Marathon Training: Week 3

Week 3

Monday 18^th May – Rest day

Tuesday 19^th May – Rest day with 45minutes walking

Wednesday 20^th May

Distance: unknown

Location: Altona athletics track

Keith Fearnley’s instructions were to warm up for 10minutes (approx. 2km) and then run for one minute, two minutes, three minutes and four minutes out and then one, two, three and four minutes back.

I’m not used to training like this and I usually use the Nike Plus app to measure my runs, so I don’t think the distances and times recorded were very accurate, however I did enjoy the challenge and felt my legs working.

The weather wasn’t great and as mentioned this type of training was different to what I was used to, but it was a learning curve and helped me focus on the recovery of the runs.

Thursday 21^st May

Distance: 4.98km

Location: Altona

Back to basics, a 40minutes run at 60-70% effort was scheduled; unfortunately due to bad weather and aches in my legs I only managed 25minutes.

I set off at a fairly slow pace, just wanting to get my legs moving and warm them up to avoid injury. I love running in the rain this should have been good fun for me, it wasn’t.

Straight away I found myself avoiding puddles, slipping on paths and losing my stride. My muscles were starting to ache and rather than risk injury, I decided it was best to head back and save my legs for another day.

Friday 22^nd May – Rest day with 60minutes walking

Saturday 23^rd May

Distance: 8.06km

Location: Altona Parkrun

As a test of my speed work, Keith set me a 5k-time trial to monitor my progress.

The ‘parkrun’ craze has followed me over from England to Australia, a fantastic concept to encourage more people to run/walk 5km on a weekly basis.

Altona parkrun only started a few weeks ago, great timing to do a 5km time trial.

With a 1.5km jog to the start line and a few stretches I was all set and ready with 40 other runners on the start line in APEX Park. Off went the horn and the front few shot off at quite some speed, I steadied myself and decided to tag on to the back of the front pack but not exhaust myself straight away.

The course was a 2.5km-looped course with the turning point at the top of the Altona 100 steps; perfect as this was the hill I have trained on the last few weeks.

I maintained a solid speed at first and was encouraged to chase runners down, yet on the way back my legs started to tighten and I felt myself slowing down, almost as if I was running backwards allowing two runners behind to close me down.

12^th place and a time of 22:29, not bad for my first 5km time trial in a while and my pace per kilometre was quicker than expected. With another 1.5km back home as my cool down I was happy with the days running.

Sunday 24^th May

Another long run was planned for today, though I had plans with my family, so I delayed the running until Monday and instead jumped around on a trampoline for an hour, perhaps not the best method of training but it was great fun.