7:30 hour training week x2

This is the second week of 7:30 hours of training. Weights have gone by the way-side because of time constraints. Legs were tired so it seemed justifiable too. But, of course, they were on the original schedule and I could have done core/upper body. I am not letting this detract me though from the massive achievement of 7:30 hours of running. 

I kept it easy except for my hill volume session and 8×1 minutes all out. On some of the other sessions, I struggled to keep HR around 135 but the temperatures have dropped massively and I am wondering if my body is just working harder (its about 0-4 degrees C). In my recovery week I am doubling down on a HR of below 135 and on my last two easy runs, I did too. Keep it low. Don’t go into Z3. Z3 is junk (well, not always, but mostly).

My effort hill session was 450m of ascend. These start in Z3 and go into Z4, even the top off. So they are proper work but I seem to be absorbing them as I feel okay on my Z2 runs the next days. Two days later (i.e. having done the session on Friday and by Monday) I feel bouncy and fresh. For the session, I am going up and down the local hill. 

I am keeping calories down and the weight is coming off. This is such a relief because on my previous high fat/low carb approach this was not happening. The switch keeps shifted though and on carbs, with a bit of protein and low fat, its working. 

I was inspired by this approach by a reference made by Jack Kuenzle, current holder of the Bob Graham Round record beating Kilian’s time, in a pod cast. Of course, we all know this should work, right? Restricting calories and exercising more. But the added easy volume is helping (with an hour of running chewing through circa 500 calories for me). Anyway, Jack was heavier until he started focusing on running when he started restricting calories to drop weight. He made it sound easy. Be patient and it will come off. Up to a point this is healthy but going too light made him injury prone until he found his ‘right’ weight. Still quite a bit more to him than Kilian but it did not see to bother him too much – he was around 3% slower on the uphills and made up for the lost time on the downhills, where he was around 7% faster than Kilian. He mused that this was due to his muscles being able to absorb the shock more than someone who had relatively less muscle mass. Anyway, if he can do it (lose the excess weight) through this approach, it seemed worth a try (again). 

This time I am hoping to beat the jo-jo by making weigh-ins at least a weekly feature. We’ve upgraded to the Garmin WiFi scales and they sink with the App. I trust them (my previous Withings scales were around 10 years old by now and weight on them seemed to fluctuate a bit too wildly). See if I can make it a habit for life. I have failed many times before and varied between 58 and 69 kg most of my life. Post pregnancy, its been higher although breastfeeding did initially help to get it down. I wasn’t so bothered either for a while because my body had jut achieved something amazing!