New regime

A long run with Fintan discussing all the gory details about the XC from the day before. Conditions were good and we were ticking over nicely - the legs felt good though the quads/buttocks were a bit sore so I must have used some new muscles yesterday. All up 21.8kms in 1:30:46 (4:10's).

Well it's time to start a new training regime. In a nutshell I've gone a bit stale the last couple of years and I've clearly plateaued. So in an effort to try and make some improvements this year I'm following a new plan that is clearly quite radical when you compare it to my current training. To start with it's going to be threshold, threshold and more threshold. I plan to run 6 to 8 weeks of just threshold running and during that time I will be doing no specific speed sessions.

Threshold pace is defined as your maximum steady state pace of running. It's a hard pace that you can maintain for one hour so for many people it would be close to 10 mile race pace. I had this pace calculated for me recently and when I reach a heart rate of 151 I'm at my lactate threshold. Run quicker than that and I start to use the anaerobic system which then generates higher levels of lactic acid; run at or below that heart rate and I am training the aerobic system which keeps the lactate level in check, thus reducing the need for recovery.

This type of training will help to develop stamina and strength - which is required to sustain running high speeds for long periods of time. To start with I plan to run 2 to 3 of these sessions a week - starting at 30 minutes, and gradually building these up to 45 minutes. By that time I'll be ready for the Craughwell 10 miler at the end of March which will be the first gauge of how things are progressing. I'll then adjust the training after that with the view of increasing the duration and quantity of these threshold sessions further. Well that's the plan all being well!

So lets see how this goes. I have a threshold session planned for tomorrow to get the ball rolling...