Keith: July 8th - July 14th.

"I train for good luck" - Arturo Barrios

Monday: 3m easy, 13m progressive @ 80% (6:12 per mile), 5.17m steady - 21.17m.
Tuesday: am: 7.2m steady, 2.91m tempo (5:33 per mile) - 10.11m.
pm: 6.12m easy.
Wednesday: 15.28m steady.
Thursday: am: 4m+ easy, then 8 x {340m+ fast, 340m+ jog}, ~2.7m steady - 10.27m.
pm: 6.15m easy.
Friday: 6.18m jog/easy.
Saturday: 20mins warm-up, then 3 x {10mins @ Half-Mara effort, 3mins recs}, cool-down - 10.43m.
Sunday: 1m easy, 3m steady, 6m @ 80% (6:06 per mile), 2.57m @ 90% (5:46 per mile) - 12.57m.

Total: 98.28m.

I wanted some quicker running during Monday's long run again, as per last week. I started outdoors, but quickly realised that the heat of the day was not conducive to quicker running. At this stage I decided to divert to home and use the treadmill based on the logic that I could have as much water as I needed to hand, plus I could sponge myself down if I got too hot.

As it happened, I completely forgot to take into account that, as our treadmill is situated in the conservatory, it is incredibly humid, and it's location means that it gets the main heat right throughout the day, but magnified.

All in all, I'm sure that it will count as good heat training/acclimatisation!

As the week progressed, I kept with my aim to get either a little bit of effort or an endurance run in most days, with a good finish to Tuesday morning's run, and then a very pleasing set of grass reps on Thursday morning.

The reason for the random distance is because I used some local playing fields and was working on a 'run one, jog one' approach, so half of the field comes in at just over 340m.

I executed them with very good control (which is not to say that I wasn't running hard, as I was), and the equivalents splits for 400m would have been about 68s, 67s and then the rest at 66s, bar one @ 65s.

A family day trip with a late finish on Friday meant I left my planned session until Saturday morning instead, which, despite the accumulated fatigue from the last two weeks of quicker paced running, went quite well again. The 10min reps started on the road, and then progressed to grass, where the surface, as it always does (at least for me), meant a slight slowing in pace for effort, but, particularly at this stage, it is the effort that is important.

Sunday then saw a solid finish to the week, with my legs responding quite well when I looked to wind up the pace a little.

This week the mileage is a bit lower, but still within what I consider my optimal range (see last week's post), but that was deliberate as I fine tune what I can do with that optimal mileage range.
My average pace has dropped from 7:26 per mile for June, to 6:54 per mile last week, and 6:44 per mile this week, and I feel better and more lively for it, which fits with my experimentations over the last few years.

However, I know that I need to have a down week occasionally as well, especially as I return to this more steady general running, so am trying a 2 weeks up, 1 week down, approach. The down week will not, necessarily, see any less volume, but will see a sizeable reduction in intensity.

The first two weeks of this approach have been quite pleasing as I have approached it in a progressive manner, rather than just 'dropping' it on my body and expecting it to adjust. Last week, out of 102.9m, just under 21m of it was quicker running, and the rest was steady or easy. This week, just under 32m was quicker running, with ~10m of that averaging 5:22 per mile, and the other (just under) 22m of quicker running being more marathon specific.

In future weeks I would hope to see the volume of quicker running pick up a bit more until I reach the optimal level of quality to go with my optimal level of quantity, but, as with everything, progress will be dictated by how my body responds.

Certainly though, it is a good start to the change in training approach.