Training Camp Vibes - Day 1 & 2

After last week's little speed bump it's full steam ahead this week. Training camp mode. Plan is batter the legs and build enough conditioning to move on to the next stage. Hope to get the CTL back up to 61 by end of the week. Next week ease back and pick a race at the weekend.

Monday - double easy runs. 6 & 3 over the trails nice and easy and felt pretty good. Plenty tired by the end of the day. Even got an S&C session in with glutes and calf focus.

Tuesday - Up early and struggled to get my legs awake. They were pretty battered from 5 days of heavy training load (well, for me anyway - 48 miles). Out to Eddington do do volume reps. Really would have loved to run these indoors on the treadmill as it was -3 but need to get confidence that this session was designed for.

Session plan - 3 miles progressive tempo (6.15, 6.00, 5.45) [3 recovery] 1 mile at 10k (5.3x) [2 recovery] 1 mile 5k (5.25)

The aim of the session is to run faster than 5.50s at the end of a progressive. Something I usually struggle with. 10k and 5k should be fairly under control and the 5k is just to get something faster in. Overall the plan is a fairly comfortable session with some quicker pace in there.

Outcome - 

Mile warm up in 6.46 feeling easy. Very quick stretch as it was bloody cold.

3 mile progressive - 6.08, 5.54, 5.41. Really good, started way to quick but eased back and then maintained. End of the loop by the school seemed to be a dead spot and pace mysteriously dropped off (from 5.37 - 5.45 on 3rd mile) but I see that as a good thing if I'm faster that these paces ;). HR was solid 150 / 162 / 166 avg and didn't blow much more than threshold.

3.19 easy walk

1 Mile @ 10k - bit hot on pace and power (5.29/mm) felt very comfortable and HR only got to what I would expect at end of first mile of a 5k race so at that pace it's really solid.

2 min recovery walk

1 mile @ 5k - OK, went out way too hard (2.35 at 800m and 3.15 for 1km) and not sure but veered off course towards the car park which was unexpectedly hilly back up to the road and then crap icy path to contend with. No idea what possesed me to do this. Decided early to just run it really hard and I was blowing by half way and faded. Came in at 5.24/mm which is actually right. HR avg 164 and max of 172 is actually really positive but my legs are just too battered from recent training.

Easy cool down to make it 7 miles.

Really liked that session. On recovered legs I would be strong at the end but a great way to get 5 miles of really good work in. Targeted my weakness and came through. 

Ended up sacking the recovery double as was too tired and legs ached!