Week 3 went quite well.  Even with a busy work/family schedule I managed to hit all of my planned runs, and won my trail race on Wednesday night.  I have been worried that doing more long running, and focusing more on 50K pacing might start to slow me down.  Thankfully, I finished with my best time out of 4 races in my Wed. night series so I guess it hasn’t bogged me down so far!

I did a couple of 6km runs on my normal neighbourhood loop on Monday night and Thursday night.  Nothing exciting on either run, but I did both at a faster pace (to try and keep some speed ability!).  I ran them in the low 4 min/km range which feels much easier while maintaining a much lower average HR than I could have in the past.

As mentioned, I had my biweekly 6K trail race on Wednesday night.  It was #4 in the series, so 4 more to go.  This is a really great mid-week race and a perfect bit of forced speedwork on the trails.  As I mentioned in my post-race report I was very happy with my pacing – I focused on pushing through the times that I wanted to walk and maintained a more stable pacing approach.  I know I will need this in the longer races and these short, intense runs are good times to work on it.

I switched my two longer runs due to family stuff we had scheduled, which meant a 25km run on Friday after work on the road (actually paved path).  I was quite happy with this effort – the temperature was a little cooler and less humid and I was able to run it at a moderate effort and maintain about 4:30 min/km.

Saturday I hit my road bike for a bit of a recovery workout.  I ended up riding 40km to my daughter’s soccer game.  I wasn’t pushing it too hard, but after that, chasing our son around at soccer, and then being on my feet at our daughter’s birthday party later that afternoon, my legs were wiped!

Sunday morning was my rescheduled 20km run from Friday.  This one I did on the trails.  I had checked the forecast the night before and was expecting cooler temps of about 23C – I was even debating whether I would need sleeves!  Instead by the time I got out, it was 30C and very humid.  Between that and the week’s training in my legs, it made for a slow day.  I managed to get the full distance in, but it wasn’t as fast as I had hoped.  I can really see the effect that heat, and especially humidity has on me – its so much harder to run when the air is so wet, and your sweat has nowhere to go!

So all in I managed to hit my goal of ~63km this week.  I am really excited about next week – the Run for the Toad race has a training day scheduled for Saturday so I am planning to drive out and get a chance to run the course.  The 50km race is made up of 4 x 12.5 km laps.  I plan to run the loop twice which will give me a much better idea of the terrain and what I need to focus on between now and the end of September.  I prefer knowing the course before a race – how about you?  Do you like a familiar race route, or do you prefer not knowing what you are getting into?

Week #4’s plan:

• Monday – rest (I definitely need it!)
• Tuesday – 8km run (probably on the road)
• Wednesday – hills
• Thursday – 6km run (road)
• Friday – Rest
• Saturday – 25km (2 laps of race loop)
• Sunday – 5km charity run with the family, then another 15km somewhere during the day

So far I am happy with where I’m at.  I plan to firm up a race goal after seeing the course this week.  I’ll keep anyone who reads this posted so you can hold me accountable to it!  Thanks for reading!