Could my training start to be paying off?

In a way, of course it is. It’s been roughly a year since I started to go from occasional jogs (well, running between maybe 1-2.5 hours a week) to a planned gradual volume increase from this ‘base’. If you can call it that. But increase gradually I did peaking at weeks of around 12hours earlier in the year. In hindsight, this was too much for my body to tolerate and I need to keep it at a lower volume (I am setting this at 8hours for now) for a while. I might add in a long bike right and my regular strength work.

So looking back, of course it’s paying off – I was able to complete a marathon in May. I have also been able to tolerate much more volume compared to a year ago and the long baby-break I had. But at the same time, due to my injury more recently training has felt a bit disjointed and I certainly haven’t made any progress. Of course, some down-time post marathon can’t be a bad thing generally and in fact is advised. And it’s sometimes difficult to see the wood for the trees because you do not have any sense of perspective.

But as we were in Chamonix I ended up doing a Interval session on a trail (going up towards Petite Balcon Sud from Les Moussoux) and both the downhill and uphill effort sections felt great (I did 7×2 mins on/off). Never in my live would I have run these as well before as I did on this occasion even when I had ‘prepared’ to participate in the CCC (which I attempted and DNFed in both 2015 and 2018, once at Arnouvaz and once at La Foully and the latter due to being pregnant and my body simply running out of steam….). 

Anyway, one session does not make for progress necessarily but its shows that sometimes breakthroughs come unexpectedly and that progress might not always be apparent. Trusting the process, being patient, and putting in the work of a well-structured training programme will over time create results. Not perhaps on a week to week or even month to month basis, but look back a year, and the results should be crystal clear to see.