Thursday, June 18, 2015

NEED TO TRAIN A BIT



With JMC (39.1km 2400m climb), Slave route Half Marathon (21.1km 200m climb), HMC (24.4km 2400m climb) and The Beast (48.7km 2100m climb) all run in May I needed some time out before tackling the next race...

With a week of easy runs I was ready to start training again!  Ok I started on the Friday morning with a light hill session... Which I followed up with a proper hill session on the Saturday! And a hill climb on Sunday (Price drive, 1.6km with 160m climb). 

I have been known to be strong on the hills, and this is why: I like hills! So I run a lot of them, if I liked to "plod" I would have ended up a good plodder!

So why all these hills? Well my next race is a little mountain race... Just up from Constantia Neck around the dams and back down. A classic 10 miler with a climb of about 500m in the first 6km! Having run this race 25 times before I know the route rather well , and with many top 5 finishes I also know what is needed to finish on the podium. 

I have plenty of hills in my legs so I should be strong going up, but that isn't enough to win the race... I am going to have to set a solid pace round the dams before racing down. over the last couple of years I have been overtaken by too many guys on the down hill, it looks like I just don't have the raw speen needed to stay ahead of them.

Back to my training:

After a weekend of hills I took the Monday easy and headed back the the hills on Tuesday! this time it was a great session of 90sec easy followed by 30sec hard before heading down. Why you might ask, well a number of my athletes often fade in the 2nd half of a race, so we need to teach there bodies the work in the 2nd half of a race...
Wednesday should have been a little longer but.... (Lazy) Thursday I took the guys down to Ronderbosh for a tempo session, and while i thought I would run easy tempo that didn't happen as the legs were working and I was running well... So it was 11min hard the a couple easy before I set off again, this time only 10min... then on the way back to the club we hammered another 2min, this was turning into a good weeks training!

After a rest (read 5km easy) on Friday I headed to the mountains on Saturday, nothing big, just some time on the legs.

Frost = Slippery
The rocks and sand were fine, and while it wasn't warm, it wasn't till I was slipping on the boardwalks that I could felt the cold!

It wasn't all cold:

and the views are worth it...
The 21.1km (ran round the car to to reach that distance!) I ran took me 2h27, so it wasn't fast, but a bit of time on the legs... Sunday I headed out on a flat run, it was also 21,1km (ran round the block to make up distance) This run was a little faster, in fact it turned out to be a tempo run... 88min!

The next next week started like the week before and it wasn't till Thursday that the program changed and we hit the track for a couple of rolling 200's... The Saturday's long run was just that long... 3h27 28.1km. Needles to say Sundays long tempo was short and not much of a tempo, but I was pushed for time as I had bags to pack for a few days off...

Wine Tasting by bike
Autumn colours
It's a good thing the roads were quiet!

2 comments:

  1. I knew as soon as I saw that picture of you wearing a singlet that it must be cold over there.

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    Replies
    1. No I'm getting soft! OK I had a pack with me and running without a top isn't good for the back, so I wear my CONTEGO top which has a zip...

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