Hello summer! I’m loving the lovely sunshine and beautiful mornings. Getting up stupidly early to run is actually quite easy as the sun is already shining and it’s fairly warm outside.
This week has been really tough. After Endure 24 I had Monday and Tuesday off running as I just needed some down time. I had a great sports massage with Kyle which really helped loosen things up. Thankfully my hip hasn’t played up again either. It’s now 12 weeks from Berlin marathon and I am wondering for how long I will go until I get injured again – I really hope things go plain sailing. Who knows? All you can be is sensible with warming up, stretching, regular foam rolling, massages and strength training.
Monday – OFF
Tuesday – strength training after work:
– 15×3/leg calf lifts with weights
– 200/leg clams with resistance band (I do 50 per leg each time)
– 4.5mins bridge
– 20×3/leg single leg dead lifts
– 16 press-ups
– 3mins toe lifts
Wednesday – I had planned to do four easy miles but as I started I found I was quite happy to run a bit faster so I call this a “paced run”. I’m finding it easier to start slower and get faster which is always good I guess.
Strength work:
– 200/leg clams
– 50/leg single leg lifts with ankle weight
– 20×3/leg single leg dead lifts with weights
– 20×3/leg lunges (mix of lunge twists and with weights)
– 4mins crab walk
Thursday – 10k tempo run. This was a brilliant run. My legs felt fresh and I felt good. My plan was one mile warm-up, two miles tempo, one mile easy then two final tempo miles.
To cool down I walked Alfie afterwards. He’s loving it at the moment as I walk him in the morning before I run at stupidly o’clock (usually 5.30am), then when I get back from my run if I have enough time I’ll walk him again to cool down. Pampered pooch!
Strength work (felt a bit de-motivated and bored so kept it quick):
– 200/leg clams
– 4mins crab walk
– 3mins toe lifts
– 3mins plank
– 2x 1.5mins side planks
Friday – a much needed recovery run. My legs felt very heavy and I felt tired. This was the third consecutive day of getting up around 5.10am.
Saturday – Ben and me headed to Basingstoke to do the Basingstoke parkrun with my friend who’s just gotten into running (the one I did the Race for Life with) and her husband and son.
In my plan it was a speedy 5k but as I had now run three days before I wasn’t sure how well this would go. I just thought put in some effort and see how it goes.
It was actually quite a tough course. There were two laps and a sneaky gradual incline you had to do twice. But it wasn’t anything crazy hard. There were over 300 people there! And lots of speedsters. I was lucky to come 4th lady with a time of 21:22, which I was chuffed with. It’s the fastest parkrun I’ve done since November. Fairly depressing but I’m pleased regardless.
Ben found the run quite tough. His ankle was playing up and it didn’t help that he’d had a late night the night before and hadn’t run properly all week. My friend got a PB of just over 28 minutes 😀
We all had a good time though and had coffee afterwards with our friends. So chuffed they’re getting into running!
Sunday – fifth day running in a row. I hope I don’t look back at this week as a mistake week. I was concerned I was running so many consecutive days but I needed to get the mileage increasing (famous last words…). I did feel OK for all the runs and afterwards though. I kept this run slow and easy.
But it did feel like a lot of hard work at about six miles. My endurance has definitely suffered due to my lack of long runs. This distance was a distance I used to find very easy, but yesterday it was back to basics. I spent a long time foam rolling and stretching afterwards, as well as doing a quick bit of core work and clams.
Later we went shopping and I was shattered at the end of the day; I had to have a nap! Ten miles is definitely not a distance my body is used to anymore sadly. Work in progress!
Annoyingly running in the hotter weather is causing me some annoying chaffage. I keep forgetting to, er, lubricate my arms before going out…
Which makes things fairly painful later…must do better.
Onwards to another week. Fingers crossed it continues to go OK!!
How has your week been?
Do you get any nasty chaffage issues when running?
What’s your top strength training move? I need to liven things up a bit I think.