After the first week at 65 miles I have to admit I was a little nervous but to be honest I’d done a medium long run, a tempo session and a long run for the first time in ages.
I’ve chosen to follow Pfitz 18/70 for London and there’s no doubting it’s a step up for me both in mileage and quality but one that looking back over Jan I’ve actually felt good about as the month went on.
Typing right now at the end of the first week of Feb where I’ve only run 5 miles due to a horrendous cold that’s had me sparked out on the sofa for 3 days straight I feel a little sad but looking back at my old school training log for January I am very pleased with 4 weeks of solid, quality mileage 64, 65, 66 and 65 in total.
After doing the tempo run in the first week though I felt immediately like the bump in mileage along with that tempo session once a week might be a little too much right now so instead of doing the tempo run in Jan I skipped that for the moment and I’ll phase speed in once a week shortly.
The long runs have all gone amazingly well so far and since I finally learnt to drive and passed my test in September it’s opened up a lot of options including driving myself over to the Trans Pennine Trail which is a flat 10 mile stretch perfect for marathon training. I’ve done 15 (7:02 pace), 18 (8:20 pace off road), 15 (6:43 pace) and 18 (7:01 pace) this month along with 7 other double digit days so the mileage has been OK.
My fall in week 1 had an impact – the knee I cut open has healed pretty well but I found a couple of days after my other knee was very sore when starting running which lasted about 2 weeks and while not painful enough to stop me running was definitely only a few days away from a trip to the physio. Seems to have gone now though so who knows if it was an impact issue from the fall or something else.
I was looking forward to testing myself at Dewsbury 10k on Sunday but I don’t think I’m going to make that now to be honest. I look forward to it for months because it’s a race I prepare for before Christmas then like to use it as a tester at the end of the first 5 weeks of marathon training but this cold has got me struggling to breathe properly and as I was aiming for sub-35 I don’t see that being likely.
I’m not one for “social racing” so I’ll probably just sulk on Sunday instead..
Still, when the cold passes I will be back on the schedule and looking forward to it. I can certainly reflect on a great January.
- Jan miles: 275
- Elevation gain: 26700ft