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.