I’ve enjoyed the training I’ve managed to put together over the last few months – it’s served me well and I’ve noticed the improvements, not least with the solid run I managed at the Kent Masters XC 2 Saturdays ago.
With the success in staying healthy, over the last few months I’ve been tinkering / playing with my long term plan and what is to come. There are a couple of things that I’ve been puzzling over / considering either as they didn’t feel quite right, I was in a better place than I envisaged, I wanted more of a challenge or some things were missing. So with that in mind I’ve shifted the following things around to look at improving my plan for London (though only time will tell)
- When to cycle on Zwift. Initially I had planned on using this as a Monday morning more intense ride. The challenge with this was being able to raise the intensity on a Monday morning, post a hard marathon session on Saturday, followed by medium run on Sunday. This also meant I wasn’t going to have space for a steady run, that run slightly slower than marathon pace but not easy. I really benefitted from these runs back in 2020. I know my body enjoys running at this pace and I firmly believe the aerobic / mechanical stimulus is key for marathon runs. Alongside which it caters for hitting another pace that I’d miss – and the greater the variety at hitting all the paces in a block the more chance for adaptation. So with this in mind I’ve decided to scrap the medium run on a Sunday, the day after my scheduled hard marathon sessions and use this as a long cycling recovery day. Resting the legs from running whilst helping ease away the day before. This also frees up Monday PM
- Starting marathon work earlier. I was planning on leaving this until Jan, but felt good and decided that now was the time to begin introducing some marathon pace work. Using Saturday’s for this I’ve gone from none to a cadence of every other / 3 weeks until the end of Jan. The idea being to let my body adapt over a longer period of time, whilst having a nice break of a couple of weeks between each marathon based session
- Introducing fast finish or flush. The flush at the end of a speed run has been great, stolen from Mike Smith (reminded by David Roche) rather than a mile @ threshold I’ve been finishing any speed session with 1k @ threshold, which is more than enough to clear the legs and feels great. The fast finish I’ve yet to see work, but I’m looking at ending marathon sessions with faster sections to adapt running hard on tired legs. Alternatively ending with a marathon block at the end of a threshold session to callous my body / brain to what this feels like
- Covering all the pace bases. I made a big change around speed work for Dec / Jan / Feb, bringing in a lot of 10k focused work, that still included 5k elements. I’m really sure that over a 14 day period it’s really important to hit as many different paces as possible, regardless of the stage of training. So deep in specific work using a 21min block that alternates 6/5/4/3/2/1 between marathon/LT/mara/10k/mara/5k you get this great stimulus that also is pretty mentally challenging. Better adaptation. Steady running on Mondays, flys included on Friday’s & marathon work on a Saturday.
- Strength – I’ve been successful at lifting for 3.5 months now, building to heavy weight and I’m sure it’s played a really helpful role in keeping me fit. What I know want to do is shift to an easier lift on a Monday AM, so I can run steady Monday PM, fits in with slightly easier post the longer run on the Saturday. I can then still lift heavyish on Thursday’s until the turn of the year. I’ve changed some of the lifts on a Monday, introducing some new variations that should complement Thursdays (ie short stance split squat & Landmine deadlifts) while leaving any plyo’s to Thursday evenings when my body is more awake.
- Shifting the long marathon sessions to Sundays from April. Gives my body 3 weeks of getting used to running long / harder on a Sunday.
BreatheToMove 