Well today was too hot. It was high 20's (80's) and the humidity was through the roof. This morning my legs were absolutely knackered so I decided to push my run into the evening. I ran at 8:00 PM and it was still unbearably hot and humid. Within the first quarter lap of my 5 km loop I knew that one lap was all my legs had in them tonight. So I decided to push the cadence a bit and shoot for a pace below 8 mins a mile. It wasn't bad at all and I was able to finish the lap and I think I should be fresh enough to get 10 km in the morning. I still have this cough lingering on and on but it has improved a bit. I did the full loop in 22:31 which isn't bad for this early in the first ramp of my high mileage increase, and considering I ran nearly 30 Km over the weekend. I am entered to run a 5000 meter open invitational track meet in just over two weeks. This may not be the best idea considering that will be right at the tail end of my first 3-4 week ramp. I am really just running it for fun and fully excpect to finish last by minutes considering I am a beginning endurace trail runner, not a middle distance track athlete. It will be fun and I am hoping to race every possible race I can before my big ultra.
I just finished reading a book by Ernst van Aaken Called "Van Aaken Method". I am a huge proponent of long slow distance and started working towards the "Lydiard Method" way of training earlier this Spring. Van Aaken was experimenting with long slow distance before Lydiard, as early as the 40's. Though both methods are quite similar there are some slight differences. I experimented with both over the last bit and have merged the methods into a plan that works well for me, with my plan resembling Lydiard's method the closest. These endurance centered methods are the extreme opposite of the tempo or interval training methods that experienced popularity in the middle of the last Century, the premise of which is to run many anaerobic intervals (using more oxygen than you can breath causing lactic acid to form) without full recovery between intervals. What is Long Slow Distance? In a nutshell the theory involves running every day and running as much mileage...
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