I'm currently reading Born To Run 2, a fantastic book by Eric Orton & Christopher McDougall aimed at, you guessed it, runners.
It's far from your average running book.
In this book they look at how to gently, safely and successfully transition to running as close to barefoot as possible for the greatest number of your runs.
The goal, really, is to be able to run any distance at any time.
My idea of awesome, actually.
This is something I've been actively wanting for... well, forever. And since I knew it would be easier to practise the drills, the games, the form fixes in the book if I had an actual goal to work towards, I did something I didn't think I was going to do this year:
I picked a running goal.
In theory, I'm going to run the Gold Coast Marathon on Sunday 2nd July in 3:59 or faster. That is, as long as it lines up with a useful time in my menstrual cycle. If not, I'll be using all the training I do for this event to pick the next closest similar event that lines up better for my body. I'm done overriding my body, these days I work with it instead of against it as much as I can.
In service of this goal, Brad helped me take stock of what my average training load had been per week in December and then we used that as something of a baseline. This is mostly so I don't overdo it when I start to increase my mileage and time on feet in the coming weeks and months.
It's not like I'm starting from scratch; I've been running on and off my entire life. Also, between 2009-2014 I did 5 trail ultra marathons and a full marathon plus another "short" but very difficult ultra marathon again in 2016.
So, I've been around the block.
I just haven't done a lot of big mileage for, well, 8 years it seems 😅 So it's time to start slowly again.
That, and I want to really run well. Like super well. And super fast. Any distance, any time.
So my training plan for January literally looks like this:
It's simple. It's not perfect as it has four weeks instead of 31 days. But it's flexible enough for me to work with my menstrual cycle and not get locked into a routine of "this on Monday, then that on Tuesday, etc" which I hate. Routine doesn't support me, it makes me feel trapped.
So, we'll see how my plan goes. On paper it looks doable and suitable for me and my personality.
1st Jan was a NYD special parkrun event. Since I'd already run hard the day before I took this 5km easy finishing in 31:20. That'll do.
Yesterday we travelled most of the day and just walked a few times to break up the trip.
So this morning, after a mouthful of water, I did my 20 minutes easy (ish).
Emphasis on the "ish" because I was also trying to increase my cadence and that makes it, weirdly, so much harder. I guess because it's so unfamiliar to me. I'm sure I'm usually sitting below 170 steps per minute; the aim (as you'll know if you're a committed runner) is 180 steps p/min.
I did alright 👇
But I was working (according to my watch) waaaay too hard. Definitely felt "grey zone ish" but I would have said I was in Zone 3 for most of it, not 4!
Definitely not a totally flat run. That's impossible in this hilly area we call home.
But it's done and I'm away. Let's see what I learn in the process 😊
{All screenshots courtesy of Garmin Connect taken on my phone.}