To recap where things have been over the summer of 2024.

During May 2024 I had something of a confidence crisis about whether or not I would be able to continue running. But I quickly realised that, despite my lack of actual fitness, there was nothing stopping me from giving it a go and trying to improve the situation, whilst acknowledging that the mechanical issues with my foot were an ever present limiting factor.

A plan. Sort of

Having purchased a new (to me) Garmin to replace the one I’d recently sold during said crisis of confidence, I looked to doing something about my (lack of) fitness. The simple fact is that it’s over 5.5 years since I raced on the road, with my focus having switched to trail and ultra distances over some of the intervening period. I therefore set about putting a training plan together to, at the very least get a reasonable baseline position of my fitness. It was inspired by looking to try out the ‘Garmin Coach’ functionality of the watches, but over time I realised some of the shortcomings of this and had to substitute some of the suggestions with workouts that had some chance of realising the goal at hand.

But what goal? I’ve kept this pretty close to my chest. In order to cause Garmin to  generate a plan that wasn’t completely vague, I needed a target race to aim for. The theory being that, even if I wasn’t actually going to enter a race, it ought to create something that aligned with my own training plans.

So this fortnight block is the final 2 weeks before this aforementioned target race. And to be honest it’s gone a bit sideways. But that’s fine.

2 weeks to go

The first week started with an anticlockwise loop of my Hazel Grove 5 mile route. As per usual this was a Garmin-suggested low effort workout of 44 minutes which fitted the bill even if it wasn’t particularly exciting (it wasn’t at all exciting). Coupled with coaching intervals that evening with Marple Runners where I added another 4 miles of easy running it made for a big Monday mileage. But it all broadly met the intention of some easy running.

Tuesday’s run with Lyme was a trip to the tops of the hills around which was useful as it kept the pace low whilst building in a decent amount of hill endurance. I did keep it a bit shorter mind, at 4.5 miles as I was feeling Monday in my legs quite considerably! The main group actually did about 5.5 miles and another hill 😉

I decided to skip doing anything on the Wednesday as my body battery was flat-lining according to Garmin. Again, probably due to my sleep levels, or at least Garmin’s opinion of my sleep levels! But I’m aware when my body needs a break so it’s likely that was the driving force, rather than a metric on my watch dictating things.

Thursday was another trip to Lyme, and with the soggy weather we stayed low and visited the canal towpath. But whilst it was a less hilly run, it was long for a Thursday, coming in at 6.1 miles.

Colds (and other excuses)

I was aware that I was coming down with a cold or something, judging by the headaches I was getting and as such I took a couple of days off to try to sort that. Interestingly when I did next run, on the Sunday, the run was fine yet all the time spent not running, I felt pretty sub par. It can be tempting to try to push through, but it’s not worth doing  especially just before the end of the target training cycle. So although I managed a 7.3 mile road run which had a couple of sharp climbs in, I decided that I needed to take my foot off the gas and let the body get over whatever it needed to get over.

Weekly mileage: 27 miles.

Taper week (or where did the wheels go when they fell off….?)

And so comes taper week, although with the body fighting a cold, my focus was more preservation than anything technical.

Monday’s weather was awful. The car was in for service and had I been fit and had the weather been fit, I’d have run to and from the garage. But this time it was all done by bus. I fully expected everyone in my intervals session to cancel in the evening, but like troopers they all came along, stating that “If I was going to be there to support them, it was the least they could do!”. Which was really humbling even if the result was that we all got properly wet in the process!!! I didn’t run much myself, recording about 2.4 miles most of which was the warm up and cool down runs!

Tuesday’s trip to Lyme was a complete failure. The traffic in town was horrendous and as such I got to Lyme late and whilst I saw the group heading off, I didn’t find where they went, and due to the patchy mobile reception I didn’t receive the route directions from the group.

As I was setting up my Garmin it was suggesting a tempo session which I ended up doing on the grounds that I could stick in the centre of the park and look out for the group! The session worked out at about 6.3 miles in distance was:

• 10 min warm-up (hunting the group)
• 4x 5 min at 10km pace with 2 min jog recovery (hoping the group would appear)
• 15 min cool-down (still looking for the group)

This was a slightly more interesting session in that unlike most of my other interval sessions, the ground wasn’t flat. It was also windy too, to add a bit more resistance. I went up and down one of the main routes in the Park, hoping to see the group , although ultimately they didn’t appear until I was stretching at the car afterwards! Despite the lurgy from the weekend I felt good, although interestingly afterwards when I looked at all the data, my HRV and resting HR were out of kilter.

With that in mind I rested on the Wednesday as the vital stats were still not right. And even running 5 miles with the group on Thursday, whilst I felt fine at the time, Garmin adjusted my training effect to strained. Not what you want to see at any point, let alone right at the end of the training block! HRV and RHR were still out of whack and so I decided that this should be it for the training block of runs whilst my body cleared the cold it was clearly still fighting, even though I didn’t feel particularly unwell.

So that brings us to Saturday.

Looking at last night’s stats from Garmin, the nightly HRV and RHR seem closer to my normal level although they’re still outside the ‘normal’ average due to  a few nights where they were way out. I feel tired, but not unduly so. I think I’m on the other side of the bug, but then I thought that several days ago…….

So, what exactly is the goal?

Tomorrow I’m tackling the ‘theoretical’ half-marathon goal, at Congleton.

It’s a race I’ve run 3 times before, although only once on the new course. I decided that I would like to give race day a shot, simply to get a baseline position at the end of this block as well as seeing if I still could do it.

Unlike previous races there are no particular goals tomorrow other than to get around in one piece. The idea of running to a pace has gone too, it’s going to be run on feel and hopefully not blow up part way around. It won’t match my previous outing on the course, but then that was 8 years ago.

And things were a lot different back then!