With 9 weeks to go, we are still working on acclimatising our bodies and our minds to the idea of doing a regular training routine.
I changed the basic formula for this week just to mix it up a bit. I’ve put hills in on Tuesday this week and a 10km on Thursday, but the rest days remain the same.
If 10km sounds like a lot to you, just walk it with the occasional jog. I believe it is important to start doing longer distances as soon as possible. The time isn’t important, but doing the distance is. The earlier you start preparing your body for longer runs, the sooner you’ll start to improve your time.
It is important not to push yourself too hard. We are still only looking for no more than a 75% effort. At this stage you don’t want speed, but rather conditioning.
Most training programs are written based running a time rather than a distance. If I set myself a goal to run a 60min workout, it isn’t preparing me to do a 14km run, but rather a 60min run. Now if you are going to do your 14km in 60min that is fine, but most people aren’t.
Many people won’t finish until after 100 minutes, so, in my opinion, a training program that trains you for a maximum run of 90 minutes, isn’t actually training you for the run you will do.
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Update April 2013
My City2Surf Training Program is now an eBook
‘How to Break Your Fitness Slump and Comfortably Finish a Fun Run’
My full City2Surf training program is now available as an eBook from all leading online bookstores and contains a link to download the training schedule as an iCal file, so you can import it into your calendar.
Also, feel free to join my free Facebook training group the City2Surf 100 day Challenge.