In the meantime...

I did get to run my second overall 22 km in my life. This time it wasn't under race conditions though but a simple, weekend long run.
I felt tired going into the once alrady postponed event. For this distance I need to finish 3 laps around the lake where I usually run my long runs. I had to push through the better half of the first lap to even get under 5:30 km pace. But something surprising happened getting close to end of the lap which I though would be the last. I felt stronger by each step after the 5th km. So strong that the second lap felt very easy. Pace got better, up to 5:25 km pace. I wasn't hesitating for a bit to start the 3rd round.
As this was an increase in distance it was unavoidable to hit a wall. 18 km was the moment where all mental power had to get in to keep running. Of course it got better around 19 km and was able to maintain pace and attitude until the end.
It felt very good to see 20 km on my Polar as the digits turned. And I almost did it in two hours as well. It would have been nice to get under two but it felt very satisfying to finish at all.

Recovery was good as well. Muscles were sore for two days. Ran a recovery 4 km very easy, then ran my usual 800 m repeat two days later. It made me reborn! I was very concerned before as my legs still felt the affects of the long run. But to my biggest pleasure all went well. I was able run even the last repeat as I should not as expected. The next day, Friday went for the hill repeats just to see how it quickly I can recover. Great run again, with even better recovery.

So good that I even decided to push harder on Sunday when the next 22 km was scheduled. Kept an easy (at least felt like it) 5:15 pace all the way the first two laps. Of course this meant more struggle for the 3rd but it was totally worth it. I slowed down to 5:20 even to 5:30 from time to time by after few minutes of refreshing, pace got back to normal.

When I pressed stop at the end I could hardly belive that it "only" toom 1 hour 58 minutes to get it done. 5 minute improvement over last week's result both at the half marathon distance and over all as well.

Now I have a new target after the under hour 12 km: get my half marathon down to 1:45.

To achieve this: some speed work this week after a recovery run tomorrow. Long run over the weekend, 1.5 km speed repeats next week foloowed by two minute hill runs.

The future looks promising...

Old habits die hard

I was adjusting my training plan this morning due to the gap occured last week after my cold. I tried to make a guess about my 800 m repeat pace and the hill workout pace. I made an estimate as I always do: this is my pace, I usually run around 5 min/km as a top speed, recovery around 5:40.

Then I checked in the Daniels table to see how I progressed based on my last 15 km. I was very surprised to see that I silently crossed a very big red line withouth niticibg. Based on what I am capable on a long run I should be running my speed workouts even faster. What is the saying? Runners usually do their fast runs too slow and their slow runs too fast. How true is that?

Now I am re-visiting my paces in all events planned to reflect the actual target I should be focusing on if I want do develop.

As it is a big shock that now my target is:
- 4:30 pace on 5 km
- 4:45 pace on 10 km
And I can actually target a slighly outside 5 minute pace for next week's 22 km long run.

Me, a very happy runner.

Over the top

It supposed to be the peak of the past few month. Run the most in a week, run the most in a day. Also, following my fastest ever 15 km, that came very very close to the dream pace with an average of 5.02 km.

Instead my body decided to peak in a different, less interesting, more painfull endevour. After last Tuesday's training I started to feel weeker. Recovery during the speed repears was not as it should and could have. By Thursday I had multiple source of pain, slught fever. This climaxed by Saturday with me spending the whole day in bed with 38-38.5 fever, caugh, running nose and headache.

To mt luck I did take it seriously and skipped even the Thursday morning workout. I started to feel better yet still weak by Sunday. The original plan was for me to stay home from work for a few days but I felt so good that I decided against this and went anyway.

Today I could even resume training with an easy, flat 4 km run. I had to redraw the plan I just layed out so I will spend this week recoveribg with two more easy runs of 6 and 15 km.

I'll start the real work on Monday with some pace run, than onto the 800 m repeats on Wed. Ome hill work on Fri and distance on Sun.

Hopefully this nasty cold will stay away and I actally will be able to attack 21 k in two weeks.