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Week 12 Review: In Health and Sickness

Week 12 Review: In Health and Sickness

A strong cross-country race performance set the tone for this week, and that was backed up with some speed training as well. However, I didn’t back this up with appropriate easy / recovery runs, and then also got hit with a stomach bug at the end of the week. That has knocked things out of kilter!

Weight change: * NOT RECORDED *
Training: Tempo 10k (Flat), XC Race, Speed training (10 x 400m), Refereeing 10k
Total Training Distance: 32.5 km

Weight loss

I am taking a sabbatical on this one for the week! The sickness bug hit me Saturday evening, so my focus was on getting better and well-rested again. I was not totally in the right frame of mine to be tracking weight 🙂

Training

The sickness bug only impacted Sunday in terms of training (I wasn’t going to go running, even if a recovery run would have been routine).

Despite this, I am a little disappointed in myself in that my training volume dropped from my recent 40 km+ levels. Primarily down to not getting the recovery / easy runs in on days following harder training. While some things have got in the way, it’s still my responsibility and essentially I should do better.

On the positive side, the cross-country race was great fun, and I have already written up how it showed my training is resulting in significant improvements.

Track Time!

The race was backed up with a preceding tempo run (Deliberately kept flat on this occasion, as the cross-country would provide the hills!), and also a standard 10 x 400m speed training session.

The healthy part of the week ended with some refereeing. A typical distance in a game is about 10k. This one was a little lower due to the nature and tempo of the game, and my fitness was not tested. However, the 90 minutes or so of running about and the twists and turns required certainly mean I need decent recovery afterwards.

What’s next?

The beginning of the week is all about recovery and ensuring fitness ahead of a game on the Tuesday night.

After that, it should be training (and diet!) as usual, leading up to another game on the Saturday.

Having two games which are likely to be high intensity means I will prioritise recovery days over speed / hill training this week.

Let’s get it done!

Day One

Day One

Hi! I’m Tristan and I want to hit a sub-twenty minute 5k run. This blog is to help keep me focused on this goal.

I’ve had this challenge in my head for a few years now, but have not worked hard (or smart?) enough to achieve it. My fastest time to date was in 2018 at Evesham parkrun, clocking in at 20:52. However, there’s a significant effort required to make up those 52 seconds.

Not helping is that I have put on some ‘baby weight’ this year due to a new arrival! Okay, that’s a pretty poor excuse: The reality is that I haven’t been disciplined enough. That has to change.

Here’s the latest running picture of me:

Running in 2019

And here was me at what I felt was my ‘best’ running weight:

Refereeing 2015

To be clear, it isn’t about the number here: It’s how I feel when running. Right now, I feel sluggish and without the best turning circle! I can definitely feel the difference when at my ‘fighting weight’.

The immediate goals are simple:

  • Diet: I will be on a 2000 kcal level. This works well for me for sensible and controlled weight loss. I ‘earn’ calories through exercise. I track this via the excellent MyFitnessPal. No binge eating.
  • Baseline Training: Establish training so that I am back to regularly running 10k training distances without it feeling a struggle at any point (Unless I am choosing to beast myself, that is!)

Once I am feeling a bit more stable with the above, I can progress to fitness training which is tailored more to the goal at hand.

These initial steps are pretty simple by design. Let’s have fun in the process too!