Sunday, July 22, 2007

End of a solid week

Well, running and work have both been conspiring to make it difficult to find time to blog. But this past week I set about trying to apply the principles of the Lydiard running approach while mainly using Hadd's heart rate prescriptions to control my efforts. The principle of the Lydiard approach, as I understand it, is to run as much as you can while keeping the distance and exertion up near, but below, the limit of what you can recover from each day. And the aim is, then, to run every day. Every day. Like all runners, the biggest threat I pose to myself is to go over the edge and head into a slow death spiral of increasing fatigue. Work pressures this week almost caused that to happen through a few nights where I didn't get as much sleep as I needed. But somehow I have got through and logged 97 km as 12, 12, 18, 13, 7, 12, 24. At this stage of the game, 18 weeks from tomorrow until the marathon, this is a pretty good place to be, but I still think that I might have over-reached slightly and will simply be trying to consolidate this next week rather than add on any more distance. At least I kept the intensity down on most of these runs, easy or lower aerobic, and haven't felt any major physical difficulties backing up each day. The only exception was Friday, when ideally I should have been doing 10 to 12, but the efforts on Wednesday and Thursday had left me feeling tired, so I backed off for an easy lap of the Palace with Ms Uchida from my office (she continues to progress and ran a PB for the course!). Today's long run, at 24 km, was a few more km than I should have done, but then it was also a bit slower than it should have been too. The temperatures are staying mild so far (low to mid 20s), but every day is overcast and humid. Bring on WM-18! (=marathon week minus 18 weeks).

7 comments:

TD said...

Very solid week of running, Stephen. Good luck with it and I will be following closely your reports on how the body copes with running every day.

To briefly answer your query on my blog, I did in fact visit Tokyo in February this year (my 3rd trip overall) for a conference. It was an extremely brief trip - one night in very nice hotel on Tokyo Bay not far from the new expo site and the imitation Statue of Liberty. It was a bit out of the way but I was grateful to be there as there was not much traffic and I was able to get in a good run. If I had of been there a bit longer I would have looked you up.

Samurai Running said...

Sounds like a good idea to "try to consolidate rather add any more distance" for the next little while.

Something that helps pick me up when I'm feeling a little "run down", so to speak, is to go out to a Korean BBQ and stuff myself. As I don't eat much meat, as a rule, it really does work to boost my energy levels. Anyway try it but don't go overboard on the beers.

Robert Song said...

I'm sure that you are aware that Lydiard was also a great advocate for listening to your body and that not to be a total slave to a schedule.

I'll watch your progress with interest. I am trying to do something similar myself.

I think you have to be going really really slow for it to be a problem. A little slow is probably of no consequence.

Thanks for the Mystery Coach links. It was all great reading.

Ewen said...

Any idea who the mystery coach is Steve?

The thing I like about running every day, is that you don't have a choice. You just run every day.

Like you, I'm doing well with lower aerobic runs - fairly much assured of recovering by the next day, even with the odd life-balance problem. The upper aerobic runs could be testing when they are introduced.

By the way, I owe you a beer... you beat me by 1km last week ;)

MilesandMiles said...

Hi Steve, interesting that you have taken an interest in Lydiards methods.

But while you seemed focused on scientifically determining what pace each run should be ran at, the main attraction for me revolves around the periodization stuff. I have beeen wanting to do a proper conditionning phase followed by hills 2-3xwk then by anaerobics2-3x weeks ect... for a long time... had some luck with it earlier this week but it all went somewhat messy.

You probably know this link already... caution: Lydiards seems to have more exegetes than the Bible!!
http://lydiardfoundation.org/training/hilltrainingdvd.html

Robert Song said...

Exegetes??

I didn't know what that meant so looked it up.

A person skilled in exegesis.

Now that certainly explains it.

MilesandMiles said...

Robert,
I meant: there seem to be a great deal of discussions around what AL really meant by "steady state" and what pace that really is ect... Some say he had a tendancy to exagerate everything to get his point accross(eg this not jogging/LSD etc,,,)and therefore it should not be interpreted too litterally !