Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Phase 2 of Training Plan

I think I now have it figured out. How to proceed with my training I mean.
I will be doing my long runs every fortnight and they will vary between 23k and 27K. No problem there, really.
What about speed?
I will stick to Tempo runs* and fartleks*. I wont do hill repeats and intervals.
I have no hills nearby and track intervals may just give me grief (read injury). But my long distance routes have some hills. Some young ass hills really - compared to Ndakaini hills which are some bad ass hills.
So I'll tell you what.
I have been doing 12k tempo runs already so what I need to add are fartleks in the 12K route. I will start by splitting the 6K route to six parts (see below) and will be taking them on one at a time with tempo runs in between. Until I lower the 57:08 time to somewhere near 48mins.
Ambitious huh? You bet your a** it is ambitious. It scares the hell out of me to even write it down but I know that is the first step if I am to meet my goals.
And now that I am targeting 5 days of running a week, I have to introduce recovery runs.
Tentative weekly program:
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Long run/Rest (23K-27K)
Monday: Recovery/Easy Run (8K-12K)
Tuesday: Tempo Run (12K)
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: Fartleks (12k)
Friday: Tempo run (12K-18K)

*Fartleks consist of bursts of speed in the midst of a training run.
*Tempo runs just require that you run faster than your usual training pace and maintain a single sustained effort. As much as possible, one should maintain an even pace or even negative split.

My 12K training Route

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