April Progress

The main focus of this early season training was to do 6 very easy runs a week, with optional rides and swims.

Below is a summary of the last 5 weeks:

Mar 23 - Mar 29
  6 runs - 30km
  1 ride - 51km
  no swims
Mar 30 - Apr 5
  4 runs - 32km
  1 ride - 70km
  1 swim 1.6km
Apr 6 - Apr 12
  4 runs - 36km
  1 ride - 78km
  1 swim 1.6km
Apr 13 - Apr 19 (recovery week)
  2 runs - 12km
  2 rides - 126km
  1 swim - 1.8km
Apr 20 - Apr 26
  3 runs - 19km
  no rides
  2 swims - 4.5km

The running started off well with the weekly mileage slowly rising (30, 32, 36) before the first recovery week. There were a few aches and pains and my body slowly got used to running again. Plus I am still not fully recovered from my back injury, so I was not expecting plain sailing.

However everything went a little downhill this week. With the very hilly 15km Puffing Billy run on the 3rd May, the pressure to be ready for this race saw me run too far on Tuesday. Predictably I pulled up sore and it then impacted the rest of the week's training. So much so that I didn't even get in a ride this weekend.

Elaine also had a bad week. She was sick early in the week and then work commitments prevented her from running later in the week. So after a week of no running, her 10km effort today was a big struggle.

I had already considered not entering the Puffing Billy run again (making this year our last time). The timing of the race does not fit into our training calendar, as it is a tough race at a time where we should be concentrating on short, slow runs. In fact today Elaine and I both discussed the possibility of not racing this year either.

In the larger scale of things, a bad week here and there is expected and should not affect our season. The disappointing factor is that in my case it was something that could (and should) have been avoided.

As for my other athletes. Most of them have finished their seasons. If I get time I'll do a separate blog post about their efforts. Currently I only have 4 athletes left on my books: Mark, Jaco, Jen and Mike.

Mark likes to do every event on the calendar, but at the moment his main focus is the Melbourne Marathon. He training has been going extremely well, and unlike Elaine and myself he should have no problems with the Puffing Billy run in a week's time.

Jen is a bit like Mark in the she likes to set extremely tough goals. This time it was Ironman Cairns, despite only really returning to training in December. While she was capable of finishing in her current state of fitness, she has wisely switched her entry to the Cairns Half Ironman (run on the same course, same day). If she can put in consistent training in the weeks ahead and then handle the potentially hot conditions on the day, she should do quite well.

Mike is travelling to Busselton, Western Australia to do the Half Ironman next week. After some great training early on, he has spent four of the last five weeks overseas. We've managed to schedule some reasonable training in where possible. And we are still hoping for a PB in a week's time.

Jaco does not have any actual races lined up. He simply wanted to get back into running after quite a few years on the couch. We started him off with lots of short easy runs to build up his mileage. After a couple of months he had reached 30km a week, but was getting sore and catching illnesses. I saw this as a sign that we had found his current limits. So now his mileage and number of weekly runs has reduced and we added in a weekly intervals session. He seems very happy to finally be able to do some fast paced running again. We might schedule a 5km Park Run in the next couple of weeks to get an idea of how much he has improved.