Keith: May 20th - May 26th

When told by his clubmates that he was not a sprinter, Zatopek replied, "If I run 100 metres 30 times, that is 3 kilometres and no longer a sprint".

Mon: Long run - 4m steady, then 15 x 280m hills @ ~10k effort with steady jog back recoveries, then straight into 10m @ 6:25 per mile, ~2m jog (21.11m).
Tues: am: 8.51m jog.
pm: 12.07m easy.
Wed: am: 5.47m jog.
pm: 6m easy, then 30 x 100m grass hillsprints with jog back recovery, 4m+ easy (14.27m).
Thurs: pm: 12.14m easy.
Fri: 3m warm-up, then 10m @ Mara effort (5:50 per mile), 2m+ cool-down (15.43m).
Sat: 8.02m easy.
Sun: 4m warm-up, then 3m @ 5:36 per mile, jog, 3m @ 5:33 per mile, cool-down (12.22m).

Total: 109.24m.

I am very pleased with this week. The volume is pretty much right in the middle of my ideal target range and I had some good workouts too. Despite there being no rest day this week, there was no extra mileage as a result; it was just more sensible to move my second run from Friday to Saturday as I had to bring the car to the garage anyway so why not run at the same time and get some extra family time as a result :-)

Monday's long run was a bit more tiring than it possibly looks. The purpose of the hill work was to tire the legs before a mildly progressive 10m at a solid pace, which it did.

Wednesday's hillsprints was a Zatopek inspired session, as per the quote. I started and felt good so just kept going.

Friday's run was particularly pleasing as it was very wet and quite windy in parts and the route itself was mildly undulating.

Sunday's 2 x 3m were run at around roughly half-marathon effort, with the last mile of the 2nd rep being around 10k effort.

So the aim now will be to keep the volume at around this level and just keep working on improving my threshold condition over the coming weeks. As simple as that. Not every week will have this much effort though as my efforts are done primarily when I feel I'm ready for them, so some weeks will see a higher volume of quality and some will be lower.

Overall though, I am certainly in the best condition I have ever been this far out from a marathon (21 weeks to go now) - though with the pleasing feeling of there being so much more to come as I'm still considerably over marathon race weight and just have that feeling that I'm running well but without being particularly 'fit'.