I don't want the increase in mileage to come as too big a shock to the body, as I definitely can't afford too many niggles or injuries if I am going to be in shape to hit my targets come Berlin.
This was my final week of building that base layer of fitness ahead of the start of the marathon block, which starts in earnest this week - with less than 15 weeks to go now until the big race day!
It has been a bit of a difficult task getting all the necessary sessions sorted this week for a few reasons, but as usual we always seem to find a way to fit in the work that we need!
I started the week with my usual steady Monday run, and felt quite strong and held a good rhythm through my 10.5 miles, most of which were run as part of the club session at around 6:15 pace.
Due to the high winds that we had on Tuesday, I decided to sack off the track session that I had planned, as it seemed as though I would be fighting a losing battle to get any sort of decent speed up. Instead I chose to do a bit of a progression run from home, aiming to run for around about an hour, and with no real targets in terms of timings/pace I was happy to just see how it went on the go. I finished up with just over 10 miles at 6:15 pace, having started at about 6:40 pace.
I followed that up with an easy recovery run on Wednesday, I felt a bit leggy, possibly due to some quite good mileage on the back of the off road race last Saturday at Grasmere, and I was suffering due to my hayfever too and feeling fatigued - so it was definitely just a case of getting the run done and ticking off another box. I managed 8 and a half miles at just under 6:35 pace, and made sure I had a good roll about on my foam roller to try and get rid of some of the heaviness from my legs.
It must have worked, because I ran really well on my Thursday progression session with Rob Affleck. I did the same distance as the previous week, but this time we did 5 miles out on the guild wheel into a headwind, before turning back and picking up the pace on the return leg. I got the 10 miles done some 20 seconds faster than last time out. We finished off with 57:21 for the distance and an average pace of 5:44, a pleasing session.
On Friday my legs were feeling the effects of the previous day's session, so I ran very easy and just did the 7 miles at 6:55s.
I swapped my long run around to Saturday this week, due to it being Kirkham Club Day and planning on having an easier day to recover from that somewhat! But also, Sunday was my final day with Molly before her big America journey, so I didn't want to be spending that final day running too much - I still managed to get out though!
The long run was ran in pretty unrelenting torrential rain, and I actually ended up cutting it a bit shorter than planned, but I ran OK in the circumstances and got in a decent rhythm despite the winds again. I did 14.5 miles in total at 6:18 average pace.
On Sunday I finished off with 8 miles at 6:25s, to round off another 70+ mile week, setting me up nicely for the bigger stuff that is ahead of me in the next 3 months.
Total mileage for the week: 71
Average pace for the week (m/pm): 6:20
Total mileage so far this month (June): 117.5
Total mileage for 2017: 1547.5
Average miles per day 2017: 9.61
