16th Feb 2020
This week was a tough one, partly because it's been bookended by two storms good enough to have names, partly because I've been battling what I assume must be coronavirus instead of man-flu, and partly because I decided to swap things about in the plan to make it less logical.
The first bit, those storms. I don't really mind crap weather too much, although I prefer it if it happens after I've started. Getting out there and embracing the suckiness of it all is part of the fun for me, so storms Ciara and Dennis didn't really do anything to put me off – I take it as some extra head training.
The week started with a 35 minute Tempo run that I was not looking forward to. I'd had a fairly rough run the day before and wasn't feeling confident about hitting what I needed to. But I got out there and it all just sort of clicked, I was aiming at 4:30/km average and ended up hitting 4:29/km, so that was good.
I should have seen the next bit coming, though. Whenever I have an unexpectedly good run, as in one where it takes no effort to outperform what I should be able to do, I can pretty much guarantee that the next day I'll be full of cold. I have no idea how that works on a physiological level, but it's been the case for as long as I can remember. Sure enough, Tuesday I felt like death.
So that was bad news, so the fact I had 10km to do Tuesday as well wasn't ideal. I'd missed running with the club on Tuesday nights and knew they were having a run I could tack a couple of km onto to get to target, so I moved what should have been a Sunday run to Tuesday night. Surprisingly this one went excellently too, a little too much. I got a bit carried away and ended up averaging 5:08/km when it should have been closer to 5:45/km. Oh well!
The fact that I managed to miss the signs twice in a row is incredible, but obviously I woke up Wednesday with full on MAN-FLU™️. There was a strength and conditioning session in the plan, but ended up first postponing it until Thursday and then sacking it off altogether. It made sense to just rest up for Friday.
Friday was the longest run so far, 24km. I work a set of hours that lets me finish early on Fridays and get my long run in, but I'd managed to get sucked into writing some code and completely forgot to eat. Still needed to get out and running, so I did. What followed was a nice early bit of bonking practise. Not fun, but got the 24 done averaging 5:52/km. A little slower than the 5:45/km I wanted, but it'll do.
Sunday was the last run of the week, and storm Dennis was starting to get going. I pretty much always run in full length leggings, but it was time to embrace the suck and get out there in shorts. This was a varying pace session, and I hit what I needed to hit.
Overall I got 54.1km done this week, which is actually the biggest week I've had in as long as I've been tracking my runs again. Happy enough with that despite dropping the gym session. Definitely don't want to make a habit of that.
Next week brings my first double run day, as part of 3 consecutive days and then some rest before Brighton Half Marathon on Sunday. Hoping to be capable of ~1hr40m for that, which is by no means fast but would show I'm on the right track.
