Training Log Entry 6: July 3 - 9, 2023

Monday July 3

Off

Tuesday July 4

I felt pretty good going into this week and started it off with 8.8km on this day. However, again with this run, I am still struggling to finish easy runs without taking any breaks. My breathing has been a lot better recently, but I’ve noticed that my leg strength hasn’t been there. My hips, in particular, get tired quickly, which may be due to the faster workouts lately. After the run I did 5x100m strides which were quicker than usual, so it’s really my leg endurance that is lacking.

Wednesday July 5

My plan for this day’s workout was to do a 5km threshold. My calf was bothering me a bit, so I avoided doing it on the roads and stayed on the trails for most of it.

After the warm-up, I was already sweating buckets because of the humidity, so I knew lasting 5km would be difficult. Therefore, I switched the workout to 3km + 2km at threshold pace.

The 3km felt alright, although I never felt particularly comfortable during the rep, and my hips felt tight. Despite this, I got through it feeling aerobically strong.

The 2km started with 800m slightly downhill and the rest slightly uphill. I probably went too fast on the downhill and had to stop at 1400m. After a short break, I did a 600m to get to 5km in total.

The splits were 12:41 (4:10/km), 5:34 (3:55/km) and 2:13 (3:37/km). With the warm-up and cool-down, I ended the day at 11.6km. I feel alright about the workout, considering how I felt after the warm-up, but I wish my pacing was better.

Thursday July 6

I did 8.1km easy this day. My breathing felt pretty good, however again, my hips were really tired, which caused me to take multiple breaks. I’m confident that after a few more hard workouts, my leg strength will come back and fix this recent issue.

On the bright side, my knee felt noticeably better during this run, but my calf is still the same. It also got really hot by the end of the run, so I’ll need to start my runs earlier from now on.

Friday July 7

I did another interval workout for this week’s Friday session. The workout consisted of 4x1k with 2:30 rest, followed by 5x200m with 90s rest.

Since it had been a while since I’ve done 1k repeats, I planned to start conservatively and gradually bring the pace down. However, this did not end up actually happening. The first rep was 3:44, which was 20 seconds faster than planned. For the second rep, I managed to pull it back to 3:59, but I was already hurting and needed to take some extra rest. The last two were 3:46 and 3:44, but were really tough to get through. I never felt comfortable during the 1k’s, and my legs struggled to keep up during the last 300m of most reps.

After taking a ~5 minute break, I started the 200s. These went very well. I ran 36, 36, 34, 33, 33. I recovered really well between reps and stuck to the 90s rest. I had a nice long and smooth stride, which made the 200s feel very comfortable.

With the warm-up and cool-down, I finished the day at 12.1km. Overall, I am pretty happy with the workout.

Saturday July 8

My legs were really trashed after the workout, so I just did 5km very easy. My foot was bothering me a bit at the start, but it got better once I started running. Aside from my foot, my knee was a little more sore than usual, and my quads were heavy. However, both felt better after I rolled them out after the run.

Sunday July 9

For this week’s long run, I chose a route that starts at Old Chelsea Road and ends at Wentzells Lake. This majority of route is on dirt roads with constant rolling hills, but it is overall net downhill.

I felt decent going into in the run, but by halfway, my legs were starting to give up. This was likely due to having two hard workouts this past week for the first time in a while. Looking at the splits afterwards, I definitely started out much faster than I was planning. Though later in the run, the splits started to go all over the place.

A big mistake I made was not bringing any water for this run. The humidity was high and by the end of the run I was starting to feel nauseous. Despite that, I still managed 15.5km at a pretty good pace even, although I had to take a few breaks in the back half.

With this long run, the total mileage for the week totaled to 62km with 400m of climbing.