29 April 2012

Week 1 of 8 to Bushy 5K

Five weeks passed since Seoul and I think I have recovered…..

Did 20, 40, 57, 64, 50 km during the 5 weeks. Ran one race, JP Morgan 5.6km Corporate Challenge in 21.03 (about 3.48 min/km), which I think it’s not too shabby given I have done no speed workouts since the marathon.

Looks like that my work trip in June to London is on. Been browsing the UK race calendar, and in terms of location convenience, the Bushy Park 5k seems to suit best. It is basically a free of charge race organized by parkrun every Saturday. The course is a mix of road, grass, trail etc and certified by AIMS. Buster Mottram and Mo Farah have ran the course with timings of 14:00 and 15.00 respectively. The timings sound a tad on the slow side, but maybe they did it as tempo because of no prize money.

My meetings in the UK run from Mon-Thu. Now I need to find work-related reasons to stay on Friday, so I can do the race on Saturday morning…

So, the Bushy Park 5k race will be just the kick in the butt to lift me up from the current motivational doldrums.

The training plan is to focus on 10k/threshold training for the first 3-4 weeks, then 5k paced stuffs for the last 4.

Let’s hope London is not gonna be too warm in June.

http://www.parkrun.org.uk/bushy/home


Mon 23/04 (intervals):
4*1600m with 2mins rec
splits: 6.05, 6.10, 6.12, 6.13 (av 3.52 min/km)
4*300m with 90secs rec
splits: 65-67 secs (av 3.35-40 min/km)
Total 13.4km in 62mins

Tue 24/04 (easy):
8km easy treadmill run in 44mins (av 5.33)
10mins gym work

Wed 25/04 (tempo):
15mins tempo @ 4.07 min/km
10mins tempo @ 4.02 + 5mins of 30secs ON/OFF
Total 12km in 55mins

Thu 26/04 (easy):
9.6km easy in 49mins (av 5.08)
10mins gym work

Fri 27/04 (long):
18km long run in 89mins (av 4.56)

Sat 28/04 (hills)
9km easy including 4*30secs, 20secs hill repeats

Total 70 km for the week

09 April 2012

Plans

Haven’t done much running since Seoul. Did 20k in the first week (2 runs), 40k the second week (3 runs), and 57k in the following week (4 runs).


As usual, recovery has been slow for me.

Tried to do a couple of workouts, but the body seems to rebel and reject any fast stuff. Last week, went to the track and could only do 3*800m before dying – that’s less than half of my yasso reps before Seoul. I suspect this got to do with muscle trauma and micro tears post marathon.

Surprisingly, I am okay with the longer stuffs. Have done a couple of 20k+ weekend runs and no issues. Still I think my overall fitness has fallen a notch due to some inactivity.

Have 2 races next week (3.5 miles and a HM) which I wouldn’t have entered if they were not free of charge (my company sends staffs to races). Given I’ve done almost zero workouts and am still recovering, my plan is to do these 2 races as tempo-ish runs.
My next key goal is probably a 5k/10k sometime in June. I might go on a worktrip to the UK mid-June, but this is not confirmed yet. Might try to find a 5k/10k whilst I am there. If the trip doesn’t eventuate, then I’ll try to find a local race here.

After this, I will have 3-4 months to prepare for a marathon later this year. Currently thinking of Osaka in late November (second choice would be Melbourne). Was flirting with the idea of doing GCM about 10 weeks from now, but not sure whether I can get an incremental improvement from Seoul. Hoping to target sub-2.58 for my next marathon (which was my projected finishing pace at 30km mark in Seoul), to allow for a stumble into sub-3 if I fade. Osaka would be ideal since it will give me a full 18 weeks prep period should I decide to re-do Pfitz program again.