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.

Progress!!

So while this running journal blog is a super helpful tool for me, it struck me that it possibly makes for very dry reading.. :) I might just have to insert a plot twist here and there to make it a more interesting account. Although, I hope not. Steady progression may be quite boring to read (and write) about but in training, rather desirable!

So theres Week 1 of my training. Touchwood, it all went according to plan. My 7K time went from 52 something minutes down to 50 minutes which felt great, so this week I'm aiming to repeat that (shave off those 8 seconds...) The tempo run for the week went well : 6x30s strides. Although, I had to get it done on the treadmill because my morning got away from me and it just became too late (too hot) to run on the road. The long run for the week also went well. I covered about 9.8 km in 75 minutes - 400meters further than last week - and then I just had to run for another minute to round the distance off to a nice neat 10K. :) Also managed to fit in 3 strength sessions, 3 swim sessions and 7 mobility sessions... check, check, check! Overall, good week!

I'll be travelling later this week and so am anticipating some disruptions to the plan. Will hopefully be able to work around it and still get my weekly mileage done..

Full-on Training Mode

 :)

Today I entered full-on training mode. 18 weeks to race day! My training calendar is divided into 4 blocks of 4 weeks each and then a couple of weeks for tapering. As of now, I have a skeletal plan for the whole 18 weeks in place and then as I progress, I will be fleshing it out one block at a time.

Weekly Long Run

Once a week I have me running a long duration run (ideally at an easy pace). Conventionally, training plans will have you running incremental long distances once a week till you build up to about 90% (typically) of the race distance. Typically HM training plans will have you start at 10 or 11K and build up to about 19 or 19.5K by peak week. And week-on-week the distance increment will be about 10% (not more). 

I like to look at my long run from a time-on-feet perspective than distance covered. This (supposedly) reduces chances of injury by reducing the possibility of overtraining. So for the first block my long run is going to be for 75 minutes, then 90 minutes for the next block, then 105 and so on. Consecutive weeks of running a fixed amount of time gets your body & mind used to being on the move for that amount of time and (theoretically) the distance covered in the duration starts to feel easier and easier.

Every 4th week is cutback week where I'll be reducing the time-on-feet and weekly mileage to help the body recover before jumping into the next block of higher training intensity.

Tempo & Interval Runs

Once every other week I'll be doing a Tempo run. Tempo runs are meant to be "comfortably hard". These will be shorter distances at goal pace to get the body used to running at that pace. And every other week I have interval runs scheduled. These are even shorter distances run at a pace faster than goal pace. The idea here is to improve overall running power. I found a 16 week HM training plan on one of my go-to running blogs called Run To The Finish and I've adapted the tempo & interval workouts from there. Have never tried these workouts before so this should be fun!

My weekly 7K runs

I've written about this before - one of my mental hacks to run a Half Marathon is to think of it as a 7Kx3 and then a little bit more rather than 21.1K. Looking at the distance as bite-sized mini chunks makes it seem much more doable. Its true what they say, that long distance running is more of a mental game than a physical one. If I can comfortably run 7K under 43 minutes, then I know that I can run the HM in my goal time of 2hrs and 10 minutes. So I've dedicated Tuesdays to working on my 7K time. Currently that comfortable time is 52 minutes (7'30" pace) I need to work this down to 42 minutes by Week 14 or so and then I'll know that goal time is a definite possibility.

Easy Runs

In addition to these runs, I'll also be throwing in a couple of easy runs during the week probably 30-45 minutes duration to make up the weekly mileage, and to maintain general aerobic fitness. Given my propensity to get injured, and to avoid possibly doing too much, these will most likely be done indoors - flat surface, controlled environment, less impact, lower heart rate and all that.

Swimming & Strength Training

Now that I have regular access to a pool and because I love it, I have scheduled 3 days a week of swimming. Swimming is a great cross training tool anyways and great for recovery. If I feel up to it, it may even be 4 or 5 times a week.

Because its absolutely essential and non-negotiable, and not because I love it, I have scheduled 3 days a week of strength training. In the past, I've not strength trained nearly enough which is one of the top reasons why I have had to go through so many niggling injuries. Of late though, I've found several workout videos (mostly fitness influencer reels on instagram) that are sort-of appealing and I have been trying them out for myself at home. This has had some mediocre success in keeping me interested enough to strength train consistently for at least 20 minutes a day, three times a week for the past few weeks. Hopefully this trend continues.

So thats the whole breakdown of my 18 week training plan. More updates on how I progress with it in the ensuing weeks. 

Base Week 3

The three weeks of "honeymoon" phase of my training plan is now done and I'm somewhat happy with the way things are going. I'm most happy with the fact that a pace of 6'09" feels hard but it doesn't feel that farfetched to think of being able to run the whole 21.1K at that pace 18 weeks down the line. Fingers crossed that my training continues smoothly without any interruptions.

Yesterday's long run of 75 minutes felt torturous (mostly because I was running it on a 300m loop). There was a time when I considered running 10K in 75 minutes to be "easy peasy" - I am barely able to do 9.5K now. Theres lots of scope for improvement. One other worry is that about 60 minutes into the run, I started feeling a familiar niggling pain on the outside of my right knee. Yes, the very same pain that I worked through back in 2023/2024 when I was training for my 20 miler. I took a teeny break, did a couple of stretches and was able to continue with the balance 15 minutes pain-free. This is of significant concern and I'm going to have to be very mindful of this issue flaring up again. Going to continue with my strength training sessions with a special focus on knee strength and prehab exercises to prevent the pain from cropping up again and becoming a serious issue.

Tomorrow is Day 1 of the full-on 18week training plan. As always, more updates to follow..