HM Training – Week 7 of 9

What do two women in their fifties who are steadily grinding their way through the ten-mile training run on a Sunday morning talk about?

Needing to find a suitable spot for another wild wee (naturally); the orange dictator (invariably); Lord Lever’s philanthropic concerns (we were in that locality); whether we’ve got enough suncream on (it was unseasonably warm).

Both of us are running in the Liverpool Half in a couple of weeks’ time, and Ruth is then going on to do the Manchester Marathon. I had suggested that we try a run/walk ratio of four minutes running, followed by thirty seconds of walking for the ten miles that we were running together, just to help Ruth with her long runs when they really start getting longer. 

I had prepped by setting a repeating timer in my Garmin – it doesn’t have the word ‘walk’ in its options for the ‘Run’ workouts, so I used ‘Recover’ which kind of amounts to the same thing. It worked by giving you a five-second countdown at the end of each section, so you knew exactly when to run or walk. What it did do, at least for me, is make my legs a lot less tired by the end, than if I’d been just running. I haven’t tried Jeffing systematically for ages – I often pretend that I’m using it whenever I see a hill. 

We noticed how quickly thirty seconds goes by, especially on the later part of the run, but I’d done a few miles before and after we met, and by the time I got home, I’d racked up about fourteen miles without needing to collapse on the floor. And considering I’d not taken any water with me that really was saying something. Ruth had managed to run another three miles back to her house, so she feels a lot more confident for the Half. If I get around to doing marathons again, I’ll have to consider taking this Jeffing method seriously for my training, if for nothing else than the speedy recovery. 

That total amounts to my last long-long run before the Half, as I’ll probably do nine or ten miles later this week, which I consider to be a short-long run. It was the end of a semi-decent week, at least in terms of mileage, which was just over twenty-nine miles. I still only managed one weights session and zero swimming or yoga. There are just not enough hours in the week.

Mon	Does running around Chester Zoo with a loon of a toddler count as exercise?
Tue	The almost 7-mile handicap (it’s 6.75 miles), which was a tempo workout for me.
Wed	Nothing – (apart from life)
Thu	Just over 5 miles at an easy pace
Fri	Nothing – (see above)
Sat	An easy 5K because I got up too late to do Parkrun
Sun	My long run with Ruth (3 miles out/10 miles with/ 1 mile back)