As I am not racing over the next couple of weeks, I will use this time to take stock of what 2016 has brought, the improvements that I have made, and what I need to focus on for the year ahead. I will chart my milestones, achievements, and disappointments alike in an end of year review and post this up in the upcoming blogs later this month,
For this week though, I have another little bit of news to share, in that I have had my place for the Berlin marathon 2017 confirmed, which gives me my main aim for the new year already and will help me to keep focused and determined through the winter months. It is a target that I have had for quite a while now and I am confident that I will be ready for what will be my first marathon in 2 and a half years when the race arrives next September.
In the meantime, the next couple of training weeks is all about upping my mileage again to north of 70 a week in order to get a good solid base to build from at Ribble Valley.
This past week I got off to a good start on that front. I managed to get out and run every day, which helped push the total mileage up slightly, but didn't manage to fit in any early morning running as I was having to set off early for work. Being a bit more local this week, this is something that I will look to do a couple of times to get a few double run days in.
My main sessions last week were a short hill session on Tuesday (7 x 2 minute efforts off 1 minute recovery) and a 4 mile tempo at a steady 5:12 pace on Thursday. My long run wasn't quite as long as I would have liked ideally as I reduced it down to 14.5 miles due to only getting out at 7pm on Sunday, as I'd had a busy day working on the house. Again, this is something to work on as I am concious that my long runs have been reduced for a few weeks now and I could do to start increasing them back up again.
Total mileage for the week: 70
Average pace for the week (m/pm): 6:22
Total mileage so for November: 273
Total mileage so far this month (December): 43
Total mileage so far 2016: 3147
Average miles per day 2016: 9.34
