Training Log Entry 31: January 1 - 7, 2024

Monday January 1

Off

Tuesday January 2

After taking a few days off, my calf felt much better. Most of the swelling had subsided, and only a slight tightness remained, but it wasn’t concerning anymore. Luckily, this week turned out to be a recovery week, so taking it easy wouldn’t significantly impact my current schedule.

My first run back went as smoothly as I could have hoped. While my legs were fresh and moved well, my breathing was a bit labored. I struggled to relax, resulting in a few brief stoppages throughout the run. However, after the run, I noticed that my pace was quite a bit faster than I had planned, which explained the difficulty.

Following the 8.2km run, I did 5x100m hill strides,all of which felt strong. This brought the total daily mileage to 8.8km.

Wednesday January 3

Since I only had a single workout scheduled for Friday during this recovery week, I decided to slightly increase the intensity this day by doing a hilly route for this easy run.

Following the sharp uphill first kilometer, I settled into a steady pace and held it reasonably well. While the pace was only moderately fast, I found myself working harder than normal to maintain it. My stride felt clunky, making it difficult to relax and I wasn’t recovering very well on the downhills.

Despite these difficulties, I completed the run, covering a distance of 12km with 170m of elevation gain.

Thursday January 4

Since I woke up feeling quite sore this day, I opted for another hilly easy run this week.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel great during this run. My legs lacked any energy, making the long uphill segments particularly challenging.

During the brief flat sections where I could open up my stride, I did feel somewhat better and was able to move at a decent clip. However, due to some discomfort in my right foot, I found myself running cautiously and feeling tense overall for most of the run.

Despite these issues, I was able to log 8.2km with 170m of elevation gain.

Friday January 5

For my sole workout of the week, I did a fartlek consisting of 8x(2’ on, 2’ float) My objective was to get a good amount of volume while maintaining a moderate intensity, so I decided on longer floats and focusing on staying controlled during the fast intervals.

Prior to the workout, I noticed some mild soreness on the top of my left foot, but it didn’t seem to worsen during the warm-up, so I decided to continue with the fartlek. Unfortunately, I struggled to find a consistent rhythm throughout the fartlek, largely due to tightness in my right glute. Despite my paces being reasonable and aerobically feeling strong, the fatigue in my glute made it difficult to sustain the pace, forcing me to take brief breaks after the 4th and 6th reps.

The 30-minute fartlek covered a total distance of 6.85 kilometers, with the following splits:

• 4:09/km (4:37/km)
• 4:14/km (4:36/km)
• 4:13/km (4:47/km)
• 4:09/km (4:47/km)
• 4:09/km (4:44/km)
• 4:02/km (4:51/km)
• 4:06/km (4:42/km)
• 3:59/km

These splits yielded average paces of 4:08/km and 4:43/km for the ons and floats, respectively. Overall, I consider this an acceptable workout given it is a recovery week.

Regarding the condition of my foot, while the soreness didn’t intensify during the workout, afterwards, the discomfort became more pronounced. As I’ve never experienced such an injury before, I plan to be very caution over the next few days.

Including the warm-up and cool-down, the total volume for the day amounted to 12.2 kilometers.

Saturday January 6

I woke up to my foot aching quite a lot, so I decided to take the remainder of the week off and reevaluate next week.

Sunday January 7

Off

The total mileage for the week totaled 41.2km with 420m of elevation gain.