So after deciding that all was not well in my marathon prep, I really switched things up this week.
Monday:
NO RUNNING! I cycled to the pool in the evening and swam for 1h15, then cycled home in the pouring rain. I didn’t love being the slowest swimmer in the fast lane, but it is what it is. Less rain would have also been nice.
I did lots of adductor/abductor work at home using a band and a chair! I will be working on hip strength lots before Paris now. My Piriformis feels much better already, but my groin is still not great.
Tuesday:
Rest Day – Goethe Test in Frankfurt and I want to rest anyway, so no training at all.
Wednesday:
Straight after work I cycled to the 1817 track and did some fast intervals. After only 800m warm up, I started my first of 8x600m repeats. With confidence low, I wanted to do 2:02/600m intervals with a 2min 200m walk pause, but I set off too fast so the first was 1:57. The next was too fast too, and the next and the next! I decided to just keep them faster than 2:00 for my 8 reps, which I managed fairly comfortably. After a 1km warm down I was done, 7.8km total according to strava, 8km actually.
Thursday
Nothing
Friday:
I was flying to England in the evening, so I took a break from work mid-afternoon to go and do some intervals. I thought I’d do some threshold stuff instead of going overboard with VO2 max work. I ran to 1817 and started off. I felt pretty crap from the get go. I was keeping up 3:45/km just about. I did 2x2km in 7:30 but then I really needed to go to the toilet. I ran to the uni, did some biiig business, then headed back to do another 2km. I felt crap and my heart rate was high, it was just a nightmare.
Saturday:
I was in England for my Mum’s 60th birthday. It was about -4°C and snowing a bit, the wind was the bad bit though! I had planned to run, but given that my hips weren’t feeling great and I felt like I had a bit of a cold, I binned it.
Sunday:
After everyone left my in Stamford, I went to the pool. It was about as bad as I could have feared. It was a leisure pool that was not at all meant for swimmers. It was full of kids, there was no swimming lane and the pool wasn’t even rectangular. I swam as best I could for 35 minutes before getting sick of it all and leaving.
Overview:
Lots of schedules would have this as my biggest training week, instead I ran twice for a total of about 18km, though I did swim 1.5 times and cycle once. My hips don’t feel good, it feels like I have groin pain on both sides, sometimes right, sometimes left. I think it is just the piriformis messing everything up.
Next week I will hope that things get better, they can hardly get worse! I would like to get a slight inverse taper in, so if next week it easy, then 1 good week before a last week of tapering. Who knows, I just need to keep doing my hip exercises and taking my iron, I can’t do much more.