The final rev up and get ready to go week for Quebec.
Things didn’t go too well. I had been taking painkillers for a damaged rotator cuff one of the side effects of which was mouth ulcers and I had a beauty. Such a small thing but bloody annoying and sore.
Run 14.3 miles with 1200 feet of climb.
Bike 41 miles with 2400 feet of climb.
Another good week, I even managed to fit in a local short race. Plan for the week was once more 15 miles running, 50 on the bike, 2 yoga and 1 pilates class.
Actual training was 14.6 miles running with 830 feet of climbing. The runs included 1 race 1 400m interval sessions and 1 easy run all in great weather.
Cycling total was 51.5 miles with 3100 feet of climb once more in great weather.
The yoga and pilates classes were all good some new poses in the yoga and a stand in tutor in the pilates its good to have a change as all the teachers have different ideas.
Next week is my last week of “prep” training.
Week 2 May 7th to 13th.
Plan for week was 4 runs totalling 15 miles, 2 yoga sessions, 1 pilates session and 50+miles on the bike.
The weather during the week was about the best this year so far which meant that I was out on the bike more than planned.
The runs were 2 easy runs, 1 at Z3-Z5 and hill reps on a long shallow hill. I normally really like running hills but found the session to be hard work, possibly because I have let this particular session disappear from my schedule. No more!
Totals for the week:
Runs 15.2 miles 1000 ft of climb.
Bike 126 miles with 4100 ft of climb.
2 yoga and 1 pilates class.
A very good week.
Welcome to my series of blogs tracking my route to the 2018 Quebec Marathon.
I did Paris in April and with Quebec in October found my self with a large gap to fill. This turned out to be quite fortuitous as I caught some dastardly French lurgy and was side lined for two weeks doing very little training.
I decided that I would go back to basics for a few weeks to try and build up my fitness again before piling some miles in for the marathon.
The week 30th April to 6th May was my first week back. Target was 3 runs with a total of 10 miles, 1 yoga session 1 pilates session and a long bike ride.
Happily, despite still having an irritating cough I managed all the planned sessions.
Total for the week:
Run 10.1 miles 377 feet climb.
Bike 85.6 miles 5839 feet climb.
One each yoga, pilates and weights.
P is done, I seem to have recovered from whatever dastardly lurgy I caught so of course my next thought was my next marathon.
It looks ages away, October 14th. It has been some time since I had so long between marathons so I thought that as well as preparing myself for it I would help others prepare as well.
This is the first post in at least a weekly series leading up to Quebec and I will go through some of my thoughts as a seasoned marathoner and some of the stuff I wish I had known when I was starting out on my first marathon campaign in 1985.
I will make a few assumptions, you are already running and may have completed a few races, park runs or charity events. So what is different about the marathon? Well distance for a start and the time you need to commit. Once you get your head around those two facts then you can begin to look at other things.
Into the melting pot goes: will you use miles or kms? Will you train using distance/time/heart rate/pace? All decisions that need to be made. If you have been running for some time you may be happy with how you train and be able to use that as your base. If not there are plenty sources of training information available.
Pick your marathon and work backwards to when you want to start training. Then once you know how many weeks you have you can start your plan. Once more there are plenty on the net, in books and magazines. You can join a club or get an endurance trainer that will help you plan your training out. (FB fitfifertraining) others are available.
This time I have elected to give myself twenty weeks of marathon training which means I have almost the whole of May to finally get over this lurgy and do things like plan the Canada trip and alter some of my training. If you have spare time it might be a good idea to spend some with the family because, depending on how hard you train they will not be seeing a lot of you!
Signing off now to get ready for The Lang Toun Joggers the group I lead in Kirkcaldy. The Thursday easy sessions will be worked into my plan as an easy run gradually increasing in distance for me not my group.
Till next time.
Posted in A-Z marathon challenge.
Tagged canada, endurance trainer, family, fitfifer, fitfifertraining, kms, marathon heart rate, miles, quebec, scotlans
Retired and living it! 