I've entered the Cotswold Way Challenge which is a 100 mile multi-stage ultra. The event organisers claim that the route is more like 102-107 miles and the distance is covered in 4 stages, camping overnight. I have to plead illness and borderline insanity as the reason (excuse?) why I entered this event: I was feeling very sorry for myself after some minor surgery that turned into more of a lengthy "I can't run" period of recovery than I was anticipating.
OK so even though I've completed 3 marathons (all comfortably over 5 hours) and I do a fair amount of walking there is no way I'm going to be able to run the whole way. Enter the Run Walk Run strategy by Jeff Galloway. It sounds soooo much better than "Walk Run Walk" or "Run Walk Crawl." I've been trying Jeff's approach of building in structured walk breaks in my runs since Christmas now and I'm finding that while my overall pace is slower than usual (and it wasn't exactly "fast" to begin with), my body recovers from training much more quickly. This means I can train several days in a row and sometimes more than once a day. Running on tired legs is going to be important, as is being able to get up and do it all again the next day.
Currently I'm doing 90mins Monday, 60min Tuesday, 2x60min Wednesday, rest day on Thursday then Friday and Saturday I'm trying to build up my back-to-back long runs. Sunday is another rest day. This pattern seems to fit reasonably well around my work commitments though it does mean quite a lot of very early starts.
OK so even though I've completed 3 marathons (all comfortably over 5 hours) and I do a fair amount of walking there is no way I'm going to be able to run the whole way. Enter the Run Walk Run strategy by Jeff Galloway. It sounds soooo much better than "Walk Run Walk" or "Run Walk Crawl." I've been trying Jeff's approach of building in structured walk breaks in my runs since Christmas now and I'm finding that while my overall pace is slower than usual (and it wasn't exactly "fast" to begin with), my body recovers from training much more quickly. This means I can train several days in a row and sometimes more than once a day. Running on tired legs is going to be important, as is being able to get up and do it all again the next day.
Currently I'm doing 90mins Monday, 60min Tuesday, 2x60min Wednesday, rest day on Thursday then Friday and Saturday I'm trying to build up my back-to-back long runs. Sunday is another rest day. This pattern seems to fit reasonably well around my work commitments though it does mean quite a lot of very early starts.
