Ok ok

So it’s not really week 1, I’m not going from zero to miler in 80 days (Although that would be a good experiment) but I am having a genuine crack at legit structured training.

I’ve been with the team at SquadRun for about 18 months. I first signed up with Kerry and Ali as part of an introductory offer in June last year.

A month later I hit a marathon PB by 3 minutes.

I’m not the best at following plans. Actually that’s not entirely true, I follow the parts that suit me! The way SquadRun works is a plan is developed and a list of 6-7 runs listed per week. Each run is given a priority rating with the idea being that if you can only manage one run that week you should run the priority 1 run. Makes sense. Except the priority 1 and 2 tends to be really long (or sometimes worse a 5k or 10k time trial) and there is always some horrid speed or hill session in there. Historically I would pick the easy ones. Each week I’d just pick the standard junk miles, the slow and steady 10k or the rolling hills. Nothing too fast, too steep or too long. And no strength training or cross training. Just no.

I’m actually quite impressed I’ve managed to accomplish anything!!

With SquadRun I’ve run two 100km runs and got a PB in the You Yangs 50k by almost 40 minutes. I know their stuff works, I just have to pull my finger out and actually do it.

Training

This week my training plan called for Back to Back long runs (30k in the AM, 20k in the PM), a 2km/1km speed session and a few moderate hilly runs.

I’m proud to say I have completed each workout and also added in two resistance sessions, one legs and one arms/abs and a 3 hr hike!

I did the speed session on the treadmill at the gym because when I try to do it out on the road I go out to hard and can’t complete the session. This way I can control the pace at least until I get used to it and can transfer it onto the road.

I learnt a lot- Go slow when it says slow, don’t go to heavy weights to soon-body weight is fine for now.

Nutrition

At the moment, I’m probably carrying 2kg of fat that I don’t really need to be. No this isn’t muscle or water from the increased training and carbs, it’s just fat. No doubt a result of discovering just how much junk food is vegan. When I first went vegan, I really leaned out, my diet was clean and all the colours of the rainbow. But then I did some research and realised that there was actually lots of stuff as a vegan I could eat. Oreos, coconut ice cream, dark chocolate, Pringles, etc. The irony is that before I was vegan I never ate those things.
I’ve been using a food diary this week to assess my diet and the good news is… I haven’t gained any weight. I’ve weighed exactly the same every morning except this morning (I did run almost 40k yesterday) when I was half a kilo down.

Overall I was pretty happy. I probably didn’t need the dark mint chocolate every second day but I was pretty good and stuck to my 2.5-3 L of water every day.

I’m away with work next week so here’s to week 2 of Tarawera Miler training! 76 days to go.