Week Five - Back to work

The recovery week was good, but like most good things was too short. Last week I was back at it with an emphasis on hills. This is the strength phase of the training, that will last about six weeks and will see hills in the program four times a week. One of the races on the horizon is the Around the Bay 30km that includes a number of hills including a significant climb at about 5km from the end. I'm hoping the hill training will allow me to take the Burlington hills in stride. So another week of training under the belt and this is what it looked like:

Monday 25th January: No run. Can't remember why that was, but probably still recovering from the race yesterday.

Tuesday 26th January: Morningside hill circuit X 2. A little faster than last week, but still slow. Legs felt pretty good overall. 15.7km

Wednesday 27th January: Longboat club run on Martin Goodman trail along Lake Ontario. Ran cruise intervals with Rob and Erik. Supposed to be 2x3km, but my first interval was 4km, that included a kilometre of catching up with them. The first interval running against the wind was at 3:56min/km pace and the second (with the wind) was 3:58/km. We ran 1km easy in between the two. These paces are still below our anaerobic threshold, as we are still developing our aerobic capacity to the maximum. 16.6km

Thursday 28th January: Ran on the treadmill at the YMCA because of strong wind and cold. Pace was an easy 8.6mph with 5 strides up to 11.2mph. 5 miles on treadmill, 1 mile on the track and an additional 1km warm up and cool down. 12km

Friday 29th January: Lydiard High Park hill circuit x 3. This is a circuit designed to mimic the circuits run by Arthur Lydiard's athletes during their strength training phase. It is approximately 2.5 km features a moderate uphill of about 800m, a flat top section of about 700m, a short downhill of about 300m and a flat to gentle downhill of about 700m. The idea is to spring, bound or run up the hill, recover across the top, run hard downhill and run a series of strides along the bottom. It's  a tough workout.15.2km

Saturday 30th January: Braved -19 degree C weather to go join the Running Free Run for Haiti along the waterfront. Fortunately there was no wind and the sun was out, so they had a good turnout. Somehow our 10km run got shortened to an 8k run. 8km

Sunday 31st January: Our weekly club long run from the YMCA. This week was pretty slow as our group stayed together for the first 12km or so. The hills began to take their toll soon after and we were happy to see the end of the run. 31km


Week Total: 98.6km
January Total: 430.7km
YTD Total: 430.7km


Bruce's goal was to run 60 to 70 miles a week in January. I think I accomplished that in all but the recovery week. All in all a good first month and a solid block of training under my belt. Next month's goals will be to intruduce regular weights/strength training and to start running doubles.