It’s peak week of our first spring training cycle of the year. This was a very short training plan, which will be the first in a three part series of our training for a half-marathon in June. It will not look the same as if we had been following a longer training plan towards a goal race (race that is a runner’s main focus) as we had originally intended. The basic idea is the same though, as this will be our hardest week of training before we start a short taper (period before a race where the mileage decreases but intensity remains the same) next week leading up to our race. The idea behind a peak week is that your training has continued to intensify up until this point. As each of the previous week’s training posts have showed, we have slowly increased our mileage as well as the intensity of our speedwork sessions. For example, in a goal race training cycle the peak week would be two to three weeks out from the race allowing for a longer taper, where the body can rest and replenish glycogen stores (this is what the body uses as fuel for those runs). This way, come race day, a runner is full of energy and feeling his/her best.
This week we did a tempo run with the strollers and it was really hard for me. I have been suffering from terrible spring allergies making it really hard for me to breathe, which has been no fun, especially, combined with my asthma. I’m really hoping all this congestion clears up before our race next week. I was a snot covered mess by the time we finished our three mile tempo run. My goal had been to hit around 8:45/mi pace but I fell short of that. I was still happy with hitting an avg of 9:04/mi for the three miles, while pushing the stroller. If you remember from last week’s coaching advice section, the goal of a tempo run is for it to be hard but not as fast as your race pace. Our goal race pace is 8:00/mi, making 8:45/mi a decent goal to hit. I was super proud of my husband, who crushed our goal pace hitting 8:36/mi for the three miles.
I noticed today on my easy run how hard it really felt and I actually find that a good thing. We have been working on making our “hard” workouts difficult and making sure to take our easy and recovery runs slow. I used to find it hard to keep those easy runs slow and would find myself pushing the pace even though I knew I shouldn’t. I think that I was running into the problem because I wasn’t pushing myself on my more difficult workouts. As you may recall, I had been neglecting more varied speedwork sessions, and instead had been mostly focused on progression runs and fartleks (a run with varying paces with sections of faster running and sprints mixed with slower running). I think that by putting more focus into a variety of workouts and paces that we will have a much stronger training base as we go into this race and into our next training cycle.
We will not be doing a full taper/rest period for this race, as although, we would like to PR (set a personal best time) at this race, our “goal race” will be a half-marathon in June. Instead, the goal is to use this 5k race along with a 10k race in May as training/tune-up races to get ready for the half-marathon. We had originally planned on doing a half-marathon the same weekend that we will be doing the 5k. Unfortunately, my husband and I both suffered from injuries pushing the start of our training cycle by several weeks, which led to the decision to forgo the half-marathon. I am really looking forward to continue this training and getting prepared to beat two-hours in a half-marathon. This was my goal last year at Race 13.1 (we are going to do the same race this year). I didnt’ meet this goal and it has been in the back of my mind ever since then.
Our last hard workout day will be on Monday and our race is on Friday. Instead of doing three miles at a tempo effort we will instead be doing only 20 minutes, which is about 30 percent less time at a hard effort. We will follow this with a shorter easy run, which will be our last workout prior to the race. Fingers crossed my allergies are better by then. I’ll update you next week on our taper and race day!
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