Planning to Train

Photo finish from last night. Me in 4th. Held off a big bunch in the finish.

OK, so time to take stock of where I am and where I want to get.

* Last 2 races have been a little below expectation. To the point where they have been the very minimum of acceptable for where I am at.

* I feel really tired and achey A LOT even when TSB is positive

* I'm hitting targets in training for intervals

* I've built a fairly solid base over the past 6 1/2 weeks now

* Training hasn't had a whole load of consistency

* When recovered I feel really fit

It's fairly obvious that I've pushed a little too hard. I said yesterday, it's no bad thing BUT I need to bring that back into line.

Race wise, off the 1500m, I get a VDOT of 60. That equates to bang on 17 min 5k. Training paces should be 400s in 75 and 200s in 37. I've been going way harder than that.

Yes, fresh legged I am sure I would be quicker but I think a couple of weeks bringing everything back in line and training slightly easier than current fitness will give me the bump I need.

I feel a hell of a lot quicker than 17.26 and 4.35 right now but those are the numbers I need to work with.

I'm also going to give myself a really consistent block of training rather than doing what my body allows me to.

I've recently upped my mileage to average over 45 miles per week. Adding in short, hard 800m reps into that is just asking for trouble.

So the plan now is to take the rest of this week to recover. Easy running, not looking at pace just relaxed and let my legs come back to me.

I really want to start adding in some threshold reps. 6 x km off short recovery at a relaxed hard pace (3.30 per km or so) just to get the body relaxing at a decent clip and build the lactate threshold.

I'll probably keep some speed work in but keep it much more relaxed and closer to 5k pace and increase the intervals. This I'll probably do on the treddy - 20 x 60 on 60 off just to keep the legs switched on but keep the pace at 5k treadmill pace (not real world as that would be a bloody tough session!)

I'm hoping that these sessions will start to help recovery, just switching in some pace with volume.

Final thing is reducing overall volume. 30-35 miles a week for me and I know I can run pretty hard every day. I just need my legs to come back to me and I do believe I'll get a really big form boost.

My steeplechase work is paying off, I'm confident enough to run a 2k chase and happy to hurdle every barrier. Bit more water jump practice in a couple of weeks and I'll be good to go. I'll keep up 2 x strength sessions on the mid body, out of range strength that is critical and that should be good enough.

So basically that's the plan for the next training block. I really enjoy the speed work but at the minute I am getting nowhere near enough recovery to progress.