6 Weeks to Comrades

Week 12 was a planned cut back week prior to travelling to Sainte Foy Tarantaise our base for a 3 week training camp with fellow Nedbank team mates Steve Way and Gerda Steyn. Our base in St Foy is at 1600m with 3 main training areas, the ski station of St Foy (1600m), Tignes Lac (2100m) and Bourg Sainte Maurice (800m).  St Foy offers many routes of either mountain roads or trails that will be used for short hill efforts, easy \ recovery day runs. Tignes Lac gives the option of flat altitude running around the lake at the main resort.  The third location is dropping down to Bourg Sainte Maurice where the the rolling cycle path provides an ideal location for long runs, plus the option of a trail 1k loop and 400m purpose laid running track around the rugby pitch.

Arriving Friday 03/05, the first few days will be to acclimatise to the altitude with some easy running.

Nutrition – Week 12 Summary

Following London I allowed myself a couple of binge days to recharge and refuel, Tuesday – Thursday I resumed my standard diet with a carb intake of approximately 100-200g carbs per day.

Friday with travelling I did not record my intake fully but stuck to low carb choices before resuming tracking on Saturday and Sunday.  For the camp I will stick to 100-200g carbs per day, for main days with increases for big training days and longer runs.

Fitness & Freshness

New section to the blog – So for my trip to France I wanted to look at performance changes and on discussion with Steve I have enabled the Strava the Analysis Summit Pack. Plus it was on special so only £18 for 12 months.

The main feature I will be using is the Fitness and Freshness analysis, for this I have reviewed and reset my HR setting on Strava as i’d never used this feature before.  Unfortunately they were incorrectly set with a max HR or 190 not 180.  This has now been updated on 3rd May so might effect the initial readings.  The Fitness and Freshness analysis considers your heart rate based Relative Effort Training Load to track your levels of fitness, fatigue and form over time.

Below table shows end of day Fitness and Freshness scores following activities.

Fitness & Freshness Summary:

DATE	Fitness	Change last 7 days	Fatigue	Form
04/05	52	-1	52	-2
05/05	55	+3	71	-16

Weight Target 66-67kg Training – 65kg Race Weight

Final pre trip weight in 67.8kg, no scales in France this was planned as wanted to concentrate on fuelling by feel and recovery for the sessions and efforts.  Will be interesting to see how weight settles over the 3 weeks away.

Weight Summary:

DATE	Weight (Kg)	Fat (%)	Muscle (%)	Water (%)
02/05	68.6kg	3.5	55.9	66.9
03/05	67.8kg	3.1	54.7	67.5

Training – Week 12 Summary

Weekly Totals: (9 sessions)

Total Miles: 84.49 Miles

Avg Pace: 7:32 /m

Time: 10:37:07

Week 29 April – 05 May Summary:

DATE	Distance (Miles)	Summary	Avg Pace	Avg HR
29/04	6	Morning Easy	7:29/m	123
30/04	7	Morning Run inc Butchers Stop 🥓 🥚	7:45/m	124
01/05	10 7	Morning Run – Miles with the fast 👨🏻‍🚒 Afternoon Steady	7:48/m 7:19/m	119 118
02/05	10	Last UK 🇬🇧 run for 3 weeks time to hit the 🏔 🇫🇷	7:48/m	114
03/06	6	St Foy St > Le Planay Loop	7:53/m	126
04/05	10 6	St Foy St > La Planay > ST Foy Village Loop St Foy St > ST Foy Village > La Thuile Loop	8:02/m 7:47/m	123 139
05/05	22	Long Run – Bourg Sainte Maurice > Aime > Landry > Bourg	6:56/m	136

Kit

Make	Model	Description	Type	Current Mileage	Purchase Date
New Balance	1400v6	Red White AW18 – UK 11	Training Road	246	Oct-2018
New Balance	Summit Unknown	Black – UK 11	Training Trail	199	Oct-2018
Nike	Vaporfly 4% Flyknit	Red – UK 11	Racing Road	67	Jan-2019
Nike	Zoom Fly Flyknit	UK11 – Dark Grey/Black/Atmosphere Grey/Metallic Pewter	Training Road	685	Jan-2019
Nike	Zoom Fly Flyknit	UK11 – Wolf Grey / Black-Blue Fury	Training Road	358	Mar-2019
Nike	Zoom Fly Flyknit	UK11 – Blue Orbit/White/Photo Blue/Black	Training Road	38	Apr-2019
Nike	Zoom Fly Flyknit	UK11 – Sequoia/Olive Flak/Light Bone/Black	Training Road	19	Apr-2019
North Face	Ultra MT		Mountain	83	Mar-2017