Running Program 2012

It was my 2012 New Year's resolution to run some races this year with the first being the Puffing Billy run in May. So I've set myself a training program in blocks of 10 days running every second day. This should give me a chance to improve, time to recover between runs, and still fit around my work and the rest of my life. While running has become a very pleasurable hobby for me, I don't want it to take over my life and finding the right balance is important to me.

So the training program will look something like this:

1. 8-12km steady run
2. Interval training, either hills or speed work
3. Longer distance run, building to 20km
4. Interval training, either hills or speed work
5. 8-12km steady run

I have finished the first set of sessions now and feel really good. My first run was the day after I landed from New Zealand and I managed 10km but was painfully slow. I felt a bit stiff to start with, but ran this off, loosened up, but couldn't build to a decent rhythm. The second run I chose a hill near where I live and ran around the block going up the hill 4 times. The hill isn't too steep, nor too long, but I was breathing more heavily than usual at the top of it. The first couple of hills weren't too bad, but it then became tough going and the end of the fourth run was a real struggle. In hindsight I realise that I was trying to run the hills too fast rather than to take them at a steady pace and was therefore tiring sooner than I should have.

My long run was great. I felt really good, and ran over 11km (I'd previously only run 10.5km) in the same time it took me to run 10km a few days before. I fell into a pace after about 1.5km and held it through till about 9.5km when I started to tire. I then ran the hills again, but this time tried to run at a steady pace and managed 5 repeats of the climb feeling better than when I'd done 4. I was able to recover comfortably as I slowly ran to the bottom of the hill, and after the hills, I even did a 2km cool down run and was able to pick up the pace a little towards the end. The last run of this session was 10km, but I really struggled as it was terribly hot, about 27C when I started my run. I ran at a decent pace, but had to stop at about the 7km mark where there is a drink fountain. So it was basically 2 runs, one of 7km and another about 3km with a break of 1 or 2 minutes between them.

I'm pretty happy with this start to the year and hope to build from there. I want to build my distance up to 20km eventually, but in the medium term, I want to get 15km and get a few runs of that distance in before the Puffing Billy run. I'm not so bothered about my speed as I'm already running faster than I'd expected to, but I've got in my mind 10km in 55 minutes which is an average of 5.30 per kilometre. I'm not far from there, so I see it as an achievable target. When I hit that target I'll think about something else!