Offseason training continues. I’ve just put in nine weeks of solid aerobic and threshold work and it went both well and badly. The aim had been to improve my threshold from where I estimated it currently to be at 6:50 to 6:30 – so the plan was to do three weeks at 6:50/mile, three at 6:40, three at 6:30. Each three week block would be a progression of 6×1 mile, 4×1½ mile, 3×2 miles with a jog recovery.
The results came in as follows:
| Date | Session | Total time | Avg pace | ||||||
| Aug 30th | 6×1 | 41:11 | 6:52 | 6:50 | 6:46 | 6:48 | 6:49 | 6:55 | 7:03 |
| Sep 6th | 4×1½ | 40:55 | 6:49 | 10:13 | 10:16 | 10:12 | 10:14 | ||
| 13th | 3×2 | 40:52 | 6:49 | 13:28 | 13:42 | 13:42 | |||
| 20th | 6×1 | 39:39 | 6:36 | 6:35 | 6:36 | 6:35 | 6:37 | 6:36 | 6:40 |
| 27th | 4×1½ | 40:17 | 6:43 | 9:54 | 9:57 | 10:15 | 10:09 | ||
| Oct 4th | 3×2 | 39:36 | 6:36 | 13:07 | 13:06 | 13:24 | |||
| 11th | 6×1 | 38:37 | 6:26 | 6:22 | 6:23 | 6:20 | 6:24 | 6:35 | 6:33 |
| 18th | 4×1½ | 39:13 | 6:32 | 9:40 | 9:47 | 9:48 | 9:58 | ||
| 25th | 3×2 | 41:11 | 6:57 | 13:27 | 13:56 | 14:21 |
While there were ups and downs in there, I rated the first 8 weeks as having gone decently and there was an overall improvement from where I began to where I’d reached. Not perfect but a definite improvement. You can see the average pace improving over the weeks in line with what I was hoping to achieve.
Then came week 9, it was atrocious – overall worse than week 1. There was a good reason for this. It didn’t simply come down to having screwed things up, I caught something and spent the week blowing my nose hundreds of times each day and waking up through the night. Whatever it was, it raised its head on the previous Friday where I was inexplicably thirty seconds per mile slower than the previous week over my nine mile course.
It lasted for 4-5 days and knocked my fitness backwards. I’m hoping this loss is temporary as the body recovers and returns all its hormones and red/white blood cell counts back to normal. I seem to be okay now.
I’ve written a lot about Maffetone training and while I don’t rate low heart-rate training as a method, I agree with the idea of a strong aerobic system being important to health. It was certainly the case for me. While my running went backwards for a few days, I never stopped being able to do the things I need to do on a daily basis. Once I realised I was under the weather, I cancelled my supplemental training (core work, press-ups etc.) and avoided other unnecessary activities. Basically I took it as easy as possible while still running every day. It’s debateable whether it was worth doing that 9th workout? I wanted to give it a go and just decided to get the best out of it I could. I didn’t push to hit target once I saw how far off the pace I was.
The days of the training week have been building endurance to support this work. I’ve done an hour Steady run on Fridays and an 11.7 mile long run on Sundays straight out of bed. On week 4, I went to Sandhurst Memorial parkrun, where I ran a tired legged 20:48 in place of the Friday Steady run. The parkrun still came in around 6:40/mile which suggests my threshold is improving. Then my Sunday long run* was 12 miles up and down the Basingstoke canal towpath. The legs were naturally not up for a faster effort after an all-out parkrun.
| Week | Friday 9miles | Sunday 11.7mile | |||
| 1 | 1:07:45 | 7:32/mile | 1:32:33 | 7:56/mile | |
| 2 | 1:07:17 | 7:33 | 1:34:31 | 8:05 | |
| 3 | 1:04:26 | 7:13 | 1:30:54 | 7:46 | |
| 4 | — | — | 1:38:54* | 8:16* | |
| 5 | 1:05:17 | 7:18 | 1:30:22 | 7:43 | |
| 6 | 1:04:15 | 7:11 | 1:29:09 | 7:37 | |
| 7 | 1:03:13 | 7:08 | 1:31:49 | 7:52 | |
| 8 | 1:08:31 | 7:37 | 1:31:54 | 7:52 | |
| 9 | 1:05:38 | 7:20 | 1:32:30 | 7:54 |
What’s strange is my Fridays haven’t been quite as good as they were six months ago when I was doing a similar block of training yet the Sundays have been really pleasing. Almost every week has been a sub-8 avg. pace which is a level of consistency I’ve never seen before. It hints that I’m finally building the base endurance to a point where the body is recovering quicker.
All in all, it’s been a decent block of training through September and October and I achieved what I set out to do. I feel confident I can crack 40-mins in the 10K for the first time since 2015 and then later run a parkrun PB. I’ve got four weeks to the Boscombe 10K and then a further fortnight until Christchurch 10K which is the more likely course to break forty on. These first four weeks are going to see me running kilometres intervals with shorter rests to boost lactate tolerance and clearance and fire up the fast-twitch muscles enough to get me on pace. It’s time to go anaerobic!
Big Red Running 
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