Well, I did. I used Trainasone for six weeks in the hopes of getting a long-term goal of mine to run 5km faster than 40 minutes, which for most people is a piece of cake, but for me is an achievement I was not capable of last year or even earlier this year.

And I did achieve it.

The question though; how much did Trainasone help me with this, and how much was just me running more this summer than ever before?

Well, I can say the following:

Using Trainasone was easy and simple. All the workouts synched to my watch properly and the instructions were easy to follow. The plan was adjustable and did so pretty well if I for some reason missed a run due to health (which was the only reason I skipped a run during this block).

I did reach my time goal so yay for me.

The free features do seem to be enough for staying on top of things. I missed some features, but nothing major. The basic features work, basically.

The paces all seemed reasonable to my actual fitness level.

On the other hand:

Trainasone never had me do any training at goal pace, and very little speedwork and seemed fine with giving me just economy runs for a whole week unless I added something myself.

Workouts that weren’t easy economy runs were constantly rescheduled for no reason that I could see at all. This meant I never got to do any tabata runs that were on my schedule at one point, and I think during these six weeks, I was only given one threshold run and one interval run. Maybe I was just underperforming?

Once the free trial was over I could no longer block a day from having a workout. I could still decide what days should be running days I wanted to schedule, but schedules sometimes vary, and being able to tell Trainasone not to plan something on THIS Wednesday, but not keep ALL Wednesdays free was handy and I wish that was still available. 

And well, I do call this training block a success, but I am going a different route from now on.

Well, whether I was prepared or not, race day arrived. I gave myself a lot of rest during the beginning of the week, but did a very short run on Wednesday just to see how my legs were feeling.

They felt fine, breathing felt fine, got plenty of sleep and things were staring to look up.

And then Thursday, Sept 1 arrived.

The goal was to beat my old PR of 40min 39s, and preferably get under 40 minutes for the first time ever.

The result:

39.46

In other words:

I did it!

And I don’t think I had that much more strength in my legs to be honest, so it feels like this PB isn’t going to change for a while. But we’ll see.

We will definitely see.

Training Block 1, Week 4

Week 4 of this block turned out about as bad as week 3, with just two runs completed. Thursday was a 6 min assessment that I’ve done before but it worked out better this time. Not sure what Trainsasone learnt from it because I didn’t see any change in what it planned for me.

Training Block 1, Week 3

Well that week was a complete failure.

Week 3 Plan

Starting now, I’m just giving myself Monday as a rest day every week.

Trainasone has planned another Perceived Effort run for me this week, because apparently, it thinks it has calibrated my easy pace wrong. I might have noticed this, so it’ll be good to have it updated if it needs to be.

There are also two threshold runs, but I’m replacing one of them with some 400m intervals at race pace, probably on Wednesday.

That Sunday run might become a little longer too, but it’ll depend on how I feel.

Training block 1, week 3

or, a fat girl’s running plan runs out of premium features.

Pic 1: the plan

Pic 2: the reality

And in this week, my free trial of the subscriptions features ran out, and I am a) poor and b) not really wanting to pay that price. I’m sure it’s reasonable, but it’s a little too high for me in general.

Monday was supposed to have a run, but once again, I felt like crap, so I skipped it, and it got moved to Tuesday instead.

Tuesday -said run was an interval run, which didn’t go well at all, because it was a set pace that frankly, I’m bad at finding and I ended up running too hard and needing a break in the middle of each interval and that’s just not how intervals are done.

Wednesday was an economy run, and it went pretty well. I ran to a nearby mall and managed to do it with very few run breaks, so all in all, I was really happy with that.

Thursday was my own planned workout, and consisted of 10x 150m slow intervals with 30s walk break. It went okay, but I need to redo it at least one more time before increasing the distance.

Friday ended up being an unplanned rest day due to poor planning

Sunday was my first ever 10km long run. My leg hurt a little towards the end, but nothing serious. I ran it at a lower heart rate, and I could’ve kept going a bit more I think. Hoping to make 10km my standard long distance run during the fall, that’d be good.

Plan for week 3

Currently there are little less than 4 weeks left until my next race. Starting to feel both excited and nervous.

This week I added my own interval run for Thursday (10x 150m + 30s walk break) which I like doing now and then just to check in, and Garmin had a challenge for 10K this weekend, so I added that too, and then let Trainasone work its magic.

It added an interval run for Monday and two economy runs Wednesday and Friday. Not the toughest week, but that’s fine and I look forward to it. Also keeping an eye on my recovery extra hard right now, due to the benefits I got from two rest days in a row last week. I’m wondering if maybe I should do that more often.

Training block 1, Week 2

or, a fat girl takes a break and comes back strooong

Pic 1: the plan

Pic 2: the reality

Well, well, well. Lots of changes of plan this week.

Monday was rough and it needed to be a rest day, that was just what needed to happen.

Tuesday and Wednesday went as planned, with two shorter runs that went well, I thought.

But then I got almost no sleep Thursday night, and very bad sleep Friday night too, so I turned those into rest days, but Saturday morning,

Saturday was just... I got so much sleep and I woke feeling so rested that I let Trainasone plan me a run even though I rarely run on Saturdays. It suggested an economy run of about 1h 20min. I started, as I always do, by ignoring pace and heart rate and just trying to run slow as far as possible, dreaming of the day that will be 5K. Until last week, my longest uninterrupted run was 1.5km. But those rest days paid off, and I managed 2.39km before needing a walk break. That was awesome and I am so fucking proud of myself. My legs felt strong all the time too. Progress is so encouraging too.

Sunday turned itself into the progression run that was supposed to happen on Friday. TAO planned it like this:

Walk/slow run for 5 minutes at 09:47 /km 138 bpm (132 to 143), (511 m).

Very easy run for 25 minutes at 09:25 /km 143 bpm (138 to 148), (2.7 km).

Easy run for 25 minutes at 09:02 /km 148 bpm (141 to 155), (2.8 km).

Fast run for 25 minutes at 08:29 /km 161 bpm (155 to 166), (2.9 km).

Walk/slow run for 5 minutes at 09:47 /km 138 bpm (132 to 143), (511 m).

It went pretty well, except I misjudged the distance and ended up running around the grocery store twice because I planned on stopping there. I also thing I need to be more prepared and bring water for these longer runs. I do bring it in my backpack, but it’s not really accessible during the actual run.