Hansons Week 6
Happy Independence Day! This American Runner has been busy the past week.
Week 6 brought the first week of both speed work and tempo runs. My schedule this week was as follows:
Monday: 4 miles easy
Tuesday: 12 X 400m with 400 recovery speed
Thursday: 5 mile tempo
Friday: 4 miles easy
Saturday: 8 miles easy (on the trail)
Sunday: 8 miles easy
Hansons really slaps you in the face during week 5. After a few weeks of easy runs, suddenly you are thrown speed, tempo, and back to back 8 mile runs. Here is a recap of the week.
Speed work:
The goal of speed work is to get faster of course! Speed work is something I neglected for years and unsurprisingly never really got much faster. Speed workouts for Hansons are typically done about a minute/minute and a half faster than your goal marathon pace. The last time I did this particular speed workout was on February 4th and 30 degrees outside (thanks Garmin!). It was the first time I had done any speed work and I recall that the 12 repeats felt exhausting and never ending. Flash forward to almost 5 months later, this same workout felt challenging but surprisingly refreshing. Granted my pace is slightly slower than that I was previously training at for a half marathon, but it was very clear how much my speed has improved. The weeks of speed and strength I incorporated as part of my training for the half had not regressed over the past month of slowing things down, and I really enjoyed the change of pace. Ask me how I feel about the speed days in a few weeks....!
Fatigue Level:
I started off the week feeling great, but by Saturday I was beat. I struggled a bit with the back to back 8 mile runs. Despite the weather being relatively cool for Chicago standards (mid 70's), I felt hot and my legs were heavy. Given all the different workouts that were thrown in this week, it is not surprising that I felt fatigued and needed extra sleep and recovery. I chose to avoid strength training and focused on short daily yoga sessions to reset my body and prepare for the next run.
Nutrition:
Nutritionally I need to up my carbs as that probably contributed to some of the fatigue. I ranged from 50% to 57% calories from carbs during the week and this is definitely not enough. I generally aim for at least 65% to 70% and I need to focus on increasing this over the coming weeks in order to support my activity level. I will have to post specifically on nutrition another time, but I already know this is one area that was lacking this week.
The next week will be a bit of a strange week in that I have a race on Saturday and will have to adjust my schedule accordingly to support the extra miles.
Week 6 brought the first week of both speed work and tempo runs. My schedule this week was as follows:
Monday: 4 miles easy
Tuesday: 12 X 400m with 400 recovery speed
Thursday: 5 mile tempo
Friday: 4 miles easy
Saturday: 8 miles easy (on the trail)
Sunday: 8 miles easy
Hansons really slaps you in the face during week 5. After a few weeks of easy runs, suddenly you are thrown speed, tempo, and back to back 8 mile runs. Here is a recap of the week.
Speed work:
The goal of speed work is to get faster of course! Speed work is something I neglected for years and unsurprisingly never really got much faster. Speed workouts for Hansons are typically done about a minute/minute and a half faster than your goal marathon pace. The last time I did this particular speed workout was on February 4th and 30 degrees outside (thanks Garmin!). It was the first time I had done any speed work and I recall that the 12 repeats felt exhausting and never ending. Flash forward to almost 5 months later, this same workout felt challenging but surprisingly refreshing. Granted my pace is slightly slower than that I was previously training at for a half marathon, but it was very clear how much my speed has improved. The weeks of speed and strength I incorporated as part of my training for the half had not regressed over the past month of slowing things down, and I really enjoyed the change of pace. Ask me how I feel about the speed days in a few weeks....!
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| Local parks make great places to do speed work, and recover! |
I started off the week feeling great, but by Saturday I was beat. I struggled a bit with the back to back 8 mile runs. Despite the weather being relatively cool for Chicago standards (mid 70's), I felt hot and my legs were heavy. Given all the different workouts that were thrown in this week, it is not surprising that I felt fatigued and needed extra sleep and recovery. I chose to avoid strength training and focused on short daily yoga sessions to reset my body and prepare for the next run.
Nutrition:
Nutritionally I need to up my carbs as that probably contributed to some of the fatigue. I ranged from 50% to 57% calories from carbs during the week and this is definitely not enough. I generally aim for at least 65% to 70% and I need to focus on increasing this over the coming weeks in order to support my activity level. I will have to post specifically on nutrition another time, but I already know this is one area that was lacking this week.
The next week will be a bit of a strange week in that I have a race on Saturday and will have to adjust my schedule accordingly to support the extra miles.
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