due to various reasons, the training journal has received far less of my attention than I would have liked. so, rather than try and catch up on all the details, I’ll whizz through a quick summary here, and resolve to get back to daily journaling…
highlights in recent times include completing the “100kms in 4 days” challenge, which included things like a Saturday night trail run (12km), followed by an early Sunday morning half marathon virtual event (21.1km).
bodily impacts
I could feel the impact on my body though, and wound up taking a day off work to help prevent early signs of a cold from developing further.
my body can take the work, it has got the distance in it for sure, but I need to build up carefully, allowing the body’s immune system to build up, not get overloaded etc.
a few symptoms led me to adding iron supplements, and so far these seem to have had a positive impact on energy levels. when you consider that I have covered almost 500km on foot, in the space of one month, it’s not really going to be a surprise that I need more of these sort of things than the average person.
walk more, run less
a tactic that is working very well, allowing me to build time and distance with less impact, is to do more walking. while this goes against a lot of the training I am used to with the marathons, it makes absolute sense. at the end of the day, I need to be covering lots of kms over an extended period of time. walking is going to be a big part of this adventure, and walking is helping to create a strong pair of legs, and I’m also getting used to spending lots of time simply walking – so the mental strength is getting a boost.
walking highlights so far are a 25km “out and back” along the Canning River recently, and walking 20km to work one Friday. Walking to (and possibly from) work could become a weekly workout…
the ultra test
despite all this talk of building slowly, increasing the walk-to-run ratio and so on, there is a very real milestone only a month away; the six inch train ultramarathon; 47km (approx) that starts with 300m of elevation (over the first 3km) and a cut-off time of 7 and a half hours.
as part of the preparation for this (and the Perth-to-Brisbane trip) I have been joining a training group on the trails, getting used to parts of the six inch course, and also on more local routes. current plans include a 32km run this coming weekend, and another planned run of approximately 42km, 2 weeks before the event itself.
can’t wait to be able to say “i’m an ultra-marathoner” 🙂
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