50 Miles per Week: 05 Long Runs

Ross Pentland
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

Mileage: 76 km

Took a less intensive approach this week, running almost exclusively at an easy pace to counterbalance the intensity from the last couple of weeks. There was an emphasis on building on the volume in mileage to properly start the campaign to successfully run the Melbourne Marathon.

Absorption run Monday post work still managing that ankle tendinitis which cleared up more or less throughout the week. Overloading with heavy weights on the calf press is the culprit with my sore ankle, so reducing the load to around body-weight will a reset point to focus on strengthening my calves.

Long Run on Tuesday post work to counter the intensity of the Albert Park 10km on Sunday. Might have been a bit a little excessive with the pace and distance but overall got a good run along the Maribyrnong River.

Thursday’s easy run incorporated hills and the cold wind that left arm colder than the right, which I’m not sure what I attribute that to, but if nothing else it was good conditioning for the next AV race at Ballarat.

Lalor parkrun session: 5–5–5/Easy-Hard-Easy

This is a session I’ve been playing around with for some time in the months leading up to Gold Coast Half Marathon. It’s basically the format of warmup/threshold/cooldown, with the warmup and cooldown extended in length. Even though the majority of the running is as easy pace, it makes the threshold run difficult as the extra time on your feet from the adds. I am a huge parkrun enthusiast and naturally love to go out fast every time I line up for parkrun

My first time out at Lalor parkrun proved to be a challenging one with strong winds blowing from the north, making the latter half of the run up the long grinding uphill even more of a challenge going into the headwind. Additionally I was out by myself with no one to run with or which was a mental challenge that I’m not proud to say that the headwind got the better me on the day, turning what should’ve been a sub 20 minute effort into a 20:25.

Longer Long Runs: With Melbourne Marathon now less than 12 weeks away the first of many increasing long runs. My default long run distance of 24km has given me a good starting point to launch from as I train for specificity within this training campaign. Nutrition is a sticking point within the marathon and thankfully the first run with a gel mid-run didn’t cause any problems.

I’m looking forward to what the next few weeks brings as I take on the challenge of running bigger mileage in what I hope is my best training to date.

Ross Pentland
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