#trainingblock2

Training Block 2 - Week 3

This week, in a fat girl’s running schedule

Tuesday - two short runs in a row, one 25 min from my Garmin Coach program, and a short 11 min run from TAO’s suggestions. And then I  was getting tired of the Garmin Coach program only giving me 25 min runs and TAO only giving me super short ones, so I changed the setting on TrainAsOne to stop suggesting runs shorter than 25 minutes so that at least I could do the GC and TAO ones at once.

Thursday, therefore, was just one run of 25 minutes. As was Friday.

Sunday was supposed to be a very long run of 11 km from TAO, but I decided to do the first 3K in one go without breaks and that was a little too tiring for my legs so it only ended up at 9km in total. I did manage those 3000 metres though, first time ever, and it feels so awesome to make this sort of progress.

Overall therefore, a pretty good week.

Training Block 2 - Week 2

Well this was a bit of a trial week of combining both the plan from Garmin coach, and the runs Trainasone suggested.

It meant several days had two short runs, that I mostly did right after each other, one from each plan.

The GC runs were all 25 minutes, or 10+5 or 15 minutes of running, and the TAO runs were a bunch of shorter economy runs and an interval session. 8 runs in total, even though none of them were longer than 30 minutes.

Tuesday & Thursday: GC 25 min + TAO 11 min

Friday: TAO run 16 min

Saturday: Interval run. 5 min warm-up, 8 min slow pace and then 8x30s runs with 30s rest and another 8 min slow, which I did on my way to a nearby park event I went to. I also added a short recovery run to that because the park was 6 km away. I also walked home and my feet were ready to die when I got home.

Sunday: GC 25 min, but this time I didn’t to the cool down and instead kept running, which means I ran for an uninterrupted 20 min. I actually think I might be ready to run during the warm-up and cool downs from now on, instead of walking.

It feels pretty exciting to get so many runs in that actually are meant to be uninterrupted instead of walking when I feel like it. I’m getting very excited about how far I might be able to run at the end of these 11 weeks.

It is, today, Saturday September 3rd.

I have a brand new personal best for the 5K distance, but I did that using walk breaks because I’m pretty unfit. I am, after all, still a fat girl. I think it’s about time to actually get through the full distance in one go though, before heading onward to the 10K distance.

Why not do a simply Couch to 5 K?

Yeah, why not? Well, there is one good reason for that. Pretty much every single c25K plan out there is based on imperial units, which most reasonable people would agree are pretty dumb, especially when training for a distance that is literally measured in kilometres. Come on. I know that this will annoy me to no end. Why would I run 3.2 km when 3km is right there, nice and even? Not everyone is going to get why this bothers me, but it does to the point where I know it will eventually cause me anxiety.

So I went looking for other beginner programs, and then remembered that my watch app has some. And I know some of them also used stupid imperial just converted to metric even though that means running 14.1448 km or some other totally random number. But Greg McMillan’s plan is based on time spent running instead, which felt more comfortable, so today I set that up.

I just want to run 5K in one go, without self-induced breaks (can’t control traffic lights etc.) So that’s what I asked of the plan. There is a local 5K in the beginning of November that I thought would be suitable, which gives me 11 weeks. Long runs on Sunday.

After a short benchmark run today, the plan has planned 3 runs with this format:

5 min warmup/cooldown which I will do walking until I feel more comfortable jogging them.

10 min running, plus 5 extra minutes if it feels comfortable. That’s a total 20-25 minute run. 3 times a week.

What I like about this, is that I know I can do this. I can already do week 1. We’ll see if I progress the way Greg thinks I will?

In addition to this, I do have Trainasone active with a 10K race date in April. 3 runs per week is not really enough to suit me, so if Trainasone suggests a good workout for me on a day where the garmin coach doesn’t, I will follow that. Trainasone is adaptive anyway, and won’t plan me more than 4 workouts per week, including the ones from the coach program.

So, goals for this 11 week Training Block:

Run 5 kilometres without needing a walk break.

Not get injured or sick.

Maybe even run 5kms faster than 39.46, my current PB, but that’s a minor goal.

Participate in the 5K in the beginning of October.