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Valencia Marathon Week 3/12

Plan for this week is to increase my mileage from 50 miles (80k) to 54 miles (86k). I'll do this by reducing the weekly intensity, dropping Friday's session in favour of 100 meter strides sprinkled throughout.

Monday
9 miles (14.5K) easy, glorious weather to start the week.



Tuesday
9 miles (14.5k) easy, listening to the Inside Running Podcast, highly recommend. Three Australian marathon runners of sub 2:20 standard, they discuss their training, running news, answer some listeners questions and plenty more.

Wednesday
7 miles (11k), back to Marlay Park for my 5 miles (8k) at 160 heart rate. No such issues getting my heart rate into the correct zone. Only my third week doing this session and it felt very controlled and comfortable, covering the route in 36:17.
I've mentioned previously that the goal of this workout is parallel lines between heart rate and power/pace. I use power rather than pace due to the undulating nature of the course. Looking at the picture below and you can see the power reading between splits two and six are very closely matched. Previous weeks there was a drop off in the last two miles (3k). The success of this session means I can add an extra mile (1.6k) to next week's load.


Thursday 
5.5 miles (9k) easy with RCSI. I had 6x400 meters planned for them at their 5k race pace off a 60 second standing recovery. This coincided with my marathon pace. Thoroughly enjoyed stretching my legs but I was also aware that we were doing this on hard concrete, the long straight on the south side of St Stephen's Green Park.

Friday
6 miles (10k) my body was so tired and achy (perhaps the hard concrete). I immediately went to recovery effort and dropped all notions of the planned strides. The upcoming long run being my main priority.

Saturday
17 miles (27k) Unlike the previous week, I was not looking forward to this. My tummy was a little bit off from the day before. I decided to run a local 5 mile (8k) loop first, just incase I needed to abandon the run. Thankfully once I got going, everything was fine. I headed up to Bohernabreena Reservoir, long drag uphill that clashed with the first gear shift in pace, could not wait for the turnaround.


At the turnaround it was time for the next jump in pace and I was surprised to see a couple of sub 7 minute miles appear (4'20 Km pace). They didn't feel particularly taxing aerobically, however not all was well with my hamstrings. I think all the changes in pace combined with lots of up and downhills had them a little disorientated. Solid run all the same!

Overall quite pleased with the first three weeks from a running point of view. Nutritionally comme ci comme ca, I'm certainly fueling a lot better but my sweet tooth has been getting the better of me. And finally a grade F for strength and conditioning, I've been promising myself every Monday that I need to start, I've yet to do so, complaining of "No time", but I think we'll all agree "No time" just means I don't want to! Maybe next Monday?





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