After a couple of races in the last few weeks, this week was back to the hard work behind the scenes with training and continuing to work around the early stages of doing up the new house. This week saw me therefore once again setting the early alarms, with three midweek morning runs, in addition to early efforts for my longer runs on both the Saturday and Sunday morning this week.
I did one main speed session this week, on Wednesday night, with my first visit to the track in a while, having been doing recent sessions on grass with the Harriers group. This time, the session was 6 x 600 and the return to short, fast bursts was a bit of a shock to the system and I found myself having to dig in and hang on towards the end of the session.
On Thursday, I didn't do quite the same in terms of tempo running as normal as I was worried I might still be feeling the effects of the previous evening. Therefore I did more of a progressive session, starting at 6 and a half minute mileing and working my way down to 5:19 pace over my 9 mile run.
On Saturday I got up early and had my 16 mile long run out of the way by 9am so that I was able to get cracking on the back garden at home - I get the feeling I might have to get used to this sort of thing now! I managed to get down to a very pleasing 6:07 average pace and felt comfortable throughout.
Finally, Sunday saw me do a further 10 miles at 6:03 pace to take me to just over the 70 mile mark for the week and leave me feeling in a good place physically and mentally ahead of an attempt to defend my Palma Half Marathon title next weekend.
Total mileage for the week: 72
Average pace for the week (m/pm): 6:23
Total mileage so far this month (October): 94
Total mileage so far 2016: 2614
Average miles per day 2016: 9.30
