I thought I should report back on my initial impressions of the slightly revised training program I wrote about last time. In short, after the first five weeks of the 12-week Gold Coast half marathon program, the news is pretty good.
My scheduled 5K time trial at the end of week 3 went well with my time of 24:26 my fastest 5K in over a year (since running a 23:52 in March 2015). The increasingly longer, long runs have also been very comfortable. 100 minutes (14.73K) in week 1 was followed by 105 minutes (15.32K) in week 2, 110 minutes (16.53K) in week 4 and 115 minutes (17.19K) in the just completed week 5. According to the schedule, my final long run will rise to 140 minutes at the end of week 11.
Health-wise, things are also going well, all things considered. The left Achilles - while not debilitating - persists as a dull pain, and I’ve been feeling the right knee occasionally. The top of the left hamstring also gets a little tetchy now and then, but overall, nothing to cause any real concern.
I’m running six days a week now and not once have I had to miss or cut short any scheduled session. The weekly mileage has been, in order, 40.46K, 43.78K, 27.92K, 44.76K and 45.52K. All the remaining weeks with the exception of the taper are also scheduled to exceed 40K, with three over 50K.
Week 6 also began positively with one of my three-weekly Bay Runs. Normally it takes around 40-42 minutes for the 7K loop. But on Sunday, I managed it in 38:38 without looking to run especially quickly, and even having to weave in and out of the very large number of Sunday morning Bay-walkers who were also taking in the wonderful Sydney autumn sun.
Of course, any optimism I might be conveying by all this is necessarily tempered by the memory of last year’s hamstring tear in the couple of days before the Gold Coast event. It occurred at the end of what was otherwise a similarly very successful training schedule.
So while I’m somewhat confident of a good outcome from this current training block, I’m also acutely conscious that what the running gods giveth, the running gods taketh away. Blessed be the name of the running gods!
