8 weeks Back In Training (My Jantastic January)

2 days ago on Sunday 9th February marks exactly 8 weeks back in training since recovering from my injury. One thing is certain: Running for miles and miles is not a problem. Can happily run up to 10 miles anytime I want though I would only want to do that once in any week.

My fitness is slowly improving but not enough to get any speed up at this current time. Thats yet to come.

In the past few weeks, like week 3, I nearly didnt get out and run but still did so apart from just 1 run. My energy has been a little erratic as has been my sleeping pattern. Coincidence? Think not.

My attempt to do some speedwork last thursday by running 10k as fast as possible misfired. From now on will be doing 5k's as fast as possible, the target being at 8 mins a mile. Not sure that target is attainable just yet but if I dont go for it I will never get it. Its the attempts to do it that will also help bring my running times down. Thats how things went last year.

Last week I began running 4 days a week. My progress on Jantastic plus my february targets can be seen from the screenshots above.

Progress Report: 4 Weeks Back In Training

Sunday 12th January marks being back in training only 4 weeks. In those 4 weeks I have also ran in 2 races, very steadily. Sometimes near the end of a run I feel I can muster some short spurts or sprints but not far and not for very long. Need to be running steadily anyway whilst my fitness is rebuilt.

My first week of Jantastic doing 3 runs a week went well with the 2nd week just beginning.

Although time is irrelevant to me at the moment it is a good way of measuring my fitness and whether or not it is improving. I ran in the New Years Day 10k and the January 5k Prom Race with the following times and paces:

Race	Time	Pace Per Mile
New Years Day 10K	61.38	9.55
January Prom Race 5k	29.12	9.23

By my calculations that is an improvement of 32 seconds per mile, which isnt a great deal but can only be regarded as a sign of improving fitness. There was only 1 training run of 5 miles done between both these races. For January and early february the plan is to carry on doing steady runs but no speedwork just yet. Wont attack any ‘proper’ cross country training till February when I feel much fitter to tackle the terrain.

Here are reports in my local paper, the Grimsby Telegraph, about the following races: New Years Day 10k, January Prom Race 5k