Following my injury on 4th July, I’ve been resting up to ensure a full recovery. I did manage a couple of slow and easy runs with Elisa in Verona (posted below). It was wonderful to be running around the river there again – it’s years since I’ve run that route.

Anyway, I’m back from holiday now and need to get back into the running if I’m going to turn in a reasonable performance at the GNR in September. I’ve also added raw food only to the vegan regime for a couple of weeks as I could definitely do with shedding a few pounds. I’m excluding breakfast from this since the cereal and soya milk really sets me up for the morning and keeps hunger at bay.

Can’t tell you how much I wish we were still in Verona – uploading this photo makes me miss it already. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Block 1 is behind me, but I’ve missed more runs than I should have (184 miles out of 229 scheduled, or around 80%). I need to fix that in Block 2, but I’m not feeling too despondent since Block 1 was devised simply to get me running again – just a whole load of easy miles.

That said, I am going to try to replace those 45 miles through Blocks 2, 3 and 4. I’ll distribute them through the step back weeks and with six of those left, adding one 7 mile run to each one will bring me more or less back on track.

Here’s what’s in store for the majority of weeks in Block 2.

I used to blog my running activity in the belief that setting targets and monitoring performance is the only way to ensure consistent progress towards a specific goal. Makes sense, no?

And I do have a goal. It’s a long standing one. It’s very simple and a nice round, easy to remember, but difficult to achieve, number:

1 hour and 30 minutes

That’s been my target time for a half marathon for some years now. It’s my favourite distance and I have come reasonably close (1:32) a few years ago.

I have the Great North Run in the diary for September (download my GNR 2010 Training Schedule.) Based on current performance, I won’t be hitting 1:30 at that event. But, I do think it’s achievable for my other favourite race – January’s Brass Monkey in York. So that’s my goal. And I’m going to start blogging and tweeting my running activities again (at the risk of boring Twitter followers into desertion!).

So, here’s the target (45 miles) for what’s left of this week (I always start running weeks on a Sunday, so I’m not including yesterday’s run in this week’s target):

Last week was a complete wash out. Never been so disappointed with my complete lack of commitment to a training schedule! Granted, there were a couple of days where it was less convenient than others, but there was a time when if it meant getting up at 5:30 to make sure the week’s mileage was completed, that was what happened.

I have committed to knocking some serious minutes off the appalling GNR time in September, so it’s time to knuckle down. This week’s mileage target MUST be hit. Thus begins the final week of Block 1. Next week it’s time for some quality.

With seventeen weeks until my next race, I want to bring the much referenced FOCUS to my training, so starting today, I’m embarking on a very prescriptive plan.

BLOCK 1

The next five weeks will be FOUNDATION (base) training. Lots of slow easy pace running with almost no “quality” sessions (hills, tempo, intervals, fartlek). My target is a minimum of 50 miles per week during Block 1 (step-back weeks excepted).

BLOCK 2

This will be followed by a QUALITY phase – six weeks of majority slow running with two or three quality sessions per week. These will be mainly hills and tempo sessions but by weeks five and six of this block, I may look to add one interval session per week.

BLOCK 3

The final block will be QUALITY and TAPER – four more weeks of quality running and a taper down over the last 10-14 days to race day.

So, my plan is to schedule each week on Sunday and add a comment to the post to say whether or not the day’s session(s) have been completed and how they went. The advantage of blogging it this way is that my site doesn’t become too running focused. Only one post per week about running.

All runs to be at EASY PACE (154bpm or lower)