A tough week

After quite a few weeks on top of the world it was only a matter of time before I crashed back down to earth again.  This week has been tough.  It could be one of many things Saturday's Race, Faster than usual long run and then a Fartlek on Monday or perhaps one of the many colds that people seem to have at this time of year.  What ever it is I haven't been feeling 100% this week.  My legs are fatigued and I feel mentally and physically tired.

In response though I am trying my best to be sensible.  I am eating well, drinking fluids, sleeping loads and most importantly relaxing my training a bit.  It is starting to pay off as I am now feeling a bit better today so here is hoping I feel great by Saturday which is the National Cross Country race where I am hoping to break into the top 100 this year.

So after my fartlek on Monday with Garscube, I ran an 8 mile run on Tuesday at a nice easy 7:44 min/mile pace and then yesterday I did a session that involved 8,6,4,3,2,1 minute reps.  I took the first two at my normal pace for this session but tried to lay off a little for the rest of it.  Although the pace was still good my HR was in a steady zone rather than my normal tempo zone and so showed I wasn't working too hard.

This morning I was in Hampden Park's Sports Medicine Department for some recovery work with Graeme.  I really am enjoying learning from him at the moment.  Today we did an Aqua Jogging session which involved some faster efforts but also some stretching in the pool as well.  Thankfully he didn't film it as I am hopeless at stretching.  On a positive note my legs felt fantastic after it although I do still feel a bit tired.

Graeme spoke to me about some of the training I had done recently and showed me that there was a couple of areas that I looked a little fatigued in recently according to my Heart Rate.  So after the Nationals I am going to try to keep a lid on my effort and make sure that I am recovering well.  We also talked about nutrition and what went wrong in last years WHW race.  I can't wait to start looking into all of this in more detail in the next few weeks.  Graeme though true to form told me to eat more and that muffins were good.  So at lunchtime I ate a massive muffin.  Yum.

So the session with Graeme this morning was very good for me and I am going to try to organise another pool session with him in the next few weeks.

Tomorrow I am going to just do an easy run of about 5 miles with Mark Johnston and forget the strides session.  Hopefully with the two easy days I will be fully recovered for Saturday race and the important long run with John on Sunday.