Steve Monaghetti Camp

I can honestly say that the camp exceeded all expectations for me.

From Friday night's recovery run where I ran the first couple of km at the back f the pack, chatting to Mona about my running, the whole weekend continued with running as the focus.

Without going into too much boring detail, lessons/impressions:

MONA
Steve was incredibly accessible, humble and down to earth. He helped me devise a shorter, more severe taper taking into account my short preparation and travel commitments in the last week. One overwhelming message was that running more easy paced total distance will help improvement far more than any session. He ran twice a day, 200k per week, week in week out with 19k/10% each week quality - a Mona fartlek or 400s, and a timetrial on a rolling hilly course of 8k, plus fairly frequent short races mainly cross country.

RAF
Unexpectedly for me, Raf opened up a new insight into running culture for me. His passion for WA running is compelling, especially for the nurturing of potential young elite runners. Certainly my perception of his store and the Frontrunner coaching groups has changed, and a number of us seem to be considering getting involved in some way, so I guess the camp achieved that purpose for him - to make it the centre of distance running excellence in the state. (Much was spoken about the deficiencies of the WAMC in catering to certain runners which was also very interesting). Mona mentined that in some ways it's sad we have one big running club rather than several small ones who could compete in various events more often, as is done in the Eastern States.

Physio/Dietician Sessions
I dont think a description by me would do justice to the nutrition talk - but it certainly had us all talking about it for the entire weekend - which must be good! I now know that Mexican food is ridiculous and Thai food is a joke!
The physio session was refreshing in that the focus was on running as the best thing to do to help strengthen running muscles, and that a small number of strenghtening exercises, taking a small amount of time, is all you need to do if not currently injured.

Participants
Great group of people all talking about the same stuff, nearly all 'mid-pack' runners, of varying ability

On to the running -
Monday 6.1k@4:58 - pretty stiff and sore post HM
Tuesday 20.1k@4:36. Still felt stiff and sore but it was such a glorious night I kept on plodding
Wed 12k@4:21 with 3k at 4:00 and later 1.5k@4:00 - knee felt pretty sore after this, so I took Thursday off
Friday am 10.25k@4:37 - easy
Friday pm 8.7k@5:17 - easy group run at camp on gravel road, rolling hills.
Sat am Mona fartlek with Mona - how cool is that! Partly on gravel and partly on grass - did 5.35k in the 20min all up - worked pretty hard. 4k w/up, 3.7k c/down
Sat pm 10.58k@4:53 - Rob and took a wrong turn on this recovery run after we split from the group, but it was a lovely evening to run and we got to use the breadcrumb function on our garmins

Sun am 20.6k@450s or so (accidentally stopped my Garmin for a bit) This was hilly and more intense than a usual long run, hence the shortness. My knee struggled on the steep downhills on the trail.

So 101km for the week and 319km for the month so far, with two more weeks of full on training. Mona suggested in the next two weeks I try to fit in an extra long run midweek one week to make up for my lack of distance - my speed seems more than adequate from the HM and the Fartlek session.