Tom's Training Begins

You have probably heard me mentioned in Nick's posts as one of the guys who come and support him and Harry on their various runs. I have always wanted to run but various excuses and Injuries have stopped me from somewhere towards the end of 2009 to now, (torn groin, slipped disks, ruptured Cruciate Ligament) been in the wars a bit. As a result of this I have gained a lot of weight I was 10 stone something when I suffered my first injury to at my heaviest 16 Stone 1pound.

Now I am injury free and able to run again I wanted to run to lose weight and build up my distance so I could compete in the Brighton 10K in November. So on 21/04/2013, I managed 3.97Km in 30:40 which I was fairly happy with considering I hadn't done much in the way of exercise for a while. I went on a few runs (7 or 8) with no real plan just running at a pace I was comfortable with for as long as I felt like, clearly not the best way to go about training what I needed was a target and by coincidence one popped up.

The London Triathlon (http://www.thelondontriathlon.co.uk/) has a corporate team event, where each person does one event, there are two categories of event Olympic (1500m Swim, 40K Cycle, 10K Run) and Sprint (750m Swim, 20K Cycle, 5K Run). My Boss entered this event a few years ago with some people from the office so he asked around to try and get a team together, within an hour our company managed to get 7 teams together (not bad for a 45 person company). I am doing the Run segment of the Sprint event for "Slam the Lamb in" (Don't ask), So once again I started training with a new purpose to run this 5K in 30 minutes, I did 4 or 5 5K runs but I had no real plan and my times varied wildly from 34:14 - 43:55. What I needed was a training plan that I could follow to help me, fortunately Nick was on hand to create one for me.

(All distances are in kilometres and paces are in miles).

	RunNumber
Week	1	2	3	1b	2b
1	5.5Ea	5.5Ea	5.5Ea	4EF or 5Ea	4EF or 5Ea
2	6Ea	6Ea	5EF	5.5Ea or 4.5Ef	5.5Ea or 4.5EF
3	6.5Ea	6.5Ea	5.5EF	6Ea or 5EF	6Ea or 5EF
4	5.5Ea	5.5Ea	5EF	5Ea	5Ea
5	Test	6.5Ea	4Int	6.5Ea	6Ea/5EF
6	5HF	5HF	5Int	6Ea	6Ea
7	5Int	5HF	6Ea	6Ea	N/A

Key

Symbol	Meaning
Ea	Easy running, should be easy to talk, initially 12:30 minute/mile
EF	Easy Fartlek, initially vary between ~11:30 and 12:30 minute/mile in defined 1/2 mile blocks, mixed as feels best
Int	1km Intervals, number is repeats. 1 minute light jogging between each repeat, first at 85% max effort increasing to 100% over the set
HF	Hard fartlek, 2/3rds Hard pace, 1/3rd race pace. If feeling hard before halfway mix in a slower half mile.
Test	5k as fast as possible.

3 Runs per Week: Do 1-3 separated.
4 Runs per Week: Add 1b after 1 or 2.
5 Runs per Week: Add 2b after 1or 2, if doing 3 days in a row do 1 or 2 with 1b and 2b either side.

So I now have a plan to follow and the Drive to follow it so hopefully this will be the first of many posts from me as I reach my goals.

Till next time.

Tom