Focus with Gem

Training has started.

I’ve exercised 6 times this week; 3 runs and 3 strength days. My current training programme looks like this;

Monday: Strength training – push day.

Tuesday: Interval run (intervals between zone 4 runs and walking).

Wednesday: Strength training – leg day.

Thursday: Rest day.

Friday: Strength training – pull day.

Saturday: Rest day.

Sunday: Long run.

I’ve written it so that I still have two rest days despite training 6 times a week. Rest is so important for our bodies when we’re training and we can’t possibly hope to make progress towards our goals if we don’t ensure we have adequate rest. It does mean that Friday is a double training day, but it’s on my easy run day so hoping it won’t be too taxing for my body. Although, to be honest, yesterday was my first double training day. I might have to move this around to another day because Friday is also food shop day so it looked like this; 6.15am gym, midday call with my mum, 4pm food shop, 5pm (not-so-easy) run, 6pm cook dinner, 7pm collapse on the sofa until bed at 9.30pm. If I can switch this day to one where I don’t have to do a food shop it might make it feel less full on, ya know.

The second thing I’ve learned this week (if the above paragraph was the first thing) is that I can’t do a warm up kilometre run on the treadmill in the gym the day after my long run day. Granted, my long run on Sunday last week wasn’t officially on the training plan, cause that started on Monday, but if this week I have to run for an hour for my long run then I felt like a needed to work up to that. I’m not sure I can even run that long yet so last week I did 40mins. When I showed up to my strength day on Monday I got on the treadmill and ran for all of 30 seconds before realising that my legs quite work. So instead on Monday I’ll warm up on the bike in the gym.

So, at the time of writing, it’s Saturday and tomorrow I need to run 60mins. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do that. An hour of running is about 10km (or it used to be when I was running last time!). The most I’ve managed is 6km so far. But I’m going easy on myself. I don’t have to run perfectly. I can walk if I need to, but I’ll try not to. I often found that if I stopped to walk it was so much harder to then keep running once I started again. And if I don’t make it to 60mins, well that’s okay too. I have 16-weeks till the half marathon so plenty of time to build up my strength and endurance. Training runs, particularly the early ones, will not always go to plan, but all I can do is show up, stick with it and trust the process.