The Road to Kona

Fast Fartlek

Trev — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:38:35 +0000

Did a great run tonight. I did the Ursvik 10k as follows: Race pace for all the hills and then race pace for the last 2,8km. Result? 42:31; the fastest time all year. It by no means shows that I am in race shape, but it certainly suggests that race form will come.

The graph above shows that the effort varied; usually I run with a flat or sloping HR. This was mountainous – never steady at all. Let’s seeif I can hold race pace for 40-or-so minutes on Wednesday.To be honest, I don’t think i’m ready for that yet!

Run again

Trev — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:19:06 +0000

I had a really nice run today with Richie; The Edsviken route from work. The fecker said that he was tired but nonetheless he pushed the pace pretty hard. It was faster than I would have gone at the start and the end; there was a brief 10 minute period somewhere in the mid-section of the run that I felt I wanted to go a little faster but apart from that I was hanging on!

The run was a meagre 53 minutes and if nothing else, hilighted the fact that I am far from ready ro race a 10k… a race that I’ll do in five days!

Swim #2

Trev — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:32:41 +0000

Second swim tonight. It felt pretty ok tonight; I never got the dead-arm feeling that I got on Tuesday. The set was easy and my pace was slow but I’m only starting back so there are no expectations. One thing is for sure; it’ll take more than ten swims to get back into shape; I’ve probably let my swim-fitness go a little too much this time… not to even mention the bike!

Rest

Trev — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:14:46 +0000

Resting today – I’ll probably do a short and hard run tomorrow; 3min@10k pace, 1 min walk… not sure where I’ll do it though.

I had a look at my HRM file from Saturday’s race and checked the data:

km 1: 3;48/km, Max HR: 170

km 2: 3;48/km ,Max HR: 173

km 3: 3;50/km ,Max HR: 175

km 4: 3;47/km, Max HR: 179

km 5: 3;51/km, Max HR: 178

Did I back off on the last km? Sure didn’t feel like it at the time!

First * in a while

Trev — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:00:42 +0000

Today was a double first:

First swim in 5 months – I literally had not swam a single stroke since last April and it felt every bit as long today. The first 50m felt the way swimming should – an effortless glide through the water that is the closest thing to flying I have experienced. It went downhill pretty quickly from there. I swam lots of 50s and 100s and threw in a few 200s for good measure. At the end we did some ‘hard’ 50s. When I saw from the wall-clock that I was no longer holding 50 seconds/50 I decided it was time to go; by that stage my arms had felt absolutely lifeless for at least ten minutes. That’s the hardest swim done; the only way is up from now on.

The second first is that today was a double training day since April 12th. Nice mixed-pace run this morning. I kept the pace pretty solid all through the run and did probably three hard efforts – the last being the hardest. I should be coming into good form just in time for winter.

Rest & Race

Trev — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:15:58 +0000

I had a rest day on Friday and raced a 5k on Saturday. I expected to feel the backlash from the weeks training on Saturday morning but felt pretty good. Ran the 5k in 18:38, which is a new PB for me at the distance. Happy with that but I think I can do much better. It shows me that I have a lot of work to do for my upcoming 10k races.

What can be done between now and October 10th that will improve my speed significantly?
Given the amount of time I have per week, I should target 1 track session, 1 tough 60 minute run and 1 fartlek.

####

I ran a beautiful route that I have never ran before. The intention was to get some road running in instead of the usual trail running. After 8 minutes on the road I stumbled upon a trail I had not been on before. It led me along Edsviken in cool calm sunny conditions. I then headded back through the usual Ursvik course. It has been a long time since I ran a new course; maybe I should go exploring more often.

Four days in a row.

Trev — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:17:25 +0000

It’s been a while since I trained four consecutive days.
Mon: 20 minutes on the bike w/ Tabata sprints at the enc (8x)
Tue: 1 hour run w/ 2 hard efforts
Wed: 1 hour eun w/ 1 hard effort at the end
Thur: 42 minute run w/ 400m sprint at the end
I feel better today then I did yesterday and hope that holds until tomorrow’s 5km race.

I have no idea what to expect tomorrow but it doesn’t really matter; I have three 10km races semi-planned now: 8th Sept, 18th(or 19th) September and Oct 10th. Hopefuly I can run FAST in one of those; I really need to get back to the track to do that.

Back it up

Trev — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:29:15 +0000

Same run as yesterday but today I took it a little easier. No hard efforts at all. I felt a lot better than yesterday and only ran the 8km section 40 seconds slower – that’s only 5 seconds/km, which isn’t too bad. The ‘bad’ side of the coin is that all the effort yesterday only gives me 5seconds/km extra speed, so the 00:30/km I’m after is a long way off at the moment. Still, nice to be running again.

I’ve also made a purchase to assist with my winter training, since this year I have done zero road cycling. I bought a set of rollers; ”Elite V-Arion Parabolic Inertial Rollers” to be specific. The idea is to use the trainer for the very hard sessions and the rollers for the longer ones… apparently they keep things interesting! Let’s see how it goes.

I’m thinking of running again tomorrow; that’ll be 36km in 3 days, one rest day and then a 5k race. Nice week!

Tough Run

Trev — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:22:16 +0000

Today I ran the middle 8km of the XTreme trail with intention to remember and note the characteristics. Well, as I knew from before, kilometers 7, 8 and 9 are key section: km 7 is HARD: Long uphill, technical narrow downhill and a longer uphill followed by a not-so-technical downhill. This leads to km 8 which is a wide flat trail that allows normal road-like riunning followed by about 4-500m of descent. km 9 is up, down, up some more, down – zig-zags through the 10k back circuit. Getting these three kilometers done right can give up to one minute time saving for the XTreme course. Unfortunately for me, and last XTreme race of the season is tomorrow; not quite time enough to get it right!
I’ve decided to run the 5k at the weekend on tired legs. Main goal is September 18th and October 10th. There is no point tapering for a 5k race that is only for fun… So running tomorrow – sometime.

All work and no play…

Trev — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:13:37 +0000

…leaves only enough time for Tabata sprints.
A little better than Friday but still quite a drop-off in speed throughout the set.I attempted to hold 35+ km/h for every set and found this impossible by set 6 onwards. I’ll have a look at the data later but I seem to remember the speed dropping off to 30 on Friday.

Running has taken an unplanned back seat once again: too much to do, too little time. I am 5 days out from my first race of teh year and need a booster session; If time allows I’ll do a fast 5k tomorrow to address that, then it’s only easy runs after that.