The New Year

A New Year; a new beginning but still very cold!

Much as I enjoyed my off-season I knew it could only be for a short time and that as soon as New Year began so would a new regime. Christmas had given me time for some re-evaluation but the break meant that I was keen to make the start
My main conclusion had been about the need for variety and to think of training as a series of waves (building up, falling back a little then building again). I have therefore started a 16 week schedule, which has a pattern of three weeks of increasing effort followed by a comparatively easy week. Within the programme is the standard mixture of long slow runs, steady runs, hills, speed, and threshold. But it is good to follow someone else’s ideas because left to myself I would do too many similarly paced runs of similar length.

Whether I actually race at the end is a moot point (I have a terrible record of ending up with coughs and wheezes and finding the actual race rather unpleasant). For me the object is to test my discipline in sticking to a programme and finding out if I can break my two hour psychological block (I seem to fall to pieces after that time).

Already there has been a result as I have rediscovered the pleasure of the short session - I had quite forgotten that a 20 minute run is just enough to make you feel you have put in some work whilst leaving you feeling fresh for the rest of the day. Over the years I have done too much steady plodding, thinking I had to run for at least 40 minutes every time. I had forgotten one of the golden rules of training is to do as little as is possible to achieve your objective and that short sessions can be good.

So I feel I have made a good start to my one running resolution of 2010, which is to look afresh at what I do, examine that which is merely habitual and try to recover the attitude I had when I first started, when everything was new.