COMRADES TRAINING REPORT 2: SLOW AND FRUSTRATING WEEK BUT BETTER SIGNS COMING

Well last week sucked. I can’t really describe it much better or worse. The heat and humidity basically ruined the plans that I had and for once changing the training program on the fly proved to be ineffective. Sure some may say I’ve taken a sensible route by not risking my health at this early stage of the campaign considering Sunday’s temperature up here nudged 40 degrees Celsius. Yet I know the importance of a back to back training weekend and being basically forced to sweat it out at home was frustrating at the very least.

The week basically began with getting a free day on the Tuesday which originally was going to be a mountain run. However not responding to the alarm in the morning is proving to be a regular occurrence that hopefully will not happen in just under a fortnight when the week of training in Brisbane commences. Still I decided to try to improvise and do some grass running at the local footy oval that afternoon. Was planning to do a program of 6-8km depending on the light and how the legs adapted to grass running and road running on the same day. It started encouragingly enough doing sufficient laps for a 2km set on the grass basically in 10 minutes. Then rather than physical conditioning playing tricks with the mind, the next set was cut basically because of concerns of where my belongings were. Carrying a bag with footwear and personal items and trying to run a couple of kilometres is not exactly plan A, B or C, and even though I covered the kilometre at a rapid clip I just couldn’t do the second half of the planned leg. Then after doing what amounted to be a measuring run for a possible footy training warm up, I decided to call it a day rather than try to push on.

A further planned midweek run was basically aborted again because of sleeping through alarms, and Saturday’s initial plan for an 85 minute trot was ruined by seasonably warm weather. By the time I started what was Plan C (Plan B was going to be the 3-4-5 split run that I was originally scheduling for Sunday) temperatures according to a school I passed just before 5:30 was still 37 degrees. Somehow I salvaged doing 3 lots of 3km efforts which rather than doing them at different paces that I was easily doing when confident, in form and slightly fitter, I ended up hitting a consistent 5:30 overall pace for each leg. I wanted to do either a 6km last leg knowing that if I did the kilometres allotted to the Sunday plan then perhaps I could do the big run about 23 hours later, but both physical and atmospheric conditions combined to ruin any schedule I may have had planned. Indeed I just couldn’t escape the confines of the bedroom as listening to cricket seemed to be slightly more appealing.

At least the new week has started on a good note. With little planned and being unable to get some shut eye before working late shifts this week I felt a good training run may get me somewhat back on track. I managed to get a continuous 50 minute run on the board, save for a brief natural break where I hope nobody was spying on me. Conditions were as good as they have been for a while so despite the legs barking a little and a few rises and small hills being thrown in for good measure, covering 9 kilometres was a success. Covering the 50 minutes was an even bigger success after the shortcomings of the weekend. Pace was relatively consistent which was nice, although I would have liked to be able to throw in a couple of fast kilometres that would be sub 5:10 pace. Still complaining about a successful run is as useful as counting Bernard Tomic’s millions that he apparently has (money or pubic hair?) so I’ll be happy having a kip before work this evening.

Hopefully I’ll be able to do another run before the weekend before doing a double this weekend. One run will need to be at least 90 minutes (probably on the Saturday) with the other being either a 3-4-5 or a 4-5-6 split. That said with the Brisbane week coming up I’m hopeful of doing a couple of back to back runs with the centrepiece Mt.Coot-tha run on January 26 so perhaps the split run may even be brought forward to Friday should I be able to wake up that early!

STATISTICS FOR THE 9 DAY PERIOD FROM 8/1 to 16/1

22.3 kilometres covered (DOWN 2.7 km compared to last year)
2 Hours active time (DOWN 37 minutes)
239 metres elevation gain (UP 13 metres)

OVERALL STATISTICS FOR PERIOD 1/1 to 16/1

54.4 kilometres covered
5 Hours active time
486 metres elevation gain