A Decent Run

Another update today, mainly because today was one of my better runs since my youth, and now, this afternoon, I am too knackered to do much else than sit down.  So doing a little update makes sense...  I mentioned before that I am following a power-based training plan.  I have never followed a training plan before and certainly not power-based!  The reason for this is mainly because I knew I had to primarily run on a gym treadmill, rather than outdoors, which is what I would have done prior to the accident.  I also like to track my runs/swims/cycles on my Garmin watch, which of course, does an outstanding job of that!  Garmin watches and the Garmin Connect infrastructure are brilliant!  However, on a treadmill it is difficult for a watch to accurately measure your pace and distance.  It does a decent job but I don't really trust it.  My sister, Veebs, in France, had made it clear to me that I was still in considerable post-accident danger for at least five years after the accident, so at least another couple of years more.  So treadmill the clear focus for a while!  If I was mainly going to be running on a treadmill for two or more years, I wanted a way of measuring progress accurately.  So I did a little Google and came up with a product called Stryd, which is a small foot-pod that apparently works on treadmills.  It wasn't so cheap and I had never heard of it, so I didn't dive in and order one.  But it was on my mind.  This was around June 2021, and at that time I had a regular physio appointment that had been kindly organised by my work, Credit Suisse, to help me recover physically from the accident.  The lucky thing was that the local physio, the completely superb Brett Fletcher in Lancaster, was a member of the same triathlon club as me (the excellent COLTs, City of Lancaster Triathlon).  He's very good indeed at triathlons and he also does training runs a lot on a home treadmill (for him due to having young kids).  He also wanted to track his runs on a treadmill and he had the Stryd foot-pod!  And he highly recommended it!  So me deciding to buy one was suddenly a no-brainer!  And I firmly believe it has transformed my training!

Anyway, enough preamble, all I really wanted to say was what my run was this morning....  As I said, it is a power-based plan  (as Stryd accurately, or at least consistently, measures power), and today was twenty minutes easy running with four little sprints at high power.   And twenty-one minutes easy running at the end.  That's all fine.  But in between was the tricky bit,  Three sections of ten minutes at a medium-high power with three minutes recovery of very slow, or even stopping.  So I guess the plan was easy running start and end with fartlek and intervals in the middle.  Tough!!  A total of 80m running, and I did it!  Was very pleased!  That power meant that I did 16km in the 80m, so an average speed of 5:00m/km which for me these days is quite quick!  Was very happy to do it, and I feel I deserve to focus on sitting down this afternoon :-)