With the wind in Auckland making cycling extremely undesirable this week I have ended up doing some solid runs in my build up to World Cup Round 1 in Tasmania passing through South Island Champs in 2 weeks and The Goat in December. I wanted to do more cycling to stay on the safe side with my right Achilles only recently coming right.
I started this week with a complete day off running but I did go for a walk in the afternoon which I think was beneficial as a recovery session after the brutal Auckland Long Distance Champs. This has been my first day off for 2 months if you count it as such. On Tuesday I did a hesitant 12km with some hills and I definitely felt recovered from the weekend. Wednesday was another success with a morning recovery jog and strength and conditioning in the evening.
On Thursday I intended to go for 2 hours on the bike but the wind was horrendous so I swapped to running at the last minute. I don’t often do more than recovery runs on the road but at a comfortable pace I knocked off over 30km. I was able to complete most of it on the grass and even had a few kms on sand as the tide was out. This was good to reduce the impact on my joints and keep these run slightly more specific to orienteering. My calves were obviously not conditioned enough for this session and after 25km they were feeling very weak, although they weren’t sore the next day. You can see this run here on Garmin Connect. Friday was another good recover day with easy cycling, core, rolling/massaging and stretching. I was feeling fine after Thursdays long run which was a relief.
Saturday marked the restart of our stride mechanics sessions with a comprehensive 35 of drills aimed and improving running technique followed by 10 intensive hill sprints. Mixed in with running, this ended close to 90 minutes. Some of us also hit up Woodhill Forest for a focused middle distance orienteering training at high intensity in the afternoon. Including the run in and out of the forest this was quality 83 minute in terrain. Check out my DOMA for all my recent training and racing.
If there is no orienteering on Sunday then the Waitaks are the obvious choice for a long run, and today we did another classic from Cascades. I was feeling a bit low on juice near the end and could have done with a snack or a gel to pick me up. You can see from my stats here that I wasn’t exactly pumping the watts down towards the end with my heart rate very low.
After all these different long sessions this week the only reason I am so sore is because of the 10 damn hill sprints! The muscles all around my shoulder blades and my hip flexors are very sore. My hamstrings are also a bit sore from some of the drills and I’m really looking forward to getting on top of some of these neglected muscles again.