A week of good hurt!

This is the 14th week of being back running.

I've had a good build up of easy miles and left it until last week to inject some faster paced work. I'd also started to add some quality bike work.

So Monday was a TrainerRoad session.

On Tuesday Finch Coasters had a 2x20 minute session which I aimed to run at fast tempo (4:15/km). A little fast on the downhill way out (just shy of 5km in just shy of 20min) and suffered a little on the way back. All in all it was a good tempo session and I remained under HM pace on the return leg. The entire session was a real confidence booster as I hadn't had a fast run since taking some time out.

Wednesday was a morning recovery run then an evening FTP/VO2 session on the bike. Thursday another club run which on analysis was 'Easy' though felt like a tempo session at the time. Probably due to pacing!

Friday was a rest day, which left the weekend.

Saturday we wandered to Woodley parkrun as a family. First time we'd tried that one. It was a pacing event and my wife was hoping to go to 34 minutes. Unfortunately she went of way too fast and then suffered! My plan was to take things easy and use it as a faster session in my LSR. Unfortunately my ego got the better of me, especially after Monday. I overtook the 20 minute pacer not far in to the first lap. The second began to hurt and I had to dig on the final lap. Garmin was under-reading and I came in at 20 minutes exactly, and 9th man. Didn't get chicked! This was another confidence boosting session, especially as I had not intended to run that fast. Coupled with WU, CD and some extra mileage at lunch that was 14km in the bag.

Sunday was a great 3 hours XC MTBing on my new build.

All in all a really good week, with some quality build added in. Today was an easy 10km, followed by entering some local races. Dinton Duathlon (November) and Wokingham half-marathon (Feb 2014). As usual the HM was the cheaper of the two. I'm all about supporting local races, but the online registration companies really take the biscuit. £3.28 for a service fee to allow me to enter a £35 race? Daylight robbery from Active Network.

The grand plan is to have a good XC season whilst building for a good spring HM. Some added bike work will see me do well at Dinton and some other low key duathlons. Spring Ballbuster in March followed by PowermanUK in May.