Saturday 13 August 2005

Complementary Training Sessions

Posted by speedygeoff on Saturday, August 13, 2005 with
“You are supposed to be retired” my wife tells me, when she sees me racing around from one activity to the next. Great, when I decide to laze around the house, I will have the excuse “You said I should slow down” in reserve.

Even with a day off scheduled for today, I decided to go the gym and have a burst on the hill climber – for the second time this week. Today’s session was a pb – I have been feeling unusually good lately, maybe I am getting over my achilles soreness (in desperation I have had no less than three inserts under the right heel for the last two weeks), maybe it is because the days are getting longer and the weather warming up, a sign that winter is passing, or maybe it is because I am meeting many great new people recently – anyway the pb was:
45 minutes on the “cross country” setting, at level 10, then
a 5 minute repeat on the same setting, at level 12.

When I was running with Flashduck at the Customs run on Friday, she mentioned it was good to have complementary training sessions. We had both run the BBQ Stakes on Wednesday, me for the second time ever, then backed up with the Customs run on Friday, me for the first time ever. (Customs run #1413 was speedygeoff's run #1).

Wednesday’s BBQ Stakes 6k is too hilly for me – so I intend running it as often as possible to get some strength training – while Friday’s Customs 5k is flat and relatively fast – so I intend running it as often as possible to get an indication of how I am going, and to substitute for speed training which I am unable to do because of the achilles injury.

Those three sessions, BBQ Stakes, Customs, and hill climber, complement each other really well and I can recover from one despite doing the next as hard as I like.

Our training group’s speed sessions are similarly complementary. PH on Mondays is hilly and soft under foot, while our Thursday track session at the AIS is flat (couldn’t be more flat!) and the track there is hard and fast.

PH with the big hill, guards and alarms (yes we set off the alarms again last Monday, and yes, you can run up the big hill again). AIS with music and lights! Very different.

Complemented again by whatever gym sessions one does during the week; complemented further by any swimming, cycling, hockey, touch, …. , and most importantly complemented by as much long slow distance running as one is able to fit in.

And I mustn’t forget to stretch! (I will go and do some stretching now)…..

…I’m back.

Hopefully dear reader you also will be retired one day and will be able to fit everything in. (I have achieved the former but by no means the latter).

lunch races this week.
BBQ Stakes – 26.10 – 4.22 per km. 30 secs faster than the previous week.
Customs 5k – 20:30 – 4.06 per km. OK for first up, and is close to my 5k target for the year.