Sunday, May 11, 2008

Leisurely Sunday recovery run

Well after the exertions of yesterday, today was a very leisurely Sunday afternoon recovery run, but boy was it hard to begin with. My legs were very heavy and felt like they were cemented in concrete to begin with. It doesn't help that where I live is surrounded by hills, and the first 3/4 mile or so is literally all uphill. But hey, it's a good workout and will stand me in good stead. However once I got into the swing of things, I opened up a little during the last 2 miles, and managed to put in some faster strides, and was fairly pleased with the run in the end.

I'm also being much more sensible about my running now, and am thinking more about the end goal rather than hitting loads of miles each week. If I carry on trying to blast myself each week I'm going to be a mess come next March. I always used to worry that I would lose fitness if I didn't get a certain number of miles in, but now emphasis is on quality, not quantity. I'll still be doing 45 miles a week minimum for the next 5 months or so, but make sure that I work hard for those, than do 55-60 badly. My fitness has come on leaps and bounds. Four months ago I was an 8min 30sec mile a minute man. Now I'm a comfortable 8 minute mile man, as shown by yesterday's run with a 4.5kg backpack on and doing 16 miles. So no need to worry there. More of the same now for the next few months, before upping things around July for the Glasshouse 100km race, the next big test!

1 comment:

Steph Cooke said...

Hi Dan, sounds as though you are getting some quality training in, I think it is sensible to aim for quality rather than increasing mileage as I have also read that the potential for injury increases when training over 50 miles per weel/
It's something I'm giving serious consideration to as well.
Steph