Week 7 is the first week of the “Lactate Threshold + Endurance”, second mesocycle of the P&D Advanced Marathoning training plan. Introducing a little more speed and a little more training at Lactate Threshold to increase the speed endurance.
The only change I made to the “Original” plan here was that I wanted to run a 20 mile long run instead of the prescribed 18. The other planned sessions were all identical.
I started the week on monday with a nice short recovery run – the intention being to get a 6th run in and earn the Jantastic “Pro” badge!
I can’t work out if this affected Tuesday’s aborted 10 miler with the middle 5 at lactate threshold pace, which was a bit of a failure. I managed to mis-plan my route so the first mile was uphill, I needed to make a toilet stop, and halfway through the lactate threshold section i just couldn’t maintain pace. With the benefit of hindsight I recognise that I hadn’t slept enough, hadn’t really eaten enough and was still recovering from a cold, all of which clearly affected my ability.
Still I was concerned I may have overtrained again. Last time I felt like this was after the Street 5k. The day after that run I went out for 4 miles at recovery pace and still felt horrendous. Thankfully, this was not the case on this occasion, as Wednesday’s run was fine. A good nights sleep and some extra food really helped.
Still feeling a bit concerned though, I went out on Thursday’s 11 mile Medium-Long Run with caution. Though thankfully I felt fine all the way around and even managed my target of making each mile split slightly quicker than the previous! I felt very pleased with myself 🙂
Friday was weigh-day. I was hopeful I had lost weight, but I wasn’t expecting a 4lb shift! I take these big jumps with a pinch of salt, it probably means this Friday I’ll lose less or even slightly gain. But still it was a nice feeling! It means I’m just 1lb over my pre-christmas weight, so very soon I’ll be “treading new ground” again.

parkrunday saw a bit of a strange, broken run. I was down for 7 miles with 8 strides. I also wanted to get parkrun in though, and I also had to volunteer as a car park attendant. So I ended up running to parkrun, doing my volunteer stint then running parkrun! It was a bit strange as I was going slow then fast, I kept swapping places with people and they must have thought I was a bit mad/crap. But still I got my strides in. Not as quick as they could have been (And have been when running on the road as part of a “proper” session), but better than 5k pace nonetheless, which was the purpose.

Sunday saw my first long run as part of the campaign. I have detailed about this run in this blog post, but essentially I ran a 7 mile warm up then the Blackmore Vale Half Marathon at training pace. It was a great event, and I was quite pleased as my legs didn’t feel nearly as bad as I expected them to, and much better than when I did my first 20 miler last year! Also, I’ll reiterate that I was super proud of Jodie for her massive PB!

This week also sees the first month of Jantastic draw to a close! I’m happy to report a 100% score for the month, and finish the month with a fantastic 14 badges! Every badge I went for and could have possibly gotten I achieved.
Onwards and upwards to week 8!