Not a lot of serious racing has been going on since 2018 commenced. It's
been too darn hot! Even at 8.00 AM for the Parkrun 5k the temperature
has been rarely below 19C. The humidity has been high too —
this morning my shirt, shorts and socks were soaked in sweat by the time
I'd finished running. My fastest 5k so far this year was on the 13th of
January, 24:35 on a warm morning that also happened to be windy! My
goal for this year is to run under 23:00 — even 22:59 will do!
I don't think this will be an easy task, as it means finding another 34
seconds over my best time from last year.
Besides the lack of hard racing, my training has been going well. I'm
averaging a little over 80 km per week, or around 8 and a half hours for
those who measure by time. Looking back at my training diaries from the
1990s, I would have covered about 105 km in 8.5 hours (sufficient
weekly time in my opinion for good race results). I'm back doing regular
Verheul interval sessions, but in a different manner to how I ran them
last year. I think my execution of the Verheul Methode wasn't how it
should have been.
The most important thing is how the feet and legs interact with the
ground. What we're looking for is a feeling of 'reactivity' with each
stride. Now this doesn't mean striving for exaggerated 'springing' and
vertical movement. It means running lightly with reactivity and forward
movement. Last year I was too concerned with split times of the faster
efforts and not enough with how each stride felt. I thought there was
good value in doing a large amount of running at near race pace, when
the real value comes from repeating the feeling of good reactive
strides. For Verheul sessions now, I'm typically thinking about how the
stride feels, without concern for how fast I'm running. My walking
recoveries are now shorter than previously. I might walk for 100m and
run for 400m, or walk for 200m and run for 300m rather than the 1:1
walk/run by distance that I did before. I'll let you know how things
progress over the coming weeks.
Long run with the Speedygeese at Majura Pines
