No nothing, I’m having an extremely challenging year, I manage to (kind of) run 50km every week but nothing like the quality miles I used to log. As a matter of fact my motivation is so low that I cannot even run for 1km straight if I am alone. I will walk, then run then walk…
When I’m running in a group, I can still do 30 -35km at 5:50 but if I’ll try to go faster, I am struggling to keep 5:20 for 5km and my heart goes 160 when less than a year ago I could run a full marathon at that pace at 150.
Having said that, since the start of this week I’m trying to stand up on my feet again and make a race end August theoretically hoping for a sub 1h40 half marathon.
The only thing that I’m doing right for now is to not quitting. I’ve learnt with the time that during hard times I have to at least maintain the habit alive and keep faking it until I make it.
The above is to give some background. For almost a year I was struggling with my running, partly due to injury, lack of motivation, massive changes in my life that influenced my biorhythms… But as I mentioned above I kept on going without quitting. I was doing 10k at 9:00/km pace which is essentially walking and takes massive amount of one’s time but keeping doing that for months.
But it wasn’t just my running. My running state was the reflection of my state of mental and physical fitness; I couldn’t sleep well, couldn’t concentrate, no motivation, no self confidence. But as with the running, I kept trying. First step was to follow threshold training with the Team every Thursday since January. So twice a week, being a part of a team, I could actually run properly, the other days that I was alone, I kept on walking but slowly things started to change.
Then about a month ago (beginning of April), something started to change: I started to sleep better, achieving my life goals, achieving my professional KPIs, feeling motivated, less stressed, literally eating better (hired a nutritionist)
The above somehow reflected on my running and for the first time in months I was able to run for 5 or 10k without stopping to walk.
In a month’s time I lost 2kg of fat and almost looked as a fit person again.
I had already decided to ask my coach to coach me again since beginning of March, but knowing him I knew I had to “show him something” in order for him to bother.
Thus I was following some of his old routines for previous races, in March I managed to complete about 50% of the training program (I’m traveling non stop it’s very challenging to strictly follow), in April month more than 80%.
I still remember the feeling of accomplishment after completed my first intervals session alone, exactly a month ago, April 4th, a kind of happiness and assurance that I’m still alive.
Last week I came back home for a month long business trip and I decided to measure my VO2 max and speed at my Lactate Threshold (LT), in the laboratory, in order to send it to my coach together with my training logs.
Provided that I’m chasing a sub 1h40min half marathon I needed to have a pace at threshold of at least 4:40/min at 159 HR. For comparison last test I’ve done February 2024 at peak fitness was at 4:48/min at 159 HR.
Of course I had no expectation that I could do so well, but given that my race will be sometime end August early September there was plenty of time to improve and reach that level.
So I stepped on the treadmill and 30’ later some of the results were as expected and some quite surprising:
- VO2 max has gone from 55 down to 51, due to lower volume of quality training all these months.
- Pace at LT has improved from 4:48/km to 4:37/km and even with lower heart rate from 159 to 157!
This means that provided I keep steady with my training and nothing funny happens near the race, I could do not just a sub 1h40min half marathon but even a sub 1h35min one!
Needless to say I’ve immediately sent the results to my coach who was amazed and confirmed that we could start tomorrow
