We are officially over half way through the training block.
After this week only 2 weeks to go.
The thoughts through my mind are still a bit all over the place, the feeling in my back might seem better but it can return in the blink of an eye!
During this week also reached my runstreak anniversary, on Tuesday I officially ran 365 consecutive days!
Read on for more insights into how week 4 went…
Monday
Still at a point that I keep doing 5K runs every day.
it’s going better day by day though so hope to be able to increase the distance soon, otherwise I know I’m going to suffer a lot during the marathon.
Especially if you imaging that before I ran 120Km per week and last week was only 36Km 😱
After the run did a short strength & conditioning session, during which I did the following:
5 x 10 crunches
10 minutes stretching
Tuesday
Since my treadmill was been fixed on Monday I wanted to try it out.
Also in my neighbourhood there are a lot of hills, which is also not very good for my recovery.
Needed to adjust a little bit again to running on a treadmill, normally I only use it when outside the weather is terrible, so it has been from before summer that I used it!
It went better than expected, at the last Km even did a fast finish.
And yes I did feel that afterwards in my right leg 🤷♂️
Wednesday
Oh this was a very busy day!
My crazy mind had the genius idea to do a run, strength & conditioning and bike session, all in one day…
Run:
Lowered the average pace to 10km/h and added an additional kilometer.
Average heart rate was 128, definitely not bad!
At around 15 minutes I did get some discomforts at my right side but luckily a couple of minutes that went away.
Strength & Conditioning:
Continuing building up my strength with:
5 x 10 Push-Ups
5 x 8 Romanian Deadlifts (Bar + 10Kg)
5 minutes stretching
Bike:
Just selected a random course in Zwift of about 30 minutes, which turned out to be just under 14 kilometers and 100 meters of elevation.
After all of this I took a cold bath to relax my muscles, because oh boy did they need it!
Thursday
As expected my body was a bit more tired, which was to be expected after that busy Wednesday!
During my lunch break went out for a run near my work with a friend and co-worker, He recently started to run again and is currently building up to run 10 miles next year.
I reduced my speed to match Matitas (his real name is Mathias, but that’s just a joke of mine 😜) his speed, reducing the speed was also really convenient for me to let my body recover properly!
In the future there will be more runs together with Matitas to get him ready for the Antwerp 10 miles!
Yeah Baby!
Friday
Decided it was ready to slowly increase the distance to see and feel how it goes.
Did 2 runs in total on the treadmill of 4 kilometers each.
Both runs went really great, even managed to pick up the pace for the second run 💪
Run 1: (morning run)
AVG speed: 5:45min/Km
AVG HR: 124
Run 2: (afternoon run)
AVG speed: 5:05min/Km
AVG HR: 130
Saturday
Another busy day on the agenda!
2 runs and a strength & conditioning session…
The second run felt really hard, but this is probably due to that I increased my total distance for the day to 10Km!
The amount of positive vibes I’m getting lately is great.
I see myself advancing a lot, my goal of that 3h20 for the marathon in Amsterdam is shining again in my eyes 🤩
This means I’ve got to decide which shoes to wear in case the weather is great or which shoes to wear in case it would rain!
You could say that I’m on a mission to try out all my fast race shoes! 🙈
Run 1: (morning run)
AVG speed: 5:26min/Km
AVG HR: 129
Run 2: (afternoon run)
AVG speed: 5:23min/Km
AVG HR: 138
Strength & Conditioning: (evening)
3 x 10 DB side raise – iso 6kg (30sec rest)
3 x 10 DB curl – iso 6kg (30sec rest)
5 x 5 push-ups
Stretching
Sunday
After running 10Km on Saturday and that strength and conditioning session, I was pretty sure that my body would be tired.
Well to my surprise, I was good in shape to run another 10Km.
This time it wasn’t a treadmill run…
I wanted to use this opportunity to see how it felt to run outside and do some elevation.
In the end it was a very good run which I managed to complete at an average pace of 11Km/H!
Total elevation difference was 95 meters.
And yes indeed, I really felt that, after running with almost no elevation differences on a treadmill or on a pancake road near work 😂
Summary
Week number 4 was a very positive week, filled with a lot of positive vibes.
I’m slowly getting back into shape and that 3h20 goal seems more reachable day by day!
Week number 5 will be very important to further determine how my performance would be on the 15th of October.
A final test is scheduled on Sunday October 8th, which will be a half marathon on a more flat terrain, this way I can evaluate how though it feels, test out my nutrition for a last time and make a decision about a plan B or C depending on how I feel on the big day…
That’s all the information I have to share about my first week of training for project 3:20!
If you have any questions or remarks, drop a comment down below or send me a DM on instagram!
