Keith: July 1st - July 7th

"You find out by trial and error what the optimal level of training is. If I found I was training too hard, I would drop it back for a day or two. I didn't run for five days before the sub-four-minute mile." - Sir Roger Bannister

Monday: 5 easy, 5 steady, 10.21m @ 6:19 per mile (20.21m).
Tuesday: am: progressive steady surging any uphills - 1st 5m @ 7:00, last 5.12m @ 6:28 (10.12m).
pm: 6.07m easy.
Wednesday: am: ~4m easy, 2m Time Trial, 2m jog, 6 x ~420m hills (with jog down recoveries) @ 5k-5m effort, 5m steady, 1m+ easy (17.52m).
pm: 2m jog, 3.18m easy (5.18m).
Thursday: pm: Steady run, surging the uphills @ ~ Half Mara effort - 8 hills for 2m+ (10.53m).
Friday: am: easy with 6 x {15s stride / 45s float} (6.19m).
pm: Progressive from easy to steady with 3 longer pickups totalling 2.18m @ 5:46 per mile - hot! (13.5m).
Saturday: rest.
Sunday: 13.58m progressive steady - last 1.58m @ 5:58 per mile.

Total: 102.9m.

This was a good solid week with some form of quicker running every day. In all honesty, this is possibly the best I have ever felt at the end of a 100m+ week.
The only thing really missing was a longer reps session, which was what I had originally planned for Friday, but between the heat in the afternoon and feeling a bit tired (lack of sleep) it was better to just leave it. Ideally next week will see similar, but with the addition of some longer reps.

Wednesday's 2m Time Trial was at ~5km race effort and I was pleased to hit 10:20 for it (5:10 per mile - equivalent to a 16:03 5km). For me, given my conversion to marathon from the shorter distances, that means I'm pretty much knocking on the door of 2:30 shape, but with 15 weeks still to go.

Mileage/optimal training level:
The more eagle eyed may notice that the effort level of my general runs is different this week.

Previously I would run easy, or jog, if I wasn't doing a session. So what's changed?

As some of you will know, I have experimented quite a bit with my training over the last few years in terms of volume of running, paces, types and volume of effort runs, etc, etc.

The early parts of this campaign have served to assert two things about my training.
1) My optimal mileage range seems to be roughly in the 95-110mpw range (+/- 5mpw); this is (considerably) lower than I thought (especially as my highest weekly mileage was 148m), but then again this was never about hitting numbers just for the sake of it.
2) I react better to running my general runs a bit quicker and throwing in unplanned efforts (in addition to planned efforts) as and when my body thinks it's a good idea.

I've found that slower running to try to hit bigger mileage invariably doesn't work for me as the extra time on feet deadens my legs and hinders attempts at getting some good quality work in (plus I tended not to hit the mileage I aim for because of the same fatigue).

Over the last few months or so I have seen the effects of this as my rate of improvement has tailed off. Conversely, I have come out of this first week running a bit quicker with my legs feeling more lively than they have done in quite a while, which tells me I'm going in the right direction, so hopefully that should kick start some improvements over the coming weeks.