Week 42: Review

It's been an interesting week, as I've had to get used to running entirely by feel as I increase my mileage. Pacing has been going better than I expected, and has been improving significantly through the week. Naturally, it takes a lot more work to manually plot and measure routes, then memorize waypoints and time things manually. It's getting easier, however, as most of my routes are variations on one another so once certain points are remembered they are useful for future runs.

Either way, most of the sessions this week went along quite well. On Monday, I managed to pull off an 82km ride in 2:47:29, hitting the 50 mile (half-century) mark at 2:43:20. That works out to an average speed of 29.4km/h, about 2:24 short of a 30km/h ride. Given that I was averaging about 26km/h the last time I rode this distance (before the half marathon), that is a significant improvement. The half-century ride on Friday didn't go quite as well due to heavy winds and traffic, but despite those conditions I still managed to average 28.4km/h.

With respect to running, things went pretty well to plan other than switching Thursday's 8K run to a 10K. As noted above, pacing was a little faster than it should have been for most of these sessions but it got much closer by the end of the week. For instance, the 8K 4:45 run at the start of the week was done at a 4:38 pace, while the same run on Saturday was at a 4:41 pace. Still not perfect, but going in the right direction.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 42km (48km)
Walking: 32km
Cycling: 185km
Total: 259km

As noted in the previous review, last week's Sunday and Saturday sessions were switched around which mixed up the weekly totals. When the 14km long run from the previous week was factored into this week's total instead of last week's, the total distance run was 48km. This brings me close enough to get beyond 50km next week, where I'll likely stabilize for the next little while to get my body accustomed to this training volume. To play it safe I'll likely continue to stay away from speedwork or hill training, as I'm still a bit renascent to do those types of sessions by feel.

Upcoming Week:
Sun (AM/PM) 16K Steady
Mon 80K Cycle
Tue 7K Tempo
Wed (AM/PM) 10K Steady/50K Cycle
Thurs 10K Steady
Fri 80K Cycle
Sat 8K Steady

Beyond that, I'm still playing around with a few different ideas for my long term plans but the priority at this juncture is to focus on keeping my base up. Whatever the plans end up being, I'd like to get back into some form of formal training program by the beginning of next month so I'll have to figure things out by then ;)