This is part of a series of posts reflecting on my experiences in the run up to the Yorkshire Marathon in October. I’m currently on week four of a twelve week training programme. The idea is to write a post every week charting my progress and reflecting on my training.

Enjoy and progress.

I must admit, I didn’t know what to write about this week. Not that it matters. I don’t have to have an epiphany every week. Nor do I need to see a significant shift in my running. Sometimes, ticking over is fine.

An ‘Innocent Refresher’ after Sunday’s long run.

I was on my long run this morning and I gave some thought to this week’s running. It hasn’t been about injuries (thankfully) or making any milestones. I’ve just got out there and done the runs.

I haven’t exactly pushed myself hard, but instead focused on just enjoying the running and that has been great. I think most runners focus on improving and pressurise themselves too much, too often. This week wasn’t like that. I wanted to consolidate what I had learned so far and get my body used to the new level of training.

In short, I enjoyed the runs and I did progress.

Training programme

Week four has included the following:

• Monday: Rest day from running, but a steady hour in the gym building up my core.
• Tuesday: A steady 10k at an easy pace. It took me nearly an hour.
• Wednesday: Rest day from running, I was working away in Newcastle which meant an early start and late finish. I missed the gym too.
• Thursday: Usually this is a fartleks day – not today. Instead I did a progression run (you can see now where the title to this week’s post comes from). Basically this is a bit of a hybrid run. I did 35 minutes at a steady pace and then 20 minutes at a fast pace. Similar to fartleks, but the transition between slow and fast only happens once and the fast section is much longer. This was tough but I enjoyed it, because my body is gradually adapting to the different types of runs I’m putting it through – and my stamina is improving as a result.
• Friday: Rest day – but I felt a tad guilty about missing the gym this week so did a short session.
• Saturday: I wanted to do parkrun this week because I’m away on holiday for the next two Saturdays. I’m glad I went too. It’s way back in week one when I broke my parkrun PB and although I didn’t break it this week (I was five seconds off) I knocked out a good time on the back of a week where I hadn’t exactly pushed myself. This was very encouraging given the fact that it was incredibly hot and humid for a bank holiday weekend (almost unheard of!). If I could bang out a great time like this in bad conditions what could I achieve when the conditions were good?
• Sunday: According to my programme this was my long run day. I took it steady running partly on road, partly on trail, and covered nearly 23k in just over two hours. I had to set off early as it promised to be another sweltering 30 degrees. I’m really not a fan of getting up early to run, but I enjoyed it and felt like I had a bit more in the tank to go further if I needed to.

All in all, it’s been a good week for running and I do feel things are progressing nicely. Next week is going to be interesting however, as I’m likely to see quite a bit of disruption to my programme as I’m off to Los Angeles for ten days.

Will I be able to keep discipline in the city of angels?

Apologies to those of you who usually drop by for updates about learning technology – I tend to post about that kind of thing on Jisc’s Inspiring Learning blog. I intend to use this blog for more personal, non-related work posts in future.