My goal at the moment is to focus on my timed runs on the treadmill. The main distances I am focusing on are the 5km and 10km. My best is 37mins 43 seconds. However it has been a while since I did this and last week I did a some what disappointing 40mins 41secs. I increaed the pace too quickly and really started to struggle at the 30min mark. I however managed to continue through for an hour and average 14.3kph which wasn’t too bad for my first attempt. I should hopefully get back down to the 37 minute mark soon enough with focus. I think I may need to drop from my current weight of 13st 2lbs to accomplish this… I will keep you posted!
Last Sunday I decided to run up Snowdon, it works out at 14km and 1634m of accent and decent. It was a great day for it, the sun was shining, this is a miracle as every time I usually run Snowdon the weather is always against me. The snow was still thick on the ground from about half way up which made the decent a little tricky but I like a challenge. It took 2 hours 30mins top to bottom with a 10 minute break at the top. I trained with a little weight on my back weighing roughly 5kg.
The very summit of Snowdon
Since completing the Jungle Marathon I have really started to focus on my long duration running. I still enjoy lifting weights although I try to get the right balance between effective training to improve running economy and being fresh to put the most into my different runs. I try to fit one interval session in a week on a treadmill as well as intervals on the Stairmaster. I also do one tempo run and then a longer run on a Sunday where I usually add additional weight (up to 50lbs) and tackle various mountains such as Snowdon, the Sandstone Trail, and the South Pennines.
My intervals usually look something like this;
5 mins at 13kph (warm up)
1 min at 18.5kph
1 min at 12.5kph
1 min at 12.5kph at a gradient of 8%
1 min at 12.5kph
1 min at 18.5kph
1 min at 12.5kph
1 min at 12.5kph at a gradient of 8%
1 min at 12.5kph
1 min at 18.5kph
(This is not set in stone as I like to add variety to stop boredom setting in, sometimes I increase the sprint speed, resting speed, gradient, times at each interval etc)
For my tempo run this can last between 7 mins 30 seconds and one hour. I like to try and see how fast I can do 1.5m/2.4km (7 mins 30 seconds). I also like to run for up to an hour which is usually averaging about 15kph on a good day.
