After a few weeks of rebuilding speed, this week was about something runners find surprisingly difficult: not running fast.
The knee has been behaving, the pace has been improving, and naturally, the brain wants to celebrate by doing something stupid.
Fortunately, the legs and Garmin negotiated a ceasefire.
The Week That Was
41.9 km | 5h 42m | 1h 22m strength training
Tuesday: Started with a 0.82 km warm-up followed by an hour of Zone 2 running. Around 10 km of controlled aerobic work, keeping the heart rate where it belonged. No heroics.
Wednesday: 6.2 km of very easy walking/jogging. Recovery isn’t always pretty, but it serves a purpose.
Friday: 8.3 km of Zone 1 and lower Zone 2. Average HR 124 bpm, with absolutely no time in Zone 3 or above. Garmin probably wondered whether I’d forgotten how to run fast.
Saturday: A shorter, controlled session — 8.9 km at 5:30/km, averaging 73% of maximum HR. Enough to remind the legs that they are runners, not retired government employees.
Sunday: 2.6 km of easy recovery. No medals awarded. No Strava segments threatened.
The Bigger Picture
The previous weeks were about bringing back HM-specific pace. This week was about absorbing that work.
No threshold intervals. No ambitious long run. Just aerobic mileage, recovery and strength training.
And perhaps that’s the most difficult lesson in marathon training.
Fitness improves when you train. But it becomes usable when you recover.
With the November HM approaching and the Feb FM still the bigger picture, the objective isn’t to win every training session.
It’s to arrive at the starting line healthy enough to race.
Week 17 takeaway: Sometimes the smartest running decision is to run less, run easier, and give the ego a rest day.
The ego, incidentally, is still complaining. The knee isn’t. 😄
