Six weeks ago I started with strength training. Besides a lot of soreness, and maybe being a little bit more toned, I didn’t notice that many differences. Until this week.
Bad training
On Monday, my dad and I went for a hill interval training together. Warming up in zone 2, then some hill repeats, some rest, again some hill repeats and cool down. Sounds easy right? Well, add a bad nights sleep and some rain and you have a totally different workout. My heart rate was very high and I just felt tired throughout the whole session. Afterwards, I felt really bad, because I have never been ‘this bad’ before.
Rest day
I guess my body just needed some rest. I am training now around 14h a week and my body still needs to get used to it. Therefore, I was really happy with this day off and literally did NOTHING. Which is how a good rest day should be.
Muddy trail
A friend of mine had texted me a couple of weeks before if I wanted to do an organised trail with her. I said yeah sure, and only after subscribing I remembered that I was still recovering from an injury and that the trail would be 25K. Not my brightest decision so far…
The weather was also awful: a lot of rain, wind and icy temperatures. However, once we started, it felt ‘easier’ then what I had in mind. Especially once I started noticing that I had no real trouble to keep running on the hills. If I would have done that a couple of months ago, I would have walked.
Intervals
Another sort of progress I noticed happened during my intervals on Sunday. I wanted to see how far I could push myself with doing 4x 3min @ 15km/h with 3min jogging in between. Never thought I would be able to finish it BUT I DID IT! And although I could not have kept running at that pace for much longer, I wasn’t completely dead. So progress is on its way and all thanks to strength training!
Next week, my dad and I have two trail runs planned. A more challenging week than this one, but I am looking forward to it! Lets see how much further I can push my body.
