Rebuilding

My first week of the new marathon-training block is over and done with. The first half of the week was dominated by the need to recover from the half-marathon that left me much more stiff and tired than I expected to be. It wasn’t until Thursday that I felt ready to let the legs go properly again. But the last few runs have all been pretty decent and I feel ready to build up my mileage again.

My last training cycle was heavily influenced by Lydiard’s training methods, though I made a few changes that I thought were beneficiary for an ultra, like the back-to-back 20-20 runs. In fact, those blocks were so effective that I toyed with the idea of keeping them even for a standard marathon, but I have gone off that idea by now. I will try and follow the classic Lydiard build as demonstrated and documented so brilliantly in Mike’s blog. I’ve also written down a few notes from his Mystery Coach, which I found all over the place in Mike’s blog, his comment section as well as cunningly hidden gems in Eric’s training diary. That includes explanations of the stamina-building back-to back efforts and other gems of wisdom.

Using one of the coach's formula I gathered that for an estimated marathon pace of 7:15 the steady state pace that I should follow for most of my runs would be in the 7:28 – 7:58 segment, though I think it’s pretty save to round that up into more even numbers 7:30-8:00. I’ll try and stay within those parameters, but I won’t force it. If my legs feel too heavy to go sub-8 I’ll just back off and let them recover. One other formula gave my 3/4 effort at 7:00 pace, which is slower than I thought it would be. It’s certainly a good bit slower than the pace I used for my tempo runs in the build-up for the half-marathon, and the occasional tempo efforts I did before the ultra.

My weekly mileage maxed out at 86.5 miles last time round, and of course one of the classic Lydiard fundamentals is the 100-mile week. I’ll wait and see how I feel. If I added a mere two mile to each run, it would turn a 86 mile week into a 100 one, which doesn’t sound too outrageous. I know that Andrew is a great believer in that mileage, but then again his injury record doesn’t inspire 100% confidence. Interestingly enough, Mike seems to have dropped his mileage ever since the Mystery Coach took him under his wing, and is concentrating more on faster efforts, In fact I think I could do worse than blindly follow Mike’s training schedule but add one minute to each of his paces (e.g. run 7:40 when he does 6:40), but I’d be better off listening to my own body rather than trying to slavishly follow someone else’s training, modified or not.

Of course I did some more running since my last post. My pace has been steadily dropping until it reached sub-8 pace without pushing. I’m pretty happy with the way it’s going, apart from one run-in I had yesterday. I was slightly over 11 miles into a supposed 13-mile effort when a farmer chose that time and place to move his humungous herd of cows from one field into another. There was no way past, and I had no option but to come to a stop and walk behind the stinking creatures while trying to avoid stepping into a fresh spattering of manure (yuck!). I even swore loudly, but quickly apologised when the farmer shot me a filthy look. That went on for about half a mile, after which I ran the last (uphill) mile home in about 6:50, hammering the road in sheer frustration.

My hay fever is bothering me as well at the moment, but strangely enough it's never an issue while running, just before and afterwards.

11 May: 5 miles, 39:08. 7:49 pace, avg. HR 149
12 May: 12.5 miles, 1:35, 7:36 pace, avg. HR 155
13 May: 7 miles, 55:04, 7:52 pace, avg. HR 149

Weekly mileage: 52.5