Keith: June 3rd - June 9th

"Hills are the shortcut to success" - Arthur Lydiard.

I have now started the hill phase of my training (in so much as you can say that one hill session a week makes it a phase). My plan for Amsterdam is to simply do one hill session a week for 7 weeks (along with other efforts). In future build-ups I will increase the number of hill sessions per week and reduce the period I do them over, as well as increasing the intensity within each session as well, but it is something I want to do in a very controlled manner.

Monday: 13.15m very easy.
Tuesday: am: 8.19m jog.
pm: 3m easy, 10m hilly and steady (6:36 per mile), 2m easy (15.05m).
Wednesday: am: 6m jog.
pm: 17.07m easy, mildly progressive.
Thursday: am: 8.24m jog.
pm: 3.5m easy, 3m tempo (5:37 per mile), cool-down (8.77m).
Friday: am: 4m+ jog, then 4 x {280m uphill, turnaround jog, 280m downhill, turnaround jog}, cool-down (7.53m).
pm: 5.5m warm-up, then 6 x {0.22m uphill, 0.28m jog, 0.22m downhill, 0.23m jog}, cool-down (14.33m).
Saturday: rest day.
Sunday: 5m jog-easy, then 8.56m progressive steady - last 1.5m close to marathon effort (13.56m).

Total: 111.89m.

I started off the week quite easily as I was still feeling the effects of the food poisoning, so what should have been a long run on Monday was simply a medium and what should have been 10m @ close to Mara effort on Tuesday was kept to a steady effort instead.

Thursday's tempo effort would have been a time-trial effort if I felt good, but as I didn't..... The pace of the tempo showed continued caution was the right call because I would have expected to hit closer to 5:30 per mile for the effort, though the heat, wind and poor choice of course for the tempo (twisty, etc) would have accounted for some of the slowness, but my legs definitely were still not right.

Friday again, because of not being fully recovered, I split the session in two. This is my (current) variation of the Lydiard hill session. Going uphill the focus was on maintaining good form and a decent knee lift, whereas going downhill the focus was on striding out and getting a decent leg turnover.
This was good fun, and in the afternoon I was definitely feeling a bit better than on the previous day's tempo, though still a bit away from 100%. I covered ~4m of hill efforts across the day (obviously split evenly between uphill and downhill).

All being well, next week should see some better quality sessions and a little more mileage, so, fingers crossed!

I shall also blog at some stage, separately, on training paces, for two reasons - firstly, I have had some questions on training paces, and, secondly, with 19 weeks to go, my training will become more structured from now until Amsterdam, and I tend to use terms of effort, rather than race pace.