flatter track.
Last week saw me run the Nail Can Hill run. 11.3 k up and over the big hill in Albury. Hard work if you don't train on hills which is what I did. I felt good on the flat but the hill killed me. I struggled and had nothing in my legs. I had organised a team from work and even though I had a shocking run I managed 51 mins with another team managing 48. The next two across the line were 52 min and 57 mins which got us 2nd place in the business / corporate category which was a pleasant surprise.
In the coming month or therabouts I have requested leave to compete in the ADF Cross Country Championships in Canberra. If it gets approved then I will be there on the 18 Jun running around Stromlo. In the next fortnight I am thinking of doing the 10 k at Mt Beauty, some of the students at work want me to do the half but I haven't trained for that distnace and I have other things on the go at the moment and 21 k doesn't really benefit them.
Anyway that's all for now.
Happy Training!
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