Training Update

It's now been five weeks since I started training with Paul O'Callaghan so I thought I'd give a brief update. So far I have only done 3 of the 10 Milers I mentioned in my previous post. The Thetis Relay replaced the one of them and last week it it coincided with a rest day so the rest day won out. This will happen from time to time since the rest day changes each week with the 7 day on 1 day off schedule. The last time I did the Broadmead 10 Miler, the weather did not cooperate for the 2nd time and the driving wind and rain was pretty unpleasant. It was tough to keep myself warm enough. Run wise, It was decent however, as I took 3 minutes off my first time there despite wasting some time figuring out the route (it will take a couple more tries before I have it all memorized).

On Sat, we usually have a interval session on grass and these sessions can be pretty tough. Yesterday we did 12x30 sec uphill with about a minute rest jogging back down. While 30 sec doesn't sound like much, if you go full out, it becomes pretty tough. By the end of the last few repeats, I started to feel a little nauseous and that rarely happens to me. For the first time, I also wore spikes which really made a huge difference in traction; particularly since the grass was wet and muddy. Unfortunately, the right shoe wore my heel raw so I have to figure out what is causing that. After the repeats, we were supposed to hammer out a 1 Mile interval. The first couple of hundred metres were fine, but I could really feel the effect of the hill repeats and it became a struggle to keep the legs moving particularly up the little hills.

Overall, I've been pretty happy with the program although the increased mileage has caused my shin splints to flare up a bit. They are still in control, however, and only a minor annoyance. Of a little more concern are some issues I am having with my right heel which has been causing me some discomfort at the beginning of my runs and sometime during the run. It is not bad enough to affect my training, but I want to make sure that it doesn't become a big problem. I've been seeing a physiotherapist and have seen some improvement. Hopefully, it will be history in a couple of weeks.

This week the training enters a new buildup phase with 3 quality sessions per week rather than just the two. There will be a track workout on Tue, the 10 Miler will move to Thurs, and Sat will continuous to be a grass interval workout. The track workouts should be interesting as I haven't done a lot on the track before. As long as I can keep the injuries at bay, I think this phase will start to pay off starting in the new year.

Yesterday, I also checked out the Gunner Shaw race at Thetis. I've raced this one for the last 4 years, so for the fist time, I decided to volunteer and was given a Marshaling post at the north end of Lower Thetis Lake. It was actually pretty interesting to see the race from a different perspective than I normally do and it was good to give a little back to the running community. All of the races are totally dependent on volunteers so its good to pitch in sometimes. Congratulations to Jason Loutitt who took the win and a big kudos to my training partner, Shawn Nelson, who ran to fantastic 2nd place finish in a strong field. His improvement year over year, is quite outstanding. I guess the new training is really paying off.