END OF HIGHER MILEAGE EXPERIMENT?

WEEK 18.  This week had ended on 37.5 miles.Another big week for me. on the last day of the week I wrote in my diary, ” END OF HIGHER MILEAGE EXPERIMENT FOR THE MOMENT. HAS IT FAILED OR AM I ILL ?” I had begun this experiment after week 12 and week 13 totalled 38 miles. The reason for the higher mileage was an article in Athletics Weekly, January 12th, by Steve Pope about his run with Chris Finill across America from San Francisco to New York a distance of 3100 miles. they averaged 40 miles a day He wrote, “The first three weeks of the run were definitely the hardest. We both experienced numerous aces and pains which gradually faded away.”

I reasoned that if I increased my mileage to 40 miles per week perhaps any pains would ease away and I would reach a higher performance level. In fact I never actually reached 40 miles in a week and pains in my knees increased. Worst of all I began to feel tired all the time. I felt there was only one way out of this and that was to reduce my training load. You could argue that I had not given it long enough time but another factor was that the pace I was running was only half that I used to run at when I was at my best and the training was becoming time consuming. The final fact in my decision was that when I had run with Dave Martin who was the co-coordinator for my visit to the Round Norfolk Relay last September, and was my age, had told me he only ran 15 miles a week yet could run sub 24 mins for 5 K, something I was unable to do.

FEELING BETTER

WEEK 19.  The second run of this week was a 4 miler and I felt better than usual. I wondered whether that was psychological. My total for the week was 24 miles. That was satisfactory. It was the 11th of May and I was still running in gloves, tights, long sleeve top and jacket. What has gone wrong with the weather ?