I'm now at the beginning of my fourth week in Australia and really feel like things are starting to take shape once more.  I am in quite a heavy period of training in terms of mileage (for me so far in my career) so we're being really careful in making sure I'm recovering properly between sessions and runs.  So far so good though and I'm feeling much more positive about my running than I was before I left the UK.

I think that partly one of the reasons I'm feeling more positive and relaxed is that I have thought about running comparatively little compared to what I was doing before, as I mentioned in one of my previous blogs.  Running has started to creep back into conversations, particularly now I've started to put in some good sessions and solid mileage, but we're being really careful this time that we don't get carried away.

One of the things which we are really conscious of not doing, is thinking too much about times, and trying to estimate what time I could run for what distance.   We have done this a lot over the last year or so, and it has probably led to us getting a bit carried away.  It's also meant that I've been so fired up going into every  race, that I have gone off far too fast, and been far to eager - ruining most of my races.  It sounds a bit silly now, but it is hard not to get too excited when your doing pbs in training.

All of my sessions so far have been done in different places so it has helped not being able to compare times and performances from sessions.  Each session (except the ones done on the track obviously) is measured using a garmin, so whilst it gives us an indication of how we're doing, it is not 100% accurate, particularly on the shorter reps.  We still hope to do quite a bit of work on the track over the next few months though so the test will come when we start doing that as to whether we can continue our non-analysis of sessions!

I have been asked on some of my training logs why I choose to do two sessions on one day and there are two main reasons .

As a bit of background to our decision - I have recently started doing only two sessions per week rather than the standard three per week which I had done for my entire career prior to this.  We changed this as recovery has always been a problem for me, and I usually found that one of the three sessions per week was a bit of a 'nothing session' because I was feeling tired - we were just doing something half hearted for the sake of it.  It also impacted on my other two sessions in the week and I was in a permanent state of semi-tiredness, hence why we have reduced the number of session days to two days per week.  

The reason for adding  in a 2nd 'mini' session on one day, usually a Saturday, is that despite doing only two  sessions a week we still think it is important to incorporate an element of speed work into training all year round - particularly for someone like myself who is hardly a speed demon.  However, when we are doing only two sessions per week we didn't want one of them to be low volume and very fast as there is obviously other essential elements of my training to work on too.  We also thought that doing a speed session on the same day as a tempo effort helps teach your body to run fast on tired legs.

It is just something new which we are trying so it may not work.  However at the moment I really do think I am in the shape of my life so it must be doing something.  Ok it mucks up your day a little bit if you have plans, as you have to trapsie off to the track on a Saturday afternoon, however I actually quite like these sessions (well as much as you can like a session).  I am usually quite relaxed about them, knowing I have already done a decent session that morning and can expect to feel tired.  I feel like there is no pressure on me and that whatever happens it's served a purpose.  The sessions usually last only 10-12 minutes in total  too so the pain is brief!  I often find, that even after a 10 mile tempo in the morning I am able to pull out some reasonable times.  We try where possible to do the speed session on the track and this is also planned because I am someone who traditionally dreads/fears/ loathes (delete where applicable) track workouts - I have a bit of an issue with them.  We thought that by doing something small on the track all year round would reduce this fear I have when the summer does come around.  We'll see!