Staying on track.

Hello and welcome to Tobias Talks.

It's been another good week fitness wise. I have run on the 11th, 13th, 15th and the 17th (Today). Each run has followed one of three routes and at different speeds. I have tried to follow my Garmin watch where possible. I have followed it's recommendations for rest times between workouts, normally somewhere between 24-48 hours, but after a particularly grueling run my rest recommendation had actually extended to 60 hours!

My Garmin has also started suggesting how far and hard I should run. Today for example was another "Base" run, I assume this is to find out roughly how fit I currently am before it recommends any specific workouts. Today's workout recommendation was to run for 25 minutes at 08:30/km pace. This is too slow to reasonably jog, although I assume it sets this pace to accomodate for walking breaks. So today I ran as slow as I could to get as close to the pace as possible. I finished the 00:25:11 run with an average pace of 07:22/km.

This was the first day where I felt really tired before I had started the run and perhaps would have benefitted from a bit more warming up before I started, but I did a few simple stretches and a few minutes of walking and then set off on my very slow base run. The Garmin still describes my fitness as "Progressing" so for now I'll keep following the plan. I have to remind myself that my first run was on the 6th of July, that's only about 2 weeks ago, I can't expect miracles. Today's run was the slowest run since my very first one, although it felt significantly easier and was over a kilometre longer. The watch hasn't led me astray yet so I will trust what it says.

My diet needs improving as I've put on 4-5lbs over the last two weeks. Quite a drastic change but one that I hope I can reverse with a bit of discipline. So for the foreseeable future i'm reducing my calories and getting lighter. Every lb I lose is a lb I don't need to carry across the finish line come April!

In the lead up to my Half-Marathon in April I have also signed up for a local 10k race in October. Hopefully that should give me enough time to be able to comfortably cover the distance even if I'm not setting any records, the goal is to run the 10k in less than 1 hour. We'll see if that's possible.

The goal for the rest of the week is to keep following the recommendations of my Garmin. In the near future I will probably start a Garmin training plan to get ready for the 10K and really make the most of this tool. I will continue to eat in a discipline way, I'm finding it easier than before as my weight has a very real relationship with my running ability. lighter is easier!

Thanks for reading.

Your friend, Tobias