Quietly i've been plugging away at my 'faster' schedule, mostly locally and so no big reason to blog. there's only so many blogs you could take about a lakeside tempo session.
So with a good number of weeks of the new regime done it was back to the 'lab' yesterday to see what improvements, if any, it was having. Would I get a 'See me'?, a 'Poor work'?. It felt like the time when your parents saw your school report before you did and the look on their faces said it all :0.
But this time things were slightly better and my anxiety that not much had changed was soon relieved. in fact i was rather chuffed to see the difference it had made with all the values (techy science stuff that marc has to explain really slowly to me) jumping significantly in the right direction. importantly for ultras it appears that i've retrained my body to use much more fat as fuel than previously.*
So today i should receive my next 16 week 'mission' and the theme will be very much the same..lots of high intensity but this time with some slightly longer runs thrown in too.
I really love this approach to training. you run a lot (as opposed to walking a lot) . its time efficient (so i have lots of time to do the other things in life). and the rebel in me loves the fact that training this way for longer stuff flies in the face of the must-do mega mileage traditional camp. doing big miles i simply got slower but doing less im getting quicker with no detriment to endurance. that's not to say this is some miracle solution to ultras as there's so many other things to factor in.
(Charlie, you'd better watch out. well maybe that's pushing it a bit.)
All this though is giving my wee pea brain a bit of a dilemma. do i aim to do the lakeland 100 in 2013, my ultimate ultra goal and dream, or do i change direction to shorter fell/trail races? decisions decisions. i know where my heart lies.
And on that note next up is the lakeland 50 recce this sunday :) from pooley bridge to ambleside, with a few obstacles in the way!
*the small print. it wasn't all A*'s. my ongoing love for salty snacks, sausages and lakeland ales meant little movement in weight despite all that running :0. must try harder :-/
