"It's a treat being a runner, out in the world by yourself with not a soul to make you bad-tempered or tell you what to do." - Allan Sillitoe


Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Racking up the mileage - also Rudisha beaten (video)

First week of my "official" marathon training program completed - 134km including two double days. It was supposed to be three but I piked out on the second run on Sunday. 134km was 10% more than the previous week's 122km and the weather was pretty gross ...

I am finding the increase in mileage pretty tiring and think it is the double days that are the difference. I am coming off a good base with 6 of my last 8 weeks being over 100km and the two others being in the 90s. I think also that I may be running my easy/general aerobic runs a bit quick as they are usually at around 4:25/km pace or even slightly quicker. This is however right in the middle of the range on the McMillan calculator.

Endurance Workouts Pace/km


Recovery Jogs 4:51 to 5:10

Long Runs  4:14 to 4:51

Easy Runs 4:14 to 4:33

I am going slower on my specific recovery runs on my double days and also on Fridays but I will keep an eye on this as I need the recovery if I am going to hit the workouts at the correct pace/effort.

I am excited about the Berlin Marathon this Sunday. It is being shown live on Eurosport on Sunday afternoon. Simon Elliott is running and there are couple of other decent runners in Haile Gebrselassie and Patrick Makau lining up as well. It will be interesting to see how Paula Radcliffe goes in the Women's race.

My long run this week will be on Saturday - 27km with 13km at marathon pace. I'm not sure I will be able to run it at 3:55/km at this stage of my training so will try to run sub 4:00/km first time out.

Here is a rare video from the recent meet in Milan - David Rudisha beaten. It has been a long season for him though.

I'm looking out the window now as the rain has come in and not exactly looking forward to my afternoon run - oh well ...

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