Week 1 Training - Reaching new heights

A very satisfactory start to my formal Perth marathon Program this week - I ticked all the boxes and the body held up well

Monday 12k recovery @ 4:39

Tuesday am 16k with 8k tempo @ 3:49min/k - ran around Herdsman and felt like the correct tempo effort

Tuesday pm 8.3k recovery@ 4:36

Wed am 19k@4:34 medium long run. This was definitely the hardest run of the week - all mental. The whole way I ran an inner discussion about needing to finish early to get to work, and took it pretty much a km at a time to push it out to the planned distance. This was where having a program helped as it was the potential shame of not sticking to the very first week of the plan which kept me out there

Wed pm 7.4k@4:44 - on the treadmill to slow my recovery down a bit (this second run wasn't on the program but i couldn't fit in the pm Thursday planned run)

Thurs am 12k@4:47 recovery - this one felt like a true recovery run

Fri am 20k@4:33 - pleased with this effort around lakes monger and herdsman

Sat am 13.3k @4:36 - did 10x100m strides towards the end of the run. Am I supposed to stop and do strides/walk back or should they just be incorporated as very short fartleks in the run? ( I did it the latter way).

Sun 30k@4:37 - Cott run with DB, Braddles and Chris Letts. felt a bit fatigued and the knee was hurting early on but gradually loosened up and DB&I pushed the pace in the last 5k 4:22/4:16/4:11/4:07/4:04.

Ended up with 138k for the week - my longest week ever. I did the sessions as per the program (planned 126k) with just a few extra km here and there to make that bigger distance.

I know it's probably flirting with danger a bit to increase the mileage that much, but I'm flying to the US early Wed am for a quick one week trip, so I'll have an enforced lower km week to recover.

Increasing the mileage was less of a big change in my week than I'd envisaged, and I'm far more confident than a week ago that i can 'go the distance' with the training plan