After many hectic weeks life has finally settled a little. It still feels like I am doing a lot of stuff but it’s more manageable. I am enjoying getting into a routine and hooking into the hard training sessions. This update is hopefully shorter than the others. This post is an account of my past 2 weeks of training and life, containing less life events and far more running related training content.

Training Plan

I wrapped up my VO2max training block in week 25. Now I am into a long and arduous tempo run block. I took a recovery week (wk26) to give my body a break and allow the hard training to absorb. Then it was full steam ahead into the ‘tempo runs’. Tempo runs are probably the most misunderstood workout in the world, to clarify this for myself I have defined what a ‘tempo run’ is for my training purpose which you can read later on in the post.

I’ve never done a fully dedicated tempo block and was quite intimidated by the prospect. But when I mentioned it to Ziggy he said he was keen. Citing that it will be just like how we used to run when we first started out. Just going out and running hell for leather on the trails. When he put it like that it changed my perspective and I started looking forward to the opportunity to hit the trails hard and fast.

I copied my tempo run block directly from Training Essentials for Ultrarunning by Jason Koop. I am doing the back to back arrangement which allows for more sessions to be squeezed into each week. If necessary I will cut the block short. The added intensity brings with it a higher risk of injury and burnout.

Wk 26 – Recovery Week

Mon, Tues – Recovery Runs

Recovery week began without much incident. Just two easy runs around the streets on Monday and Tuesday. My home loops are so well known that I can run them on auto-pilot. Ideally I would get on trails for every run but starting from home reduces the time taken to squeeze a run in. And I can find a few nice sections of trail like the one along the waterfront at Cornelian Bay. The tide was extremely high on Monday, the highest I have ever seen it.

On Tuesday I was out for another easy run around the streets plus a few strides then popped into the gym for a strength session. I have been trying to follow the strength routine from a study on the effects of strength training on running economy (link), but slacked off and hadn’t done it for a couple of weeks. I resumed where I left off but things felt hard and I paid the price the following days with significant muscle soreness. Consistent strength sessions are a struggle for me to fit in. When they are sporadic the muscle soreness afterwards can be extreme and mess with my running workouts.

Weds – Funeral Rest Day

Lauren and I drove all the way from Hobart to Penguin early on Wednesday morning to attend my Grandfather’s funeral. It was a long day of driving plus the emotional rollercoaster of farewelling a family member. But it was nice to catch up with so many family members. I guess that is the silver lining of funerals.

Cuddles with my niece Olive were a highlight that helped bring some joy to us during a sad time. I granted myself a rare full rest day, there was no spare time to run and it was a recovery week.

Thurs, Fri, Sat – Easy Running

We journeyed back to Hobart on Thursday morning. I managed to get some work done from the laptop at home then get out for another 60 minute easy run around the streets. I noticed afterwards how much my aerobic base has grown over the years. It happens so gradually that it’s hard to notice. My average heart rate was 125bpm paired with an average pace of 5:05. It’s nice to notice these things and realise progress is still happening despite sometimes feeling like things have plateaued.

I returned to the trails on Friday with a fresh pair of shoes. They were NNormal Tomirs that I got for the bargain price of $99 (link to shoes). I can’t resist cheap shoes and I had heard good things. Their maiden voyage was on the Nierinna creek track which was quite wet and slippery. The fresh rubber was sliding all over the place and the soles and foam felt so firm, it was like running with solid rubber blocks strapped to my feet. I thought I had made a grave error with this shoe choice.

My planned 75 minute run with strides turned into a 90 minutes after I misjudged the turnaround point. The shoes started to feel a bit better on the run back but I was still not sold on them.

I went for a morning run on Saturday, something I only ever get to do on the weekends. Starting work at 7am means weekday early runs are extremely rare. It was another cruisy trot around the streets before a day of intense household chores. I decided to ban myself from scrolling on my phone all day and made myself a list of tasks to get through. My only source of dopamine was ticking off items from my to do list.

In the one day I was able to clean the bathrooms, do two loads of washing, vacuum and mop the floors, replace the batteries in the bathroom scales, change the sheets on my bed, plan meals for the week and do an online grocery order and research then buy ingredients to make homemade energy gels (blog post on this incoming). I was astounded at how much I could get done when the distractions of the internet were taken away. I finished the day by picking up my groceries, cooking dinner and having a household sauna session.

It is prime sauna season in Tassie at the moment. Our cold plunge sits at 7 degrees before we even put ice in it. Having a sauna in the backyard makes winter bearable and almost something to look forward to.

Sun – Long Run

For most of the recovery week I lacked motivation. I was hoping that by the end of the week I would be feeling keen again but so far it hadn’t happened. Ziggy and I joined forces for a Sunday long run on the mountain. He plotted a route with 1100m elevation in around 16km. I was happy to tag along and get my weekly elevation numbers up. It was a great run and it was just the antidote I needed to get me fired up again and keen to train hard. A long trail run has medicinal properties beyond the fitness gains.

We finished down the Old Hobartians track from top to bottom. Anyone familiar with the track knows it is both a gnarly ascent and descent. There’s roughly 800m of elevation gain / loss in a little over 3km. I typically head up it to get instant vert but rarely run down it. Our run down it got me in the zone. Consistent technical downhills are the ultimate catalyst for a running flow state. Ziggy and I floated down to the bottom and finished the run with fulfilment and fatigued quads.

📝Week 26 Training Summary

• Weekly Focus: Recovery
• Training: 7h 40m
  • Running: 79.56km +2229m
    • Workouts: None except 6x15s strides
    • Cycling: none
    • Strength: 1x durability workout at Zap
• Injuries and rehab: All good
• Compliance with plan: 102% based on time
• Score: 9/10
• Summary: Good recovery week
  • Took it easy all week, even a full rest day on Wednesday
  • Gym sesh left me with sore legs for a few days which made running feel unnecessarily hard, will need to be more careful with gym sessions to prevent muscle soreness impacting my running
  • Finished the week with a mountain long run with Ziggy, felt good and by the end I was feeling excited and keen to hook into the upcoming TempoRun training block

Wk 27 – Tempo Run Block Begins

The confusing part about doing a tempo run is working out what they actually are. If you asked 10 people you would probably get 10 different answers. The problem lies in the fact that there is no universal definition of the Tempo run, because the definition essentially means running at ‘a Tempo’ and that tempo needs to be defined. I could do a whole blog post on this topic, and I may do it one day. A tempo run workout always needs to come with an explanation of the goal intensity.

It helps to understand the purpose of the tempo run and keep this in the front of your mind while running. When I say purpose I mean what physiological adaptions are we trying to achieve.

These are some of the main adaptions that I am targeting with my tempo run workouts:

• Improve ability to process and utilise lactate
• Increase the size and density of mitochondria in muscles
• Help make me a faster runner especially on trails

The other confounding factor is that Tempo and Threshold runs are so similar that they could almost be considered the same thing. To clarify things I came up with a guide on desired intensity based on RPE and heart rate. After much research and deliberation I have settled on some guidelines for my goal intensity during tempo reps.

My goal intensity and focus is based on the following in order of priority:

• RPE of 8-9 / 10
• At or slightly below my lactate threshold heart rate, my LTHR = 174bpm
• An effort that think I could maintain for about 1 hour (essentially Functional Threshold Pace)
• Run all of these on trails to improve fast trail running skills / economy

Monday – Recovery Run

On Monday I stuck to the streets of Lutana for an easy recovery run. The only thing of note is that I stopped in at Kmart to check out their active wear. All of my running stuff is falling apart and I don’t want to spend a fortune buying good quality brand name stuff. I need to wash my clothes constantly because I sweat so profusely so I need heaps clothes to churn through. So I went to Kmart and tried on some shorts and ended up getting 2x pairs of shorts and 2x pairs of undies all for the reasonable price of $38

Tuesday – 3x10m Tempo

With much trepidation I embarked on my first tempo run on Tuesday afternoon. I decided on the Nierinna Creek Track and planned to do all of the tempo reps running uphill. Uphill make it easier to reach the desired intensity and hold it for the duration.

After each of the 10 minute tempo intervals I ran the shorter 5 minute recoveries downhill. Each tempo effort ended up on a different section of track and I was getting further and further from the car. This was ok because I was targeting 1:30 total time for the run so I needed a decent cooldown distance at the end.

The initial rep was incredibly hard, it was a shock to the system but the subsequent reps became more bearable once my body realised what was happening . It takes a bit to warm up physically and psychologically for hard efforts. The Nnormal Tomirs that I previously hated were now becoming a favourite shoe. My movement felt fluid and smooth and I was able to trust my footing. The shoes seemed to have softened and provided me we a good balance of stability, cushion and ground feel.

I finished the session feeling tired but fired up from the joys of fast trail running and the endorphins from the hard exertion. No longer was I dreading the tempo block, instead looking forward to the opportunity to have many similar runs in the coming days and weeks. Once it uploaded to Strava I saw I had reclaimed a crown on the Nierinna creek track climb. The segment crowns on this track were the first I ever set targets on all those years ago when I started running. It took me years to obtain them but some were gradually nabbed. It was nice to reclaim one of my old segments.

Wednesday – 3x8m Tempo

Ziggy had told about a new trail in Knocklofty that was a consistent climb with switchbacks that he thought would be good for uphill and tempo intervals. I looked at it on the map and liked that there was a short cut back to the bottom. This meant I could do my tempo interval going up then during the shorter recovery have time to get to the bottom again via the shortcut.

My plan worked out extremely well. The hill was slightly too small, I reached the top in around 7 minutes but I could still keep running and try to stay at tempo intensity. A similar situation arose where the first rep felt clunky but the second and third felt powerful. For the second day in a row I uploaded the activity to strava to see another crown claimed. This tempo block is a great excuse to go hard and fast, something I would rarely do other than in a race. Again I felt amazing after this session but I slept quite badly the night after. I think the hard stuff stresses my body and gets my cortisol levels up. I note this and consider reducing intensity if it persists because it could be an indication of overtraining.

Thurs, Fri – Recovery Days

After back to back tempos there was two days of easy running before getting back into it. Thursday arvo I went for and easy 60 minutes. Then Lauren came over and we discussed our weekend plans, we were heading to Freycinet for a friends 30th birthday camping trip. Annoyingly I had another bad night sleep which was getting me slightly worried. All other metrics were looking fine including my morning HRV measurements. Sometimes I sleep badly regardless so it may be unrelated.

Friday was a repeat of the same, another 60 minutes easy on the road. I was meant to be packing for the weekend camping trip but procrastinated with a long sauna session. This worked out ok though, I just did a rapid packing session and got it over and done with.

Saturday – Parkrun and East Coast

I had myself scheduled in for another 3x10m Tempo run on Saturday. But I’d also agreed to come along to Parkrun with Justin and Ziggy. Justin had been putting off doing a 5k time trial for months so we made him choose a date and we pledged to come along to force him to do it.

I was tossing up still doing the tempo workout and incorporating it into parkrun, then I considered pacing Ziggy to a 19 minute 5k. In the end I decided to help pace Justin to 17 minutes. This way it would work as a bit of a benchmark of my fitness without being an all out 5k time trial which frightens me.

It was a super brisk morning and a little breezy which can be problematic at the Montrose parkrun. I set off out front with Justin and another bloke James who I’d just met both trailing behind. After the first loop I looked back to see that James was right on my tail but I was already losing Justin. I decided to let James head past and slowed a little in the hope of picking Justin up again but the windy back straight had other ideas.

There was a strong headwind around 2-3km into the 5k. This is soul crushing when trying to hold a goal pace. I was still holding onto the goal but Justin fell off the back of the 17 minute train. After the turn around we were granted with a nice tail wind but it doesn’t really make up for all of the extra effort spent fighting it. When I hit 4km I was surprised by how good I felt, this is typically the part of a 5km where I want to stop and curl up into a ball.

James was a few 100 metres ahead and decided to have a crack at running him down. I worked my way up towards him and got myself up to maximal effort for a solid kick to the finish. I couldn’t quite get him in the end but it made for a super fast final kilometre split and a 16:50 finish. Justin came through in around 17:30 and Ziggy just a little over 19. Even though it wasn’t a true time trial it was still a confidence builder. I ran the same time about a year earlier and nearly killed myself doing it. This run was spent mostly at 7-8/10 intensity till the final km. I was able to essentially count it as a tempo workout.

Related post: Chasing ridiculous goals: Can I run a 15 minute 5k

Shortly after parkrun Lauren picked me up and we drove to Whitewater Wall to setup for the night. It was a beautiful winters day. Come night time there was a party setup down in Bluestone bay with a DJ and fairy lights. Despite being extremely cold it was such a fun time. It’s so nice to get out of town for a change of scenery and to hang out with rock climber and high liner folks who I feel are kindred spirits to trail runners.

Sunday – 3x8m Tempo in Freycinet

We had a relatively late night then slept in Sunday morning till nearly 10am. We were waiting to hear others get up and it seemed everyone else was sleeping in too. After an extended breakfast and pack up Lauren and I headed to Wineglass bay for a run and a walk.

I wanted to get my tempo run done and Lauren wanted to hike, so we came up with a plan where I would run the Hazards loop in one direction and she walk it in the other. Then we would run into each other at some stage. I would run past her a bit then turn around and catch her again and walk back out with her.

I went straight up the climb to Wineglass bay lookout. After a late night and a hard parkrun I was feeling pretty rusty. I began my tempo effort on the isthmus track and felt horrendous, this seems to be a common theme. By the second and third I felt amazing. I passed Lauren and went all the way back to the carpark before turning around and catching her again on Hazards beach.

Then we walked back to Wineglass bay and back over the climb. I did the loop twice in both directions. It was such a lovely day. I think Tassie has some of it’s best days in the middle of winter. So still, calm and beautiful. It was a late finish and a long drive back to Hobart but I was content with a great training week and a fun weekend away.

📝 Week 27 Training Summary

• Weekly Focus: Tempo Run
• Training: 8h 50m
  • Running: 99.5km 2330m
    • Workouts: 3x10m Tempo, 3x8m Tempo, Parkrun (Counting as 17m Tempo), 3x8m Tempo
    • Cycling: None
    • Strength: 45m various strength
• Injuries and rehab: No issues
• Compliance with plan: 100% of time, hit all workouts except Saturday became parkrun
• Score: 10/10
• Summary: Very good training week.
  • Really enjoying doing tempo efforts on trails. It’s so fun to get an excuse to run fast.
  • Substituted my 3x10m tempo on Saturday with a parkrun effort. Incidentally mostly ended up at tempo intensity except for the final km where I sent it. Was a great confidence builder being able to run a 16:50 5k without having to kill myself. Was probably at 7-8/10 RPE for most of the run.
  • Total time at Tempo intensity = 95 minutes
  • Good start to the tempo training block

Wrapping Up

That’s all for this weeks post. It was a fairly routine couple of weeks for me. Just running, working, sauna, hanging out with Lauren, the usual. Training is progressing well! I am feeling fit and strong. Hopefully I can maintain the momentum and the body can handle it. In the past feeling fit and strong often preceded an injury scare or niggle. Fingers crossed all the years of consistency has built up some resilience and durability.

One final thing to note. The Gariwerd Trail Runners podcast I mentioned a while back is now out. If you are interested in hearing Ziggy, Justin and I talk about running then have a listen.

Thanks for reading!