Sunday, July 1, 2007

New Training Routine

Recently I've felt that I needed to step up my training for two reasons. The first is the obvious one, which is that my pace and endurance has outstripped the amount of miles that I've been running every week (which was an average of 13.1 a week) as well as only running roads/paved paths. The second reason is that I now know that I will have to run more often in more varied terrains in order to increase my endurance. This past week was my first week in a step towards that direction.

Sunday: 10k Race, 1.5 mile cool down (Flat, Paved Path)
Monday: Rest Day
Tuesday: 13.15 (Flat, Paved Path. Endurance Run)
Wednesday: 4.11 (Treadmill. Five .25 Mile Speed Legs)
Thursday: 5.56 (Trail Running)
Friday: 3.48 (Trail Running)
Saturday: 4.02 (Trail Running)

I started the week off with a 10k race and set a PR. Always feels good to run a better race than the one before. I've had a packed few weekends in a row so I decided to take Monday off and rest, but this only lead to some downtime, so I finished Ultramarathon Man. Couple the inspiration from this book with the PR and I went out on Tuesday and ran my longest single day training session at 13.15 miles. Ran it nonstop and faster than I have ever ran a Half Marathon. The kicker with this, though, was that the next day I didn't feel tired or sore, which is much different than my previous long runs. This was a huge check mark off my list of steps that needed to be reached, which buoyed me for the rest of the week. Finally, the last two stages of the week: speed and hills. I did a short speed session on Wednesday and then the rest of the week was all Trail Running at Mount Madonna. Elevation gain was huge, with the last run amounting to about an 1,100 foot ascent over 2 miles, 3/4 of which was in the first mile. In addition to the running I was able to get in about 8 miles of hiking. It felt great to hike the same trails before or after my runs. Could focus on the trail and actually feel the calves and hamstrings burn. Great trails.

With my endurance run, speed runs and hill running worked into my routine I feel much better about my endurance for the upcoming Marathon. Couple those with the 38 miles I ran last week and I am very pleased. The next step would be to continue this routine through the coming weeks and months and watch as my endurance grows.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was Monday your first day off in weeks? If so, it seriously sounds like you are overtraining and it can only lead to injury or exhaustion. I would recommend following an established build up program rather than making it up yourself. The Hal Higdon ones are good and are available for free on his website - they've been used by 100s of 1000s of runners and are well proven.

Brian Hawkinson said...

Thanks for the input and I will look into that training plan, but Monday was merely the only day I had off for that week. The week prior I didn't run 4 days, then 2 the week before and 4 the week before... So I have plenty of rest time to recuperate (yesterday for example, which gave me two rest days in the past week). I do worry about overtraining, but at this point I don't run near close enough to my limit to have to worry about that.

Thanks for the input!

Anonymous said...

Good good :) Sounds like you're being sensible then.