This week, yet again had lots of new aspects,. Starting off with my new training layout with some new sessions added. For a while now I have wanted to try the double training approach, although I am mostly completing them one after another I also have the option to seperate them to either end of the day, and only do so when it’s 2x runs in a day.
With the new layout my rest day has moved for the first time to Thursday so when Monday came around I was ready for my rest day but had to keep pushing through to Thursday completing 2x long runs within one block with no rest which I’m proud I completed. It really shows what dedication can let the body achieve. But I was sure ready for the rest when the day came, going into this week I set a goal to keep working hard of getting at least 8 hours of sleep as sometimes with early starts and late finishes 7 hours started to creep in and I definitely could start to feeling the rolling fatigue building up especially throughout the day.
So I can say I successfully improved, wasn’t perfect but majority of the week I was at the 8-9 hour mark. A major milestone I guess for my uni is that I had my first test on Saturday, thankfully this was only worth 8% but I was pretty prepared, this week showed me I’m grateful for keeping up with my notes and classes as I was able to almost continue normally with some extra revision whiteboard study sessions a few nights leading up to the test. With just a little bit extra to do on Sunday which I know sometimes will happen with added tests.
I now have 2 weeks and 2.5 until my next 2, which are both worth 20% so slightly more so I’m driven to try achieve the same with keeping up to date and not have to cram the information while continuing to get behind on other classes. I’m pretty happy with how the test went and am hoping for most of the 8% grade.
On Saturday morning I was supposed run my first parkrun but with my test being so close to the start time I decided to complete the run myself which was set to running 5km as fast as possible, now I’m not sure if it was the accumulation of my focus being on the test, the fatigue in my legs, the lack of competition around me, my mental barrier really was set and I wasn’t able to push through as fast as I was hoping but I didn’t let that ruin my morning before my test because at the end of the day I got to run and that’s my favourite thing to do, and not everyday is going to be a PB, especially now that I’ve set a high PB for myself that’s another barrier I have to cross that I’m not running purely for a PB.
It’s exciting to see my PBs finally reflecting my fitness but I’m so used to always having more in the tank each run that it’s hard not always to see my best. But I guess that’s all apart of the learning curve and journey I’m on.
I ended the day with a festival which was a nice outlet but also let me head to bed ontime ready to wake up and gain my 8 hours sleep before I face my 2.5 hour long bike + shake out run. Christchurch 10km is in 2 weeks so I guess we will see what I can achieve there, as well as it being smack bang in between my 2 tests, it’s a extra motivation to keep on top of my study
Onto the next week!
– Jessica Bray