Blog – Alex steps up his training

Like 32,000 other people, our Jog Division are training hard for the 2021 Therme Manchester Marathon on Sunday 10th October.

In his latest update, Alex tells us how his training is progressing…

 

A little update

I think last week is the first time I’ve been able to properly stick to my training plan since we started. Commitments so far over summer have made it difficult for me to stick to the plan, despite trying. Something tells me that I really need to get into a routine in order to improve my training schedule – but life seems to keep getting in the way!

Fortunately, it looks like August could be the perfect month for me to start building that routine – but we’ll have to wait and see how it all pans out.

Heavy legs

With what feels like a relatively significant increase in training load, my running watch keeps displaying ‘overreaching’. I’m not 100% sure how accurate this is as I haven’t been using it for all of my previous runs, however my legs are certainly feeling the increased intensity. It seems that they don’t want to function properly until about 1.5km into each run.

Perhaps I’ve been neglecting recovery fully – although I do always throw in a few stretches at the end of each run, my legs feel as if they’re needing a little more than that.

I tend to work in some yoga, but this doesn’t seem to be making the cut either. As a result, we’ve been getting friendly with the foam roller which does seem to give some sort of muscular relief.

It seems it could be the time to invest in some compression clothing – so I’ll be checking out the 2XU site after writing this post…

It’s been hot…

The heatwave that graced us last week also made training a little tougher – forcing me to head out earlier than I normally would. The perk of this was some cool air, quiet trails and a completely free day. The negative was having to get up crazily early and, (the majority of times)  forgetting to drink any water before leaving and getting back from my run light-headed. So, Alex – hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

A big month of training is on the horizon, roll on August.