2020 Training Week 4 (01/06/2020 to 07/06/2020)

June 7, 2020

My weekly totals

First, let’s review summary of this week’s training: weekly mileage 30.01 km, weekly steps 80218 (11460 steps daily average), total weight loss so far 3.9 kg and this week’s weight loss 0.8 kg.

About my weight loss

About my weight loss, I guess 0.8 kg for a week is pretty close to my 1 kg/week goal plan even though my weight loss in the middle of the week on Thursday was 1.2 kg but after that my body weight increased a little bit.

Summary of this week’s activities

First, let’s review my activities during this week. I had 4 run activities in this week. On Monday (01/06) I had a 5K run with the following averages: (5.00 K, 5:24 min/km, 155 bpm, 17m elevation gain). On Tuesday (02/06) I had a 5K run with the following averages: (5.01 K, 5:16 min/km, 157 bpm, 16m elevation gain). On Friday (05/06) I had a 10K run with the following averages: (10.00 K, 5:33 min/km, 179 bpm, 29m elevation gain). On Saturday (06/06) I had a 10K run with the following averages: (10.00 K, 5:46 min/km, 167 bpm, 48m elevation gain).

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
5K Run	5K Run	03	04	10K Run	10K Run	07	30.0 km
10,615	10,605	14,254	0	15,718	16,147	12,879	80,218
83.8 kg	83.3 kg	84.3 kg	83.2 kg	83.6 kg	83.8 kg	83.6 kg

About my weekly mileage

My weekly mileage this week was 30.01 K which was the same weekly mileage as what I had in the first three weeks. It’s very good to stay long enough on 30K weekly mileage (at least four weeks) because it would help me avoid getting injured due to overtraining.

VO2Max and comparing activities to see my improvement

My VO2Max calculated by my watch’s wrist heart rate monitor on Monday and Tuesday was 51 and 52 ml/kg/min respectively where my VO2Max calculated by the Garmin’s HRM Run heart rate monitor on Friday and Saturday was 50 and 49 ml/kg/min respectively. I definitely trust more on the VO2Max calculated by the HRM Run heart rate monitor as it’s more accurate.

In order to see my improvement this week, I want to compare my activity on 01/06 with the following averages: (5.00 K, 5:24 min/km, 155 bpm, 17m elevation gain) with my activity on 23/05 with the following averages: (5.01 K, 5:29 min/km, 153 bpm, 48m elevation gain). My effort in both of those runs were almost the same and they were both 5K runs. I guess the faster pace in the first run (5:24 min/km vs 5:29 min/km) would balance the harder terrain in the second run (17m elevation gain vs 48m elevation gain). Therefore I would consider the performance of both activities the same i.e. no significant improvement in my runs during the past 9 days.

As we all know running improvement comes in sudden, we train for weeks with possibly no significant improvement in our paces and all of a sudden we see a jump in our speed.

My lactate threshold pace and heart rate

On Friday (05/06) after wearing my HRM Run heart rate monitor, my watch automatically recognized my lactate threshold pace (5:19 min/km) and lactate threshold heart rate (170 bpm). Later, on Saturday (06/06), my watch updated those numbers to the following amounts: lactate threshold pace 5:25 min/km and lactate threshold heart rate 172 bpm.

About my overtraining last week

Recently I experienced a little bit of overtraining and I felt it first last Sunday (31/05) when my mind didn’t want to go for the 6K downtown walk. Due to the understanding of my body, that’s the early symptom of overtraining. That day I did the walk because socially, I really needed to go downtown as I haven’t been in public places for a complete week (since last weekend) due to the pandemic.

The reason for my overtraining was obvious. In the past few weeks, I took about 100’000 steps each week but last week I increased it by 12% to 112’306 steps. (My total weekly steps reflects how active I was during the week because it contains both my running and walking activities) Also I guess after the first three weeks of trainings, my body needed a little bit of rest so I listened to my body.

As a result, I didn’t have daily walks of Monday (01/06) and Tuesday (02/06) (decreased my daily steps just to 10’615 and 10’605 steps respectively for those days) and on Thursday (04/06) I was as tired as I even didn’t get out of home and was mainly sleeping during the day. I resumed my normal training from Friday but anyways my weekly steps for this week dropped to 80’218 steps which had a 20% decrease compared to normal weeks.

Increasing length of my daily runs to 10K

Starting from this Friday, I made another big change in my training plan and it was increasing my daily runs from 5K to 10K. I stayed on 5K runs for almost 4 weeks and I felt it’s the right time to go to the next level of training.