Hi TheEd - thanks for checking in. I've been getting some more consistency this month and things are getting back to normal as you expected.
Long runs around 13/14k on Sundays. The weekly total is around 35k. The structure has had to move a bit as I'm doing an open water swim once a week and that will become an evening group activity from next month, so things are shuffling around a bit, but it's all good fun.
The runs are currently something like:
- Long run Sunday
- 4-5k tempo Monday or Weds (either just after the OW swim or earlier in the day)
- Easy 8k somewhere
- Intervals session somewhere
- The odd ROTB if I can fit one in
The challenge is that two rides a week are really quite intense. One is threshold and one is VO2. These are hard - e.g. Tuesday's ride was 8x3 mins VO2 where each interval had the HR up in the 160s or nudging 170. But the body seems to be absorbing it so I hope it is making me fitter.
Garmin's 5k prediction has come back down from 21 mins to 20:18 as of this morning.
I've been doing 1/2/3k intervals at something like 4:20/4:25 pace which I think is around my threshold. Then if I do a 400s session they are faster like 3:50.
I did 7x1k this morning with 1 min easy between the intervals. They were all around 4:20 pace (1st one 4:26, last one 4:14) and the max HR on the last one was 168 (lower 160s for the others) and the average HR was 150s). It was a solid session but felt pretty good.
So I think I'm doing ok training, and Garmin's prediction is moving in the right direction, but I *feel* I am some way from holding 4:04 pace for 4k which was what I did in the 4k test about 6 months ago.
