Weekend! Progressive 5 & Slow and Steady

This weekend we did not get new snow, but we had night frost with temperatures of - 12 C. This meant that I needed to make some adjustments for my weekend runs.

Normally I do a short zone 1 on Saterday evening and a long zone 2 / zone 3 on Sunday early morning. The snow that was still there was flattened and frozen to make it one big icy mess. The government did clean the main roads pretty well, but it would be a real mistake to stick to my routine and run too fast while it would be still dark - especially since I still had to be a little careful with my hamstrings.

Saterday
My plan became to use the Saterday for a short progressive run - while sticking to the main roads. I picked progressive over tempo block to allow myself to use it as injury check run for my hamstring.

This run went really well, felt no issues and was able to go to a decent speed without any increases in hamstring tention. After 5km I finished the progressive part and used the remainder of the route as a small cooling down before doing some dynamic stretches at home.

Sunday
Starting later to be able to see the icy parts was a good call. Furthermore I decided to use road shoes to force myself to be cautious and read the road. My general strategy to be able to run was to:

• slow pace / staying in zone 1
• try to avoid grey parts, run on the most white parts
• see where the sun reflects on the road - avoid these parts.

Both runs felt amazing! In both cases it was still too cold in order to run in shorts. Today’s run started at -6C so this was the first run in a long time where I had to use running gloves.

With the weekend runs, this week ended at 57.4 km - by running every day and focus on low zone runs. Which should give my body enough room to recover and repair my hamstring before the more intense weeks start!

Happy running!