Summer holiday training

My last training post was written in the middle of July, at the beginning of the school summer holidays, and this one is written at the end of August, when they are almost over. I find training in the summer holidays quite tricky. My children are home with me, so I can't run in the morning anymore (unless I get up at silly o'clock!), and my evening routine goes out of the window when we are away on our camping trips.

I've managed to continue to attend my weekly Pilates class, which has been a great help with healing my leg injury. I also continued to attend circuits, cycle, and swim whenever I could.

I restarted running in August with a training day for the Duck N Dash organised by Freedom Tri. We had an hour of swim training at 7:30 am, then we ran the First Saturday of the Month 5K around Norton Common. It was a good opportunity to see how it feels to do a dual event. I found the swimming really difficult, but the running went well, possibly because I didn't strictly race the event, I took the first mile "easy" and then began to speed up towards the end (26:27).

Because I've been away a lot over the summer, when I do get chance to run I've been trying to make it count. I've maintained my long run distance by running at least 10K once a week. On the other run day (I usually only managed two runs a week) I was focusing on speedwork, either hill sprints or intervals. It's been good to attempt speedwork on my own because I usually leave run club to organise my fast runs! On my last run (5.5 miles) I concentrated on maintaining a faster pace than usual (I aimed at 9 min/mile vs settling into a 10.5 min/mile plod). I also aimed to run fast up all the hills. It was a good run, despite the faster pace I felt comfortable (and wondered to myself why I'd never pushed myself before this day!). It's definitely given me some confidence that I've not lost too much fitness and I can get back something from this year (aim is still to achieve 10K and half PBs).

This week I'm taking charge of run club. My plans aren't too complicated because I'm not very confident on my own! Tuesday will be about negative splits, taking the beginners to Arlesey and back to see if they can make the return journey faster, and intermediates will be attempting to run a progressive 5 miles. Thursday will be speedwork for the beginners at the Norton Rd underpass, and intermediates will be running 4-6 miles depending on who comes (we might race the distances).

I don't really want to risk injury on Thursday, because Sunday is the Duck N Dash. I can't believe it's less than a week away. I need to concentrate on my diet this week, I need to lose some weight but I also need to keep my energy levels up. I'll be blogging about my diet on soggous.blogspot.co.uk.

Thanks for reading!