Training Diary // Run Hackney 2016 // The Plan

3/30/2016

Here we are again! It's time for another Training Diary series and if you haven't seen from the title, I'll be running Run Hackney on May 8th!

It's 6 weeks until race day, I will typically doing the same runs that I did for my North London Half training, with a couple of changes I'll explain below.

How many runs per week?
First things first, I'm going back to 4 runs a week. 3 runs a week was fine.. but I found that I was sometimes making an excuse not to run on some days and some weeks I only ended up running twice! So I figured, if I up my run days back to 4, I will at least run 3... there's some logic in there somewhere?! ;)

What runs will I do as part of training?
I'll be doing a Long Run, Tempo, Interval and/or hill run and another run of my choice during the week. Run days will be Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Sundays is always a long run -though, these days aren't set in stone as I plan on travelling into town with Phillip on a Sat/Sun for hill training and will have to see how that works with doing Long Runs. I may have to shuffle things about.

This hill is meaner than it looks, the photo doesn't do it justice and it's the only hill around!

Which brings me on to Long Runs actually! Since it wasn't too long since I did a Half Marathon, I'm just trying to maintain my mileage. Typically, when I train for a half marathon, I start off from about 5 miles and build up, but since I've already done a half recently, I'll just alternate between doing 7-8 and 10-11 leading up to race day.

Cross Training? Rest Days?
I typically take 1 full rest day.. or at least active rest(a walk or yoga/stretching). I will swim at least once a week, but looking at upping that back to two days a week(Friday, possibly?). I will also be starting up kettle bell workouts and home workouts again, which I'm sure will be SO much fun( DOMS!) after a bit of a break! Aiming for KB/home workouts in between my run days. I did actually enjoy doing kettle bell workouts before I went on holiday, so I'm looking forward to getting back into it.

Whats the aim?
My main aim is to try and not skip interval runs and actually try and boost my pace a bit. My pace has come right down recently and I don't like it too much! I'd like to be back under 10 min/mi if possible, or at least close to! I obviously know it wont happen overnight, but I'm hoping to make at least a bit of difference come race day.

and obviously, ideally I'd totally like to beat my PB at Run Hackney. If I put in the training, it's totally doable this time, but it means sticking to my training, which I know has sucked recently. Will I manage to stick to it this time? We shall see!

As of Monday, keep an eye out for new Training Diary posts and see what runs I have done and what I have on the schedule :)

Question: Are you training for any races? What runs do you always have as part of your training?