I posted my 5 week plan that I made for leading up to Wellington Round the Bays half marathon and the update on the third week on how things went. This is my fourth week training update leading to the next weeks Wellington Round the Bays half marathon! I’ll post how it all goes next Monday!

Week 4 was a week where most runs were in ‘maintenance mode’. Target was to run a total of 60kms for the week.

Monday – 04th Feb – Rest day  with some strength work in the afternoon. Mostly involving some stability work and Plyometrics including Box Jumps, High Knees, Bounding and Single Leg hops.

Tuesday – 05th Feb – It was a pretty windy day, probably the first one in quite a while after the great weather we’ve had. Easy 12kms. To avoid running into the wind I went up Carlton Gore road on the waterfront and did a reverse loop out to Evans bay and back via the waterfront with the wind behind me. So bit of a small hill run at around 5:30 easy pace.

Wednesday – 06th Feb – 11k run with a tempo session. I was able to push about 35mins at tempo pace. I use a HR monitor with my Garmin watch. This gives me a good indication when I need to push and when I can ease off. Once you figure out your HR zones it works to your advantage and helps in maintaining the right effort level on each workout.

Tempo session

Thursday – 07th Feb – Initially I had Thursday down as a rest say. However we had plans to go away this weekend so I decided to go for an easy recovery run today. easy 12ks and lots of stretching and foam rolling to relax leg and ITB muscles.

Friday – 08th Feb – A steady 12km run around 4:45 pace and post workout stretch.

Saturday – 09th Feb – Rest day!

Sunday – 10th Feb – 14ks of easy running around the bays. Final long run and warm down!

RTB Week 4 Training recap

So here’s to the next week of running leading up to Wellington Round The Bays.

Also if you haven’t entered the giveaway go and check it out – “Keep running and you’ll be winning” I’ve changed the rules, means all you have to do is enter the competition if you are running AMI Round the Bays.

With only a week away I am looking at running a PB by aiming to better my previous time of 1hr:37mins. What are your goals?

I posted my 5 week plan that I made for leading up to Wellington Round the Bays half marathon and the update on the second week on how things went. This is my third week training update leading to the next two weeks before Wellington Round the Bays half marathon!

Week 3 was another week of medium to high mileage week. With the The Tussock Traverse 26k trail run out of the way and a day of rest leading onto the week of running starting Monday 28th January. Target was to run a total of 80kms for the week.

Monday – 28th Jan – 12kms steady pace – it was pretty warm even at 6:30am when I did my run. Finished my run with a swim at oriental bay to cool off. The ‘unusual’ summer we are having is pretty good but sure does make it a bit uncomfortable because of the higher than normal temperatures in Wellington.

Tuesday – 29th Jan – 5k race @ 80% effort at about 4:10 pace and a 5k warm down jog post race. Managed to do the 5k race relatively easily with even splits. Jogged 5k so total of 10ks for the day. Again a fine warm day with high temperatures.

Wednesday – 30th Jan – 16k run at about 4:30 per Km pace. I did about 14kms at this pace and slowed down the last 2km to recover. Total 16kms done. This run was a bit of a test run to check how I can get into ‘race pace’ on the day of the race. Pushing 4:30 pace felt good and no major concerns. Did some core strength and foam rolling in the evening.

Thursday – 31st Jan – Rest day!. Lots of stretching and foam rolling to relax leg and ITB muscles.

Incidentally January 2013 was my highest mileage for the last 3 years of running. In January I ran a total of 308km (191miles) in total. This was a steady build up for over 5 months of slight increases in my weekly Kms. If you are planning to increase your running mileage make sure that you increase gradually and back off when things start hurting.

Monthly Increase in Kilometers.

One of my goals after this half marathon is to start training for my first Marathon. So this increase in Km is an important step to get my body adopted to the coming high mileage training. I’ll update on this in another post. 🙂

Friday – 1st of February – A steady 20km run. Now this was a special run! I ran with Greig and Willy, two local fitness experts/runners who are training for one of the toughest races on the planet. “Marathon Des Sables 2013” is a 6 day stage race across the sahara desert and these guys are doing it this year!

“The MdS is a multi-day ‘ultra-marathon’ or ‘ultra’ run in six days over a course of between 150 and 156 (254km) miles.”

Basically they set themselves a goal of running 5 marathons in 5 days in different parts of the country as part of training, their 5th marathon was scheduled in Wellington on Friday 1st Feb. They sent out a message to local runners to come join them for the run and I gladly joined them for 20kms.  They are fund raising for the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research. So please visit the Sahara Charity Challenge fund raising page and donate if you can.

It was great to run with them and they certainly were pushing a steady pace so all in all my 20km scheduled run was done with them out to Chocolate Fish cafe and back.

Willy and Greig just before heading off to complete the 5th marathon! Photo credit – Malaghan Institute.

Saturday – 2nd Feb – I had a 10k interval session scheduled for the morning. I ran this at the Lower Hutt Park Run – 5k + 5k, 2 sets of intervals.

Sunday – 3rd Feb – 12ks of easy running with a few hills! I headed up Mount Victoria and explored some of my favourite trails and did a couple of hill reps and a total of 14ks. Stopped on Oreintal bay and cooled off in the sea with a swim!

RTB Week 3 Recap

So here’s to the next two weeks of running leading up to Wellington Round The Bays and remaining injury free!

I posted my 5 week plan that I made for leading up to Wellington Round the Bays half marathon and the update on the first week on how things went. This is my second week update!

This is a recap of how the second week went. It was an relatively easy week of running with a few rest days leading on to my first event of this year The Tussock Traverse 26k trail run. So here is what happened in week 2.

Monday – 21st Jan – REST DAY! Apart from going for a walk I just chilled out. And being a public holiday (Wellington Anniversary day) it was nice just to chill out!

Tuesday – 22nd Jan – planned 10k @ 80% effort at about 4:40 pace. Managed to do this relatively easily with even splits. Jogged 1k so total of 11ks.

Wednesday – 23rd Jan – 14k run at about 4:30 pace. I did about 12kms at this pace and slowed down the last 2km to recover. Total 14kms done.

Thursday – 24th Jan – 10km easy pace as a recovery run. Did this one at about 5:30 pace. Lots of stretching and foam rolling to relax the muscles before the Saturday race.

Friday – 25th Jan – REST DAY! Drove to Tongariro National Park!

Saturday – 26th Jan – The Tussock Traverse – read the full race recap here!

Sunday – 27th Jan – Rest day! Easy 2hr walk in Natiional Park and a relaxing day!

RTB Week 2 Training Recap

So here’s to the next three weeks of running leading up to Wellington Round The Bays remaining injury free!

I posted my 5 week plan that I made for leading up to Wellington Round the Bays half marathon.

This is a recap of how the first week went. It was a big week of running with no rest days from Monday to Sunday. So here is what happened.

Monday – 14th Jan – planned 14km easy run. It was a wet day & the rain made for an interesting outing. Coming from a day of rest on Sunday the run was pretty easy & I cruised it pretty easy in the morning despite the heavy rain. Actual distance an easy 15kms in about 5min per Km on average.

Tuesday – 15th Jan – planned 5k race @ 80% effort and a 5k recovery after, so a total of 10ks. I was supposed to run each Km at about 4m 15s however I pushed it a bit & the competitive side got the better of me finishing the race at an average of 4min 05s & posting my second fastest 5km race time for the Waterfront course in 20min 20secs. Took a 5min break & then did an easy jog/walk of 5km as planned as recovery. So far so good.

Wednesday – 16th Jan – 20km Hill run or 2hrs plus hills. Typically I save my hill runs for Saturday or Sunday, this week I wanted to break the pattern & see what will happen with a middle of the week hill run. Weather was pretty good on Wednesday & it was pretty warm when I headed out at around 7am. I also wanted to use this run to check my gear for the 26km trail run Tussock Traverse on 26th Jan (next Saturday). The route I chose for this run was a loop starting from the Waterfront. It’s one of my favourite runs including some of Wellingtons great trails. (Ill do a post later on some of these) Basically run up to Brooklyn via Central Park then run down to the start of the Tip Track via Happy Valley Road. The Trip Track is long & winding with an ascent of about 400m over about 4kms. It’s a good climb & should be part of any Wellington runners schedule :). Once at the top you run to the Brooklyn windmill & follow the Karori sanctuary fence line to the Polhill track then it’s all downhill to Aro valley & back to the waterfront. Total distance 22kms. This isn’t an easy run & in hindsight I should have scheduled a rest day after this run. My legs were pretty tired & I did some foam rolling that evening.

Tip Track Elevation

Thursday – 17th Jan – 14km @ half marathon goal pace! Well this was pretty ambitious after the hill run. I knew that this might be asking a bit too much from my body but I thought if I ran late evening on Thursday my body would have had enough time to recover. Was I wrong on that! When I woke up in the morning my legs felt pretty heavy with a few aches. I’m used to this usually and not a stranger to a bit of aching in my legs after a long run. Anyway by about the 1km mark I knew that there was no way that I can run anywhere near my goal pace. So I settled for a pretty slow 10k. Lesson learned – no fast pace runs after a long hill session 🙂

Friday – 18th Jan – 10km intervals – another big mistake 🙂 my legs were like solid iron blocks everything hurt. Net result a slow 8k & lots of foam rolling & ice. I was experiencing a sharp pain just below my hamstring – not good & alarm bells started ringing!

Saturday – 19th Jan – 14km easy run – nope not a chance! However since my pain had somewhat subsided I decided to go for an easy jog/walk. It was terrible – legs were pretty tired, my HR was pretty high. I managed a 8k jog which felt like hell. Should have taken a full days rest! Foam roller & ice to the rescue.

Sunday – 20th Jan – 18km long run with hills – didn’t even attempt it! Slept in & just took it easy. Walked around the waterfront enjoyed the day. Came home & had an afternoon nap! So by around 5pm I felt pretty good, my legs were feeling normal again no pains. So I decided that I’ll go for an easy jog just to test how I felt. After about 2km of steady running it felt really good so I kept going & then it was 10ks without even feeling it! So ended up with a 15k around the bays!

Week 1 Training Recap

So my goal of running a full week with no rest almost worked & I learned a lot from this week. I also ran the most number of cumulative Kms in a week with a total of 88kms! Our bodies have a way of telling us when it’s time to take it easy – pain & aches are our bodies way of telling us to take it easy or rest. It’s our own defense mechanism to prevent us from damaging ourselves beyond repair. Running places a great stress on our bodies but also makes us stronger.

I’ve been reading a book called “The Runners Body” written by some leading sports scientists, I highly recommend this book even if you are a novice runner who has taken up running recently. It’s available at the Wellington City Library.

So next week (21st to 27th Jan) is relatively easy apart from the trail race on Saturday 26th in Tongariro & I’m hoping to stick to the plan! Monday (today) is a rest day!

So here’s to the next four weeks of running leading up to Wellington Round The Bays remaining injury free!