Backing Up

I woke up this morning not quite sure how I was going to get through my long run. My legs were still feeling weary from my long ride yesterday.

I usually look forward to my long run, it is a nice chance to get out and just cruise for a while. A nice time to enjoy running. Today's session was going to be the same, there is no prescribed pace for these long runs so I am free to run by how I am feeling. Given I was feeling tired I was more than happy to simply run slower. My concern heading into the session wasn't about pace, but more about whether my legs would let me run for 20km or so.

With that in mind I went into the session nice and easy. I have been seeing a lot of articles on Social Media etc recently about making sure the easy sessions are done easy. This long run is a perfect example of that, it is so easy to get caught up in chasing pace and going too hard in these sessions. Starting the run today I was just focused on feel and heart rate. My goal was to ignore pace and make sure I was keeping the intensity down. Not just have it feeling easy, but confirming it with the heart rate monitor. Approaching the run this way meant that I got to the half way mark feeling surprisingly good. It wasn't even that much slower than normal. As I have said, pace wasn't what I was focusing on, but I found as I warmed up and got moving the pace improved anyway. By the second half of the run I was up and into the rhythm of the run. I got to the end of the run actually feeling good. Not at all what I had been expecting when I started.

With that I have come to the end of my training week. A week of training has been a good one, despite me being offshore for most of it. It certainly doesn't feel like it has been a week of nothing. It does feel like it has been an easier week though (which it was) and it has also given me a good mental break (which it was supposed to). After the interrupted week I am definitely ready to get on with training, get back into the routine for the lead up to Iskandar Puteri,.