Last Big Push

5 weeks to race day. This is my last big push - and I will really need it.

Last week I fell ill (again) but this time it was a full-blown flu, complete with temperature, body ache, cough and congestion. It might have been Covid, which, apparently is doing the rounds again. It took a while to get over it and the aftermath ran into this week. To top it off, mid week, I got my period and my body felt extra-beat this morning as I set off on my long 18K run. Of course, as was to be expected, I could not complete it. Around 12.5K, (to my absolute dismay) I developed a funny pain in my left knee which would stop as soon as I stopped running. The pain was too intense to be ignored. Ended the run at the 13K mark. 

Was (still am) feeling quite bummed out about not just today's run but also the way the whole training is going. Actually considered (considering) stopping the training and not doing this event at all. These past 6 weeks or so, after every single long run, I would develop migraines later on in the day. Migraines of varying degrees. The longer the run, worse the migraine! I'm guessing its the combination of heat and exhaustion. I believe I've been pretty good with my hydration and fuelling but obviously there are still some gaps to be filled. 

Currently as I'm writing this, there is a dull throbbing in my head which makes me think:

Is it all worth it? 

Should I keep at it?

3/4ths done

 ...well, almost!

Time is flying by and just like that I'm almost at the end of the 3rd block in my training plan. Today I ran 17K. It took me 2 hrs, 9 minutes and 59 seconds. Which funnily enough, is my race day goal time (for the whole distance of 21.1K). Which means to say, I am running short of 4.1K! I have 7 weeks to go to race day. I'm not sure that I can improve by that much over the next few weeks, in order to close that gap...  This feels like a really, really, tough ask!

7'39" pace today.  6'09" goal pace.  6'17" was my 7K pace on Tuesday - which is much closer to 6'09" but I did take quite a few untimed breaks. I am barely able to sustain 1 mile at 6'09" and I think I should be able to sustain at least 4K at goal pace at this point in my training in order for goal pace on race day to become a reality.

Last week, my Garmin race time prediction dipped down to 2:36:35. It is currently showing 2:33:58. This is a bit of a bummer. The prediction times are supposed to go up not down! 

Oh well, we trust in the process and plod on!

Half way there!

11 weeks of training done and 10 more weeks to go. While the 1st 7 weeks went visibly well and I could see clear progress at the end of the "base-building phase", I'm not sure if the last 4 weeks of "picking-up-the-pace phase" has contributed to any significant progress. I'm sure there is incremental progress, for example, a 7'05" pace doesn't feel so bad now while it used to feel incredibly tough even 4-5 weeks back, but impatient me is looking for significant progress. Alas, thats never the case. Slow & steady: I must remind myself.

This week had me running 1Kx3 @ goal pace and while it was hard effort, it was doable. I managed all three sets at goal pace which is an improvement over the huffing-and-puffing 800mx2 @goal pace that I did 3 weeks ago. Small victories.Then I think that I will have to do 21 sets like than on race day without the rest intervals between sets and I'm back to thinking, maybe this is not enough progress.

It doesn't help my mental space that my Garmin's race time prediction hasn't improved at all in this time. In fact it keeps bobbing between 2:31 & 2:28. The hardest two blocks are coming up, hopefully that will be enough to shape me up and have me race ready by the time I'm lining up at the start on July 20th. We'll see. 

Training Blues...

 I'm nearly at the end of the 2nd block of my training and I'm not feeling the best.

Even though I've managed to check off most of my workouts this block, I've hit on some troubling spots that has slowed me down a bit, and managed to give me a bit of the training blues. I've always considered the long run of the week to be the most important one and when that doesn't go as planned, I feel a bit bummed out. The last two weeks, I've had to swap out my 90 minute run for an indoor run of the same duration. Its better than nothing but I feel a bit less "trained" than I ought to be. I know that that bit is mostly in my head, but still!

To elaborate on those troubling spots that I mentioned : I've been having a bad run of restless, sleepless nights. No idea what might be the cause of this, but I feel less recovered going into the next day's workouts. I've been feeling flu-y since last Thursday. Its just an itchy throat and a general feeling of bunged-up-ness but it doesn't feel great. This also comes with a side of lethargy which is simply not helping. The worst of all, Friday morning I woke up with a pain in my right knee! No idea why. I went to bed with the knee feeling perfectly fine, wake up, and its throbbing! I'm thinking I must have slept funny and that might have stirred up old feelings in the knee - which has never really been the same since my injury back in 2018.

All that being covered, this week is cutback week - which is ideal. The knee thing seems to have subsided now and though I'm still feeling flu-y, I have enough energy to handle this week's low intensity, lower mileage training. Although, I do plan on getting in that skipped tempo WO from last week for good measure. Good thing thats only on Thursday - I'm hoping I'll be well and recovered by then.

More notes down the line.

Week 6!!

Week 6!! We've got roughly 13 weeks to go. Every week that I can stay the course, injury-free, is reason enough to celebrate! :)

Last week I started Block 2 of my training plan. Block 2 & 3 are considered the "build phase" where you're supposedly increasing mileage, building strength and working on getting faster. The intensity just got amped up. Last week's interval workout involved running 1 mile at goal pace. Sadly, I wasn't there yet. I think I started the workout with a "I don't think I got this" mind-frame, and found myself fading at around 700m. So instead of 1 mile @6'09" I ended up doing 800m x2 @6'13". Plenty of scope for improvement here. Have accordingly tweaked next week's 2 mile run @goal pace to 1Kx3 at goal pace. Heres hoping that goes better.

I really feel like I'm getting into each morning's workout with less than ideal sleep / recovery the previous night - which obviously has a negative impact on the run. Summer is truly upon us now and even the nights are super hot and sultry which doesn't lend itself to a proper, restful sleep. Also, since I've started waking up at 4:30 in order to start my runs earlier, I ought to be going to bed a little earlier (ideally 8:30, but that just seems ridiculously early to me!) to try and log the optimum 8 hours sleep. Something to work on.

More updates to follow. :)

I signed me up!!!

The registrations for DRHM2025 opened up on Monday this week. And I signed up for it today. Its now become very real. Theres no backing out now. We're doing this!!!

Race week is about 14 weeks away. My goal as announced previously is to complete the half marathon in 2:10:00. I'm training diligently for it and am 80% confident that I can get there. Yes, only 80% confident because self-doubting moments are quite frequent given that I haven't done a half marathon race in 7 years and my past PB is 2:16:38. 

My Garmin watch (that I upgraded a year and a half ago) has this cool feature, where you can log in the event that you're training for in the app, and it will predict your finish time based on your current fitness / training. So depending on how you are progressing with your workouts, the watch adjusts its prediction accordingly. For me its very heartening to see that the prediction has gone from 2:40:something at the very beginning to 2:34:16 to currently 2:30:51. I'm hoping it will keep dropping over the course of my training and that the day before the race, it will show 2:10:00. Now, that would be a great confidence booster!!!

1qtr Done! :)

And just like that the 1st block of my training is done! As mentioned earlier, I had split my 21 weeks of training into 3 weeks of base building, and 4 blocks of 4 weeks of race training at progressive intensities followed by a couple of weeks of tapering. We're now 7 weeks down and things are looking good. I'm glad to see that have I've been able to check off about 90% of the planned workouts, I'm not fatigued, and best of all, that I am injury-free (knock on wood). Looking back to the start of the 7 weeks, I can see that there has been some progress and that is definitely a motivating factor to keep going.

Up until now, the workouts have been relatively easy. When I say easy, what I actually mean is "not-intimidating". For example, when I see "75 min run" on the calendar, it feels very doable in my head. And when I see paces of 5'30" and 6'09" on there for 1 or 2 minutes, also it feels very doable. In the coming weeks though, we're going to be amping it up. I have a 1 mile @ goal pace run scheduled for Thursday and that does feel quite a bit daunting. Actually the idea of running at any pace thats quicker than 7'00" for a sustained period itself is very intimidating at the moment. The hope is that, that feeling changes over the course of the next few weeks. Trust in the process right?