2000 miles and monster hills – w.e 30/11/2014

For the first time in several weeks, I’ve actually met my 50 mile a week goal on Strava and got some real speed in the legs chasing segments.

I love looking at some of the local segments on Strava and using them as short speed workouts at maximum effort, it’s been encouraging to bag a couple of local ones at good speeds ranging from 5k pace to a third of a mile downhill blast at 3:39/mile and a new mile best (again, somewhat aided by gravity!) of 4:35 at the end of a tough 9 mile hill session on Sunday.

One of the things I definitely noticed running up my road on Sunday was that there’s a lot more strength in my legs going up longer climbs which bodes well for future races.

I definitely feel stronger for chasing these segments and they take some of the pain away from doing speed work.

The 04:50 start for the weekly long run was tough this time and to be honest, running 18.5 miles where the first 2 hours or so were in total pitch black weren’t the most inspiring so I’m thinking of just building base miles doing the long run on the roads instead. Not very exciting but at least there will be street lights.

2000 miles!

The other landmark I celebrated on Friday when I was out on a birthday run with Ally was that I passed the 2000 mile mark for the year! Amazing to me to think that I’ve ticked off that many miles (and 190,000ft of climbing) in 11 months. It’s been an awesome year for the most part and a nice little landmark to tick off going into a winter of planned base building.

  • Monday – 7.9 miles
  • Tuesday – 18.7 miles
  • Wednesday – 6.4 miles
  • Thursday – 7.2 miles
  • Friday – 5.1 miles
  • Saturday – Rest
  • Sunday – 9 miles

Total: 54.2 miles, 5,200ft elevation