150km+

152km this week. Would have been slightly more but I completely forgot to go for my afternoon run on Tuesday.  Sammie was having a sleepover at her cousin's house and Rox, Ben and I went to a movie - The Hunter with Willem Dafoe.  It is set in the Tasmanian wilderness and is spectacular - so much so that we have started making tentative plans for a Tasmanian holiday next year.

I got some great quality running in this week amongst the volume.  On Tuesday I did 18.5km including an 8km tempo.  4km warm up which was to the car park just over the Causeway then 8km tempo which was 6km out to UWA and 2km back to the Brewery.  

McMillan gives my tempo pace as 3:34-3:40 and I managed this for the first 6km but blew out a bit over the last couple of km which were back into the wind, although there was a bit of fatigue in there too.  Didn’t want to push to hard over tempo effort even though the pace had dropped. Average pace for the tempo was 3:42/km.

Easy run home for the last 8.55km.

Pretty happy with this effort given where I am at with volume at the moment and also compared to my last temp effort which was more in the 3:50 range for the whole 8km. 


On Wednesday, I caught up with Simon Elliott for our first run since he got back from Berlin.  Met up down the bottom of Hurlingham and set off on a clockwise three bridges loop although I was going a bit further.  Even though we were having a good conversation we got into a groove at a nice pace around 4:07/km which continued on until we separated at the Windan Bridge.

I carried on to the Peninsula golf course and kept the same pace up until after I crossed the Windan on the way back.  Hit a headwind and decided I didn’t want to feel like I was pushing so backed off.  Noticed that I still went through what would be a half marathon in 1:28:30 so it was an honest pace which ended up being 4:13/km for the whole run despite the slower kms towards the end.

Easy running after then including catching up with Rob on Thursday and then 21km on Friday.  Got a bit of niggle in my groin (left) which bothered me for a couple of days but with just easy running and some anti inflamms it was ok by Sunday.

For this morning's long run I ran 16km out in 1:13 (4:35/km) and then 16km back to just past the big flagpole. Had to work hard over the last 5km – one particularly slow km in there 4:00 which was coming back up over the Windan Bridge and where the easterly made it feel like you were in wind tunnel.  First couple of km were probably a little quick so I was pleased to average 3:54/km against a target of 3:55/km.

My overall assessment is that I didn’t feel like I could maintain this pace for a marathon but I don’t think that is the point of this workout at this stage of my program – it is more about teaching my body to burn fuel efficiently at marathon pace.

Took one Burner gel at the 16km turnaround before I started and then a Smart 1 gel after about 9km into the MP section.  The Smart 1 gel contains caffeine and I think this provided a good boost.  The Science in Sport gels are an isotonic solution which is runnier than normal gels which means that you do not need to take them with water which is good when you don’t have access to a drink and don’t want to have to stop at drink fountain.

Good to get this in the bank.  When I did a similar run on May 28 before the Perth Marathon I did it in 63:12 (3:57/km pace). 

Bit of a recovery week this week to consolidate the work so far.  Think I will also get a massage during the week.