Peaking Duck

Time to sharpen up this week. Peak for the National Champs on Sunday.

Basic outline of the goals -

Short term - 1500m this week. Next week, mainly easy back to conditioning. Build back for 3000m & 800m indoors start of March. Get a solid (i.e not 100% Parkrun time in).

Mid term - standard training - block of 5k Races late April / Early May. Recover from that and back to standard training. Race through this training.

Long term - June / July focus on a target race at each distance over 3/4 week period. Go for times, 100% track training. Get a steeplechase on the board. 

August - rest up, back off and recovery / conditioning. Think about maybe getting that hernia sorted.

So, that out the way, this week.

Monday - full rest. Normatecs, stretching, etc. Feel good

Tuesday - track. 1500m specific session. 8 x 400m off 100m walk. Ended up with short break after 4 to swap out spikes. Asics shreded my calf. Adidas much better.

70, 72, 69, 69 (change spikes) 72, 72, 72, 72

Basically bang on mile pace. Session was TOUGH. I felt completely flat from the off and had zero ping in my legs. Really struggled and feeling the effects of Sundays race still in the legs. Rest up, eat well and get sleep - I need the legs to come back to me.

On a DC positive note, for 72's to feel so slow and flat I must be going well !! Tired, was very cold conditions, completely solo and not in Dragonfly. Worth a decent chunk more on a good day.

Happy enough with that. These are the sessions to bag and move on. Fitness is improved off that.

Results from Sunday updated. 9:29.9 official. 3 in UK V45 indoors and 2 overall (Connor C ran in December). Things are moving in the right direction. I'm a way off where I want to be but each day I get a little stronger. Bad sessions now are the great sessions of the last few years.

Runbritain ranking at 0.7 which is an improvement but hoping that drops to around 0.4 once the SSS updates! - What a geek lol

So, anyways the important thing now is to consider how to get myself to Sheffield in the best possible position.

The session. Take the positives, it was bloody hard and you ground it out. 

Food - I've eaten well for lunch, eat mainly clean today and make sure you get all your nutrients in and drink more water. Relax over the next couple of days and don't be to precious on diet. Just lay off the binge eating crap.

Recover - no weights today just stretch and roll. The body is not back to fully recovered and ideally now I'll nail a confident session on Thursday. Get plenty of active work done and focus on sleep tonight. 

Training - no double today and tomorrow I'll save it until coke club and add the additional loop to make it around 9.6 miles with the first bit 'steady' and the 8 nice and slow. Ideally I'll feel much better after tomorrow's run and be ready to push onwards.

Wednesday - longer run planned today, first chance to bank some conditioning during race phase. Feel good, just ache from the races and sessions. Plan is to build that foundation today and recover well for tomorrows session. 

Got to CC early tonight. Straight into steady - 6.23 then eased back when it got to 5.40s and finished to about 1.7 miles @ 6.13/mm avge. 10 miles after with Rich and Wayne for 11.7 @ 8.04 avge feeling easy. Calf muscles are tight so need to address that tomorrow. Tonight, ate well and now plan to sleep heavy. Tomorrow will either be a session or rest and do the session Friday. Clear aim this week is to arrive in Sheffield fit and healthy.

Must admit, today I feel super strong. Going out at that pace and HR and effort all pretty low felt a really good place to be. Right now I am fit, I need to protect that and move forward but there is no point in taking risks from here. Tomorrows decision will be key for the week.

Runbritain ranking is back, down to 0.6 - Sundays race was another 0.5 SSS (fast) which is a bit annoying but hey ho. Times on board and that. One day I'll hit one of those Parkruns with a random super high SSS and run well !

Thursday - track. Decided on session as legs were heavy but not sore. Warmed up at 6.30/mm feeling easy. Legs are really starting to build in conditioning. Plan was 2 sets of 200m at pace followed by 200m float. 200m walk recovery between sets.  Short and sweet - a nice peaking session that should become a go-to pre-race from now (if it works lol)

The plan was 1500m target pace - 35 per 200m.

First rep settling in and 32 secs. Too quick. Float round then back off on rep 2 - 37 secs. Too slow. I'm like goldilocks here. 3rd rep in 34 which is perfect and grab that feeling. 4th rep up in 34 too and float back for a mile set.

Second set and first rep is up in 32 - sod it, lets do these at 800m pace as I feel relaxed. Next up 33 then 31 and 31 to finish.

2km cool down and a decent pre-race workout banked.

Those paces felt much easier than planned for the majority which is a good sign that things are continuing the upward trend.

Plan now is to either shakeout tonight and rest tomorrow or simply rest throughout. From here I just need to get myself on the start line feeling pinging.

Feeling great about Sunday, I'm in decent shape and running well. Obviously a fair way from where my ambitions lay but it's really nice to be able to put out some solid paces right now.

Friday - rest day. Most difficult part of preparing for a target race is the extra rest but if you want to get those last bits of percent out of you then you have to go easy! Feel good today, not much sleep last night in that wind but legs and head all feeling sharp.

Today I'll do some rolling and some activation work. Getting towards the end of a racing block I'm always looking forward to starting again and planning the next target.

Saturday - err strange one. Woke up at 5am as 2 of my neighbours houses were on fire. Totally destroyed one and the other one is not too clever. Puts a lot of things into perspective. Absolutely devastated for them all. Hit ParkRun - tried Pocket in St Neots for the first time. My 51st PR on my 13th course. I'll keep doing these easy tourist ones when I'm not racing them.

Felt really easy today. 19:21 relaxed and not really pushing anything at all. Few strides and a jog either side and that's me set for tomorrow.

Shame I didn't bother with the HRM today but it was just steady. Form is boiling away nicely now. Mind you, going to attempt a minute a mile faster next week so that'll be interesting !

Sunday - first things first - Sheffield is too far for a day trip !! I was leggy today, just didn't have that pop I had in my last couple of races. 2 1/2 hours in the car and I felt bleugh. That said, I took the shit or bust approach once I saw who was running. Simon and Jamie would rinse me in a slow race so I had to take it out. The plan was to run 70s but I never got that going. 72 through 400m and 2.59 through a km. I actually just held 71/72 pace the whole race. With 600m to go myself and Jamie gapped Simon & Steve and I tried to push on but pushing was just keeping pace. Jamie came past at about 150m to go and I had no response.

Silver medal in 4:28.70.

Thinking in the (long) journey home that was actually a really good 'bad' race. Not what I was after but I ran hard on the front and gave myself a chance to win it. I know from here I can get those paces down. The pace was consistent throughout. 1.29 at 500m 2.59 at 1k and 4.28 at 1500m. I just need to go faster, I'm not fading at all. I'm at the races and actually racing well.

From here I'll go back to an 'easy' week next week and build that conditioning back in. Next race proper is BMAF 3000m in a few weeks and I'll hopefully be stronger by then.