Friday, April 11, 2014

3 WEEKS of TRAINING

After African-X, like any other good Athlete (and by good I mean well behaved) I took the week off... OK I took 3 days off, OK I still ran but easy, only running 6km on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday was a really beauty of a day so I headed up to the Block House...

That's Nic, don't think Usain Bolt would have made it up there!!!
I think the legs must have recovered or the brain had stopped working, because with Friday a holiday I had time to head up the mountain... It was perfect up there, not a breath of wind or cloud, and early in the morning I was alone!

Maclear's Beacon

Now with the weekend behind up, and the rest week over it was time to start build-up to Oceans. While I am aiming at the 22km trail race most of my boys have the half in their sights, so the program would focus on them...

WEEK 1: with Monday's easy run behind us Tuesday had us on the road for 3-4 x 2km (90sec rest). (3 for the guys doing the half and 4 for the rest of us.
Wednesday I sent the boys off to run an easy 15km with a couple of long hills, while I ran 15km on the mountain following the Oceans trail route.
Thursday and it was time for the next session... HILLS, Oceans has plenty of hills and the boys need to be able to run up and down! The entrance to Rhodes mem has a long unforgiving hill of almost 500m... I called it a day after 7 reps, I must be getting old in the 90's I would be 10sec faster and run 10 of them...
Since there was a 30km race on Sunday I took Saturday easy only doing 16km (OK I popped up Nursery from home, a 750m climb). As for Sunday's 30km, well it was really just a training run and I was fine until the last 5km (which is all down hill) when my legs got tired so I couldn't pick up the pace and run with Eddie who had run with me till then...

WEEK 2: We changed the 2km reps for miles, and moved to the grass. I was running a little quicker and while I should have done 5 I stopped with the other at 4. (Lazy)
This week I joined the boys on the road, and while they only did 12km I did the full 16km.
Thursday was another long hills session, but we moved the hill to Boshoff Ave. and since it's not as steep the boys were flying on the way down watching their style... I've seen a lot of guys run a hilly race and after hammering the downs they haven't had the legs to run on. My boys should be ready!
I didn't want to drive out to the half on Saturday morning, so I headed for the mountain again. This time over Vlakkenberg, Manganese Mines, up Blackburn, through Silvermine, and back along Level 6 through Tokai Forest.

Love the sunny days
Half way up Blackburn
With over 1000m of climb on Saturday I went flat on Sunday taking Dawn with me, she was on the bike, and had to keep turning back for me!

WEEK 3: We again shortened the reps and this week it was 8 x 1000m (the half boys only did 5, but were flying). Wednesday's 15-16km run was run to 13km and Thursday's hill session was changed to 60sec fast up. I had planned on 15 of them, but number 10 was so slow I called it a day... OK I changed the rest of my session and just add 2 x long hills running them the way I would run them in a long race... (slowly on tired legs)

I'm please this week is over and week 4 is a taper week up to Oceans, I would not have made 4 hard weeks this time round.

Now as for the weekend? Well on these tired legs I'm going to line up for the 10km race and see if the legs will work, before running leg 2 of the cross country relay in the afternoon...