I know this is one of your weeks on the road, so I’ve tried to keep any runs midweek down to 60 mins and also changed the S&C as those sessions you won’t need a gym or your normal gym. But as always feel free to switch things up as you need. 7 weeks to London. I love this time of year. My excitement and anticipation for the upcoming races is through the roof right now.

155 Points Achieved

MONDAY

10pts | Home Legs

10 POINTS

A good home workout for the legs. No weights needed, but if you do have some that will add to the difficulty. Recoveries around 30-60s. If time is limited then combined two exercises together. So whilst recovering from squats for example you could be doing your calf raises. This could save you as much as 15 mins.

15 Points

Elliptical w/u 12 min. Strength session – did legs and core instead of legs – 61m. Completed as planned.

Great start to the week Phil. More than happy if you ever want to tweak it or add in some extra exercises. Sounds like it went well. Some bonus pts banked as a result of the elliptical and core exercises.

TUESDAY

24pts | 60 Mins Easy to MP

24 POINTS

Rather than just head out and do 60 mins easy, this goes through the gears a little and will hopefully help you improve running economy as the speed picks up a little. It’s still a light session but makes the easy runs more interesting. Best done on the flat to hit consistent paces.

29 Points

10m elliptical w/u as usual. 64m run versus 60m. 15m easy at 9:47/m, 20m steady at 9:22/m, 20m @8:47/m, 9m@easy 6.83 miles in total. Heart 139 bpm Quick Question re Thursday … when it says 90 s rest, does this mean walk/jog?

Great work Phil. Another good session banked and well done on the little bit extra. I always prefer recoveries to be rest periods, that way we can push that little bit harder in the reps and hit those targets.

WEDNESDAY

10pts | Gym Legs/Core L1

10 POINTS

A good all round session to work the legs and core. You should have built up to this fairly gradually, so don’t dive in head first as you want to take your time building your strength. Be sensible with the weights to begin with.

If short on time combine 2 exercises together (superset) them to save on the recoveries. Ideally one leg exercises and one core exercise where possible. Eg squats and planks.

13 Points

Core & Legs completed 47 min. Elliptical 10m w/u. All good. Just to check then re the “rest” 90 seconds tomorrow, that these are walk/jog and not easy pace?

Great work Phil. Yes take the recoveries, come reps 7-10 you should be working pretty hard so will appreciate the rest, without it, holding target pace late in the session might be tough.

thursday

27pts | 10 x 3 Mins (10k)

27 POINTS

10 Mins WU @ Easy Pace (RPE: 3)

3 Mins @ 10K Pace (RPE: 7)
90s Recovery
x 10

10 Mins CD @ Easy Pace (RPE: 3)

Really simple session and a chance to practice running at your target 10k goal pace for short periods of time.

27 Points

Good session today, completed as planned. Slight leg strain but nothing serious. All 10 intervals completed under the target time of 7:41/m Pushed harder in the 2nd half than the 1st half: First 5 reps (7:39, 7:37, 7:34, 7:38, 7:35) – ave 7:37/m Second 5 reps (7:30, 7:33, 7:22, 7:11, 7:05) – ave 7:20/m

Some nice splits in there. I don’t mind pushing the pace a little if you are feeling good. As there will always be those days where we are a little off pace. Thanks for all the stats too, really helps me monitor progress. Hope the leg strain is ok. Niggles can be part and parcel of marathon training but always important to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t become anything more serious. Great work Phil

FRIDAY

17 Points

20m core workout as I wanted to do a 3rd core session this week. 51m easy run at 9:47/m – COMPLETED AS PLANNED I’m planning to do the 180 min run as planned so as to not exceed the points threshold :)

No worries, that won’t effect the pts too much. I read an interesting study in the latest Runners World edition. To be fair it was focused around speed/tempo sessions saying runners improved doing 2 per week. 1 or 3 produced less benefits than 2. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same applies to specific S&C workouts and cross training. Sometimes less is more. That said, well done on the run as well. A solid week so far.

SATURDAY

Hi Simon, just a heads-up on the next few weeks as the diary is becoming clearer. w/c 9th – I am good to exercise Monday to Friday and then also on Sunday, but I fly to Sydney on Friday night (with Chris) so Sunday is fine for 60m easy, but not a long run or quality session. It means the overall week is 6.5 days long given the time diff. My suggestion would be to do the long run on the Friday, but I will leave it for you to work through. w/6 16th I am in Australia all week … Sydney Sun & Mon, then Mel Tue to Sun. I leave Sunday 8.00 am so I don’t think I can do much on that day – I am flying to the US, so i’ts a 24 h flight but i arrive the same day. One option could be to do a S&C session in the same day as an easy run this week, so as to optimise the time. There is a gym at the hotel so i will find time to do everything. w/c 23 another strange week as I am in the US (Mon, Tues, Weds) and then fly back Weds night to the UK arriving Thursday morning. Given the short time overnight, Thursday becomes a write off usually, but by the Sat / Sun I should be fine for a long run Let me know if it’s easier for me to put this on email

Thanks Phil, that’s great. I think I’ve made the necessary tweaks but we can always adjust again if need be on the week itself.

SUNDAY

54 Points

Mission completed as planned:) Felt pretty good until the last mile or two when it started to get hard quite quickly. I don’t find it relaxing to run slowly and think i may fare better next week when doing more at M pace (let’s see!). Splits were okay, not perfect. Stats were 135 BPM, 170 cad, 8.8% vertical osc (I guess that vertical osc and cad both lower as not running at goal pace). Garmin is now predicting 3:50:00, Strava is predicting 4:09:00 so the ave is c 4hours. Let’s see how the next few weeks go. P.S. I bought a pair of super shoes about 4 weeks ago. I haven’t tried them out on a run yet so I’m thinking of using them on one of the quality runs next week to check the fit / match.

Fantastic work Phil, another excellent training run banked, What shoes did you go for? I love the whole shoe discussion and knowing what people run it. Definitely sensible to give them a run out or two. Depending on the model you might find they are not the best for a 3:50 marathon. I’ve yet to wear my quickest shoes for anything over 10k because i think comfort is crucial too.