The week in running (to 21 Feb '16)

I thought it was about time I penned some running ramblings. Looking back at the blog and seeing the last entry was June 2015 on my Ramsay Round is rather demoralising, so time for a fresh start. I thought a paragraph or two a week would be a good discipline, if nothing else providing a good time to reflect on what I've been up to, which of course largely evolves around running. How long I will last, who knows…

So ignoring the write-off that was the second half of last year (I won’t bore you with the gory details of that), since Christmas I’ve felt on an upward trajectory. I guess if you start somewhere quite bad (i.e. unfit) the gains are going to be regular and significant. And they have! I’ve been building up the miles again, running 6+ days/ week most weeks, and getting in some good regular sessions, plus the odd race. Above all, feeling positive again.

So the aim is to bag a good block of consistency in the build up to the Highland Fling at the end of April, my first ‘A’ race of the year. It’s been quite a while since I set foot on the West Highland Way so a return to the shores of Loch Lomond is an exciting prospect. Prior to, and in the build up to the Fling, I’m running the ‘Hobble’ in mid-March, plus a handful of road races to get some sharpness.

So the routine is going to be 80 odd miles a week consistently until mid-March, then perhaps cranking it up a touch in the final build up to the Fling. Wednesday night I’ll run the marathon sessions with the Bournemouth AC boys down the prom, and get in some 5km parkrun efforts within longer runs on a Saturday morning. Sunday morning will be a long run, on the hills most weeks. So a nice balance of quicker stuff to improve on leg turnover, and endurance built from slogging it out on the hills. Nice. And the biggest challenge as always will be fitting it in around 'life' - the job which calls me away from home quite a bit - and all the other important stuff. More on that as we go along.

Last week I was pleased to nail some good 12 minute efforts (x3) on Wednesday night in horrible weather on the Bournemouth seafront, consistently getting faster from marathon pace, as is my style. In fact if you study my runs on Strava, I find it impossible to run a first mile at anywhere near the average target pace for the run, so always tend to be playing catch up. Most runs turn out to be progressive, which of course is the best way to run an ultra anyway, so I'm not particularly worried :o)

I’ve had a lingering cold which I hoping I’ve just about got through the worst of after 2 weeks. On Saturday morning I ran my quickest parkrun of the year so no impact there, but on Sunday’s long run on the North Dorset hills my body wasn’t overly happy, calling for some back-off – too early in the year to risk over cooking it. So a quiet Monday and possibly Tuesday me thinks.