Toughening Up.

Friday 27th June

  After discussing the benefits of hard training  on the treadmill with Jim Bulman I thought I would have a crack at one of his hellish training sessions. It sounds excellent, 3 miles fast with no recovery at the end and straight into another 3 miles but faster and also with no recovery. Then you got it another 3 miles even faster with no recovery and finally give it rock all for the last mile with the aim of trying not to drop below the middle section speed. The good news is that you can rest as much as you like afterwards. I used do quite a few speed sessions built into a 10 mile route which certainly helped with building some serious endurance for the longer distance races,  good but from past experience you have to limit these sessions as to avoid becoming burnt out. It's definitely helps with the hard training sessions when you are looking forward to them.

Saturday 28th June

  Fuelled up and hydrated off I went to the gym with some trepidation, I knew the first two thirds of the training session were within my capabilities but I knew the last third was going to be seriously tough and maybe it would result in me seeing how far I could go before cracking.
  The first three miles weren't as easy as I was expecting, the second three miles at a faster speed was starting to get hard and so much that I knew the third set of three miles was really going to be a test. The third set of three miles at an even faster speed soon became a question of being if I could even manage do one mile , then  how about just another half mile to make it half way. Then let's try for  two miles which at that point giving up was imminent, each 200 metres seemed to take forever and eventually somehow I made it to the three mile point. The thought of being able to slow the pace down a touch for the last mile and the shear will power to complete Jim's training session were the only reasons I managed to hang on. The last mile seemed almost   pleasurable after what I had just put myself through and with a last few minutes dash I finished in 54 minutes 44 seconds.
  That has got to be right up there with one of  my hardest training sessions that I have ever done. Because I switched from my own training session to Jim's it was like training against a virtual competitor, probably the nearest thing to training on the track with athletes of equal ability. I will be sending Jim some of my training sessions with times and speeds, so he can try to complete them or beat them either way I wouldn't want him to miss out on all this suffering.

Race Time

  I have enjoyed the 5k races and all the variations of the 5k test runs that I have done over the last seven months, but it's now time to move on to the longer distances. I will start on the 10k races and build up to the half marathon (13.1 miles) over the next three months. From my past experience the way to keep the enthusiasm up is to keep mixing it up, there is plenty of options to choose from in the running world besides the different distances, fell, road, trail, cross country, track, multi- terrain and indoor track.