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?

Maintaining

There! Week 2 and 3 of my training block done! 

Week 2 went off relatively well except that I ended up having to swap my weekend's long outdoor run for an equally long indoor run and my weekly mileage was a smidge less than target. During my week of travelling i.e. Week 3, I had to make several tweaks to my training plan. Too many late nights, diet all over the place and also my periods showing up early meant making many compromises and choosing to sleep in for proper recovery rather than pushing through a run on a sleep deprived state (I've wised up these days!). 

To summarise, I came up 1 run short and had to swap a couple of the remaining ones for equivalent indoor runs. My weekend long run was cut short because my watch battery ran out and also I was really, really tired and wasn't quite "feeling it". There was no swimming at all :(. I had some resistance bands on hand so managed to get in 3 out of 5 strength sessions using these and body weight.  On Friday however, I did manage to make use of the steep slope leading up to my home and got in a "hill run"  which felt pretty good and was the highlight of my training week!

Given all the circumstances, training has been satisfactory. While I can't tell if theres been much progress, theres definitely not been any regression either.

Next week was meant to be cut-back week. (I'd slotted in a low mileage week after every 3 weeks to help in recovery). But considering that Week 3 was rather light in terms of effort, I'm keeping Week 4 as a do-over week to make up for the missed workouts from Week 3 but still light enough to be able to transition to Block 2 with enough energy & mojo. Lets see how that goes.