And we are off!

So, week one done, and how did we do? Not bad for the first week, I had four short sessions this week (i.e. <10k), but this included some tempo work and some sort of speed or hill interval. On the minus side, a 'owe' yesterday's (Sunday) session which I will do today (essentially swapping rest days around) and I haven't made it to the gym yet, but I hope to do better this week.

Demi (my girlfriend) also started her own 10k programme this week - it will be fun training concurrently for the same distance!

I also had the first post-summer (dare I call it autumn?) training session with the Harriers: A fast-paced 9k run which also happened to work very well as the first session of my new 10k programme from micoach.

The Harriers (or more accurately, the Huncote Harriers AC) had their 2012 AGM after the run and listening to the captains give the reports, I again felt I should be participating in more league / championship races with them... It's all about managing time though and the many demands on it... and time at weekends is the most valuable of it all...

I also started a triathlon class at my local gym – it’s basically a weekly session looking in turn at running, cycling, swimming and transitions and aiming to get us to compete in a sprint triathlon in spring (with a lot of additional training between sessions, of course). I’m not sure I will compete in one necessarily, but I’m using this class as a bit of extra (cross-) training and to help motivate me keep my swimming up. The trainer taking it is also a useful point of reference for nutrition, strength training etc. etc. We started with running this week (outdoors thankfully, not sweating on a treadmill!), and it was a straight 6k run followed by 2 sets of hill reps. A reasonable session for starters (and as a supplement to my more structured programme), but I really felt those hills!

That’s where you need someone to train with though (be it a trainer or just a training partner): to keep you honest and pushing as hard as you possibly can on the way up (especially when you have got unaccustomed with high intensity work outs). Exactly the kind of exercise I need right now then, fast intervals or hills just to get my lungs working again!!! In fact I remember motivating myself to squeeze every last little bit of effort out of myself by thinking that the fastest I ran up, the more fractions of seconds I would be shaving off my eventual marathon time, six months away – seconds, I told myself, that could make the difference between coming in under or over 3:30! You’d be right to call it complete nonsense (looking at each session in isolation) or a valid principle (if maintained consistently over the coming six months), but the point is that I felt it put a spring in my step and that’s what I needed.

Finally, I've being playing around with the Nike+ app on my Android... It took a lot of calibration (the initial stats would have you believe I was setting world records), but I think it's there now... 

So there you have it... A good first week, but I need to ramp it up a bit more!