Friday - day of rest

It's kind of ironic that I start my blog on a rest day. Previous to this year, 'rest' was a foreign word to me. I knew physiologically that the concept of rest was imperative for the adaptations induced by my training to come to fruitation, but as mentioned in my previous post, running is like a drug and can be addictive. Nevertheless, 2015 has been a year of maturity for myself, and I now embrace my Friday's. I used to just go out and run an easy 30-40 minutes each Friday morning, but I would frequently notice that I would turn up to training on Saturday morning feeling stale. Even the Kenyans, the greatest distance runners on the planet, train six days per week. Back when I was kayaking, Sunday was my rest day. But for some reason, a lot of runners feel the implusion to run 7 days per week. Again, this is where you need to know your body and when to listen to it. I know plenty out there who respond optimally to training each and every day, whilst others would simply overtrain performing this schedule. In terms of performance, it important to remember it is dictated by two very important variables - training and recovery. The latter is what most tend to ignore. It is essential to acknowledge that influences external to running can signficantly compromise the recovery process. Factors such as family, work-life, financial stresses can all take their toll on your overall level of performance. Therefore, it is important when designing a training schedule to factor in these variables, to ensure that you do not tread down the dreaded path of overtraining. 

Anyway, back to Friday's recovery day. The goal today is to rest the legs following a tough week of training (which included a 10km race), especially on the back of yesterday mornings session - which consisted of 15 x 400m with a 200m float recovery between intervals. I have recently come to the realisation that an area that I could really improve is my actual speed endurance and aerobic power (as running coach Jack Daniels would state). As a result, I actually didn't push the 400m intervals to an all out effort, averaging between 68-72 seconds, but actually didn't slow down too much in my 200m floats, running around 4:10-4:20 min/km pace. This may become a staple session over the next month, as I am adamant on breaking the elusive 33 minute barrier for 10km. 

Tomorrow morning I have planned a 10km race pace specific session of 3 x 2 miles (3.2km) at 3:18 min/km pace, with 2 minutes floating in between sets. I plan to complete this at Passmore Oval, Manly Vale, which has a nice uninterrupted 650m asphalt path. Apart from a 100m stretch which has a slight canopy temporarily blocking the GPS signal, I find this course mentally challenging, but great nonetheless. I will post an update tomorrow upon completion of the session.