Merry belated Christmas, everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful food and family filled day. Coming at you a little late with my training diary for that very reason! Last weeks training wasn't too bad, had a couple of off days, one cause I was working from home and very busy, the other taking my Dad to the airport and spent the majority of the day in the car driving. Despite that, I think I did OK this week.. Let's get into it!

Also.. apologies for the lack of pictures.. it's literally too dark to take a picture of anything, it just turns out black and it's super annoying!

WEEK FIVE TRAINING
MONDAY
Activity: Bike Commute - Distance 2 miles each way

My only bike commute for the week not much really to update on, it's the same old each time. Except gathering by my times, it was probably very windy as I was a bit slower than usual.

THURSDAY
Activity: Run | Distance: 1.49 miles | Time: 13:15 | Pace: 8:45 min/mi
Activity: Run | Distance: 0.4 miles | Time: 3:53 | Pace: 9:40min/mi
Activity: Run | Distance: 1.47 miles | Time: 15:11 | Pace: 10:21 min/mi
Activity: Run | Distance: 0.38 miles | Time: 3:54 | Pace: 10:17 min/mi

Did a run commute to work on thursday and it was my second fastest run ever to the station because I left the house a little late and practically had to sprint there. Oops! Thankfully, I didn't miss the train which would have been horrible! I also had a pretty good run on the way back and managed a decent pace despite the nasty uphill.

FRIDAY
Activity: Run | Distance: 7.32 miles | Time: 1:14:14 | Pace: 10:09 min/mi

I messed this one up. I had to nip to the post office to pick up a parcel and took my run commute bag, thinking whatever I had missed would fit in the bag. However, it didn't and I had to walk back home with a pretty hefty box! Though.. tbh I'm glad I didn't decide to take my brompton down otherwise I'd have struggled to get it back home.

SATURDAY
Activity: Run | Distance: 7.32 miles | Time: 1:14:14 | Pace: 10:09 min/mi
Long Run day and after missing last weeks long run, I knew I had to redeem myself this week, so headed out with the intention of doing 7 miles. We went on a bit of an exploratory run as the weekend is currently the only time we can actually explore as it's light outside. We cant during the week as its too dark in the evenings and we'd get lost very easily.

There was a nice out and back route that we did down to a nearby village, partly uphill on the way back, I've had some useful route tips and i've been using strava to plan out my next few long run routes, so I should be all set.

The run itself actually went really well and I felt great for the most part. Happy to have maintained just over 10 min/mile for the 7.3 miles. Need to get in some speed work to see if I can get down my average pace. Would ideally need to be going 09:55 min/mi for 13 miles in order to get the 2:10 that I want for my half marathon goal. I think it's more than achievable.


So, that's it for this week. Would have liked to have fit in a longer run during the week but I had 2 days where I was working from home/travelling so didn't get the chance. Still happy with the runs I completed this week and more than happy that the 7 miles I did felt pretty good.

I definitely feel stronger when Im running which is a mega positive as I usually don't really feel great during longer distances. I'm interested to see where I'll be in a few weeks.. esp when I start getting into double digit long run distances.

Question: Do you like to be adventurous when you go running or do you stick to the same routes for your training?