July was the first of my two high mileage months (with August being the second).  The plan was to walk a total of 300 miles and I ended up with 335 miles (540km) for my biggest ever mileage month.

But what I learnt during July is that when mileage goes up other things go down.

I have set myself targets for the amount of time I spend stretching each month, and the amount of time I spend sleeping.  But spending over 70 hours walking in one month meant that both the stretching and the sleeping suffered during July.  Although I have to admit that there were times when I sat on the couch watching TV when I could have either been stretching or could have gone to bed early.  But you have to have a life outside of sport, don’t you?

Sleep:

I have a target of getting 8 hours sleep at least three times a week, and trying to average 7 hours sleep per night overall.  I haven’t yet managed to achieve those targets but this month was my worst since I set those targets.  I only managed three nights of 8 hours sleep and averaged just 6 ¼ hours per night.

On a few occasions this was because I had to get up early for either long walks or early morning walks, and on other occasions I just woke up without needing 8 hours sleep.  Most of the time though, I just fell back in to old habits of not going to bed early enough to get 8 hours sleep in a night.

Stretching:

If I didn’t have a target of stretching three times per week I wouldn’t do any stretching at all.  So one stretching session is better than none I guess, but it isn’t something I am happy with.  Every day I remind myself what I am training for, but I have just been too tired to stretch, or have found excuses to do something else instead.

That said, working a full time job, walking 300+ miles in a month, and trying to maintain a balanced family life doesn’t leave much time for anything else.

Nutrition:

The fourth aspect of my training programme (after walking, sleeping and stretching) is my new nutrition plan.  Up until the end of last year I ate a lot of junk food.  And if I wasn’t eating junk food I was eating food that wasn’t necessarily giving me any benefit other than filling my stomach.

That all changed on the 1^st of January.  I still haven’t had a ‘heat n eat’ meal this year.  I used to eat at least one per week, if not two.  I have only eaten chocolate during long races and the occasional long training walk, and I have been eating a lot more fruit than ever before.

Healthy eating has actually become easy, and whilst I would love to snack on a chocolate bar on my way home from work, I don’t.

Year To Date Mileage:

Total hours: 353

Longest walk: 145 miles (233km) – being the Grand Union Canal Race in May.

Races:

No races during July but I had two ‘adventure walks’ (my District Line walk on my birthday and my Monopoly Board walk a couple days later).  My next races are the UK Centurions Race (100 miles) and the Liverpool to Leeds Canal Race (130 miles) which are both in August (3 weeks apart) and will both be training races with high mileage days immediately beforehand to replicate multi-day races.

I only have one serious race left for 2016 – the six day race in October.

Plans for August:

August will be the second of my two high mileage months, although the high mileage won’t be spread evenly across the month.  Instead 80% of the mileage will be in the first and last weekends of the month.

My plan is to walk 70 miles from Leeds to Redcar this coming Friday and then follow that up with the UK Centurions Race on Saturday/Sunday.  And then like I did in May, I will take it easy for a few weeks before a second massive weekend when I do the Liverpool to Leeds Canal Race at the end of August.  The only difference being that as well as covering 130 miles in that race on the Saturday/Sunday, I am planning on covering 100 miles walking from Birmingham to Liverpool during the Thursday and Friday immediately beforehand.

So that will give me 400 miles (640km) alone, which is significantly more than I walked in July.  During the remainder of the month I’ll probably walk between 50 and 100 miles to potentially give me 500 miles in total for the month.  I will also be trying to get more sleep and do more stretching 🙂

And then the first half of September will be complete rest before four or five weeks of easy mileage leading up to the six day race starting on the 23^rd October.

And why am I writing all this?

I have huge plans for 2016.  Everything is focused around the 6 jours de france (Privas 6 day race) in October, and I am breaking my preparation down in to individual months.  My training is going really well so far.  July was month seven of a 9 ½ month build-up and was focused on high mileage.

At the end of each month I write my monthly review which helps me access where I am with my training, sort of like a business reviewing its KPI’s at month end, and I set/confirm my goals/plans for the next month.

Writing this blog post helps me to focus on what I need to do.

Richard

When I wrote my training summary for May I said that I was going to break June in two – the first half would be all about recovery after two huge races in May (the Continental Centurions 24 hour race and the Grand Union Canal Race) and that I would then build up the mileage over the second half of the month when I resumed training again.

And I kind of did what I set out to do.  I didn’t do any training at all until Saturday the 11^th when I started back with a ten mile walk including a 32 ½ minute parkrun in the middle.  But rather than easing back in to the training I then went to Guernsey for work on the Tuesday and went mad!

Guernsey is a small island, only a few miles wide and not much longer than it is wide.  The circumference by road is only about 25 miles although if you follow the coast it is almost 40 miles in total.  And so I decided to cover as much of the island as I could during the five days I was there.

I arrived on the Tuesday afternoon and only had an hour for a short walk before dinner that evening, but I did 2 ½ hours on each of Wednesday and Thursday nights, completing a ‘double coast-to-coast’ on both occasions.  On Friday night I only did a short walk but this was off road high on the cliffs near St Martins where I was staying. And then on the Saturday morning I circumnavigated the island via the road and incorporated the recently established Guernsey parkrun in to a 29 mile (47km) walk.  In total I covered exactly 100km while I was there and strangely I returned home feeling like I had been on a weeklong training camp rather than a work trip!

The following week I think I paid for my overtraining.  I felt lethargic all week and only attempted two 10km walks.  On the Thursday I felt so tired that I slept 11 ½ hours!  I can’t remember the last time I did that.

And then the final week of June arrived and it was the start of the Fitbit parkrun challenge in the UK.  The goal – to complete at least 10,000 steps every day from Saturday 25^th June to Saturday 2^nd July inclusive.  And you know me; I’m just a little bit competitive.  After day one I was in 6^th place on the competition table with 61,000 steps – made possible by a 32 mile (51km) walk that incorporated a 32 ½ minute parkrun along the way.

Unfortunately they didn’t maintain an overall ranking for the whole competition – just daily rankings tables – but with two days to go I have walked 61,000 steps on the Saturday followed by daily totals of 20,000, 18,700, 12,300, 18,900 and 47,500 to complete the month.  This is the first time since January that I have trained six days in a row and the first time since January that I have managed to complete 10,000 or more steps every day for six days.

So it has been an interesting month.  In total I covered 175 miles (282km) for the month which is about what I had planned, and I feel that I am now ready for a high mileage month in July before my next two big events in August.

Sleep:

A few months ago I set a goal of getting 8 hours sleep at least three times a week, and trying to average 7 hours sleep per night overall.  Previously I have always tried to get away with as little sleep as possible but I now realise that quality sleep is important in aiding recovery from training.

So based on that goal I should have slept 8 hours at least 12 times during the month.  In reality I only managed to do this 9 times, but that is an improvement on the 4 times that I slept 8 hours in May.

Nutrition:

It’s been six months since I started my healthier eating plan and I still haven’t had a ‘heat n eat’ meal this year.  I used to eat at least one per week, if not two.

It’s hard to eat healthily all the time though, especially when I love the taste of things like coke, chocolate and biscuits as much as I do.  But I keep reminding myself why I am doing all this, and that the training is only a part of the overall picture.  Sleep, nutrition and stretching are other important factors.

I did allow myself a little bit of leeway this month though.  Firstly, after the Grand Union Canal Race at the end of May I allowed myself to eat a bit of junk food during my recovery at the beginning of June.  And then while I was working in Guernsey I drank a coke with dinner each night.

But I’m now back in to the serious training and focused on the 6 day race in October, and as a result my healthy eating plan is back on track.

Stretching:

I wish I could say the same for my stretching plan – only six 30 minute stretching sessions during June.  This was a big improvement on May when I did next to no stretching, but was only 50% of my targeted three times per week.

Year To Date Mileage:

Total hours: 282

Longest walk: 145 miles (233km) – being the Grand Union Canal Race.

Races:

No races during June.  My next races are the UK Centurions Race (100 miles) and the Liverpool to Leeds Canal Race (130 miles) which are both in August (3 weeks apart) and will both be training races with high mileage days immediately beforehand to replicate multi-day races.

Plans for July:

It’s time to increase the training mileage.  During July I’ll cover around about 300 miles (480km) in training and then in August I am planning on covering 170 miles in the first weekend with a 70 mile walk from Leeds to Redcar on Friday 5^th followed by the UK Centurions Race on the Saturday/Sunday.  And then, like I did in May, I will take it easy for a few weeks before a second massive weekend when I do the Liverpool to Leeds Canal Race.  The only difference being that as well as covering 130 miles in that race on the Saturday/Sunday, I am planning on covering 100 miles walking from Birmingham to Liverpool during the Thursday and Friday immediately beforehand.

Rail travel to Leeds and Birmingham is significantly cheaper than going all the way to Redcar and Liverpool respectively, so I thought I would walk the rest of the way 🙂

And why am I writing all this?

I have huge plans for 2016.  Everything is focused around the 6 jours de france (Privas 6 day race) in October, and I am breaking my preparation down in to individual months – June was month six of a 9 ½ month build-up and was focused on recovery after a big month in May before launching myself in to the July/August high mileage phase.

At the end of each month I write my monthly review which helps me access where I am with my training, sort of like a business reviewing its KPI’s at month end, and I set/confirm my goals/plans for the next month.

Writing this blog post helps me to focus on what I need to do.

Richard

May was all about two big races – the Continental Centurions Race in Schiedam, Holland on the 14^th/15^th and the Grand Union Canal Race from Birmingham to London two weeks later.

Total distance from those two walks: 259 miles (416km) in 60 hours and 44 minutes.

I achieved my goals for the month – beating the New Zealand records for 100 miles and 24 hours at Schiedam, and taking less than 40 hours for the Grand Union Canal Race.

And it looks like I have come out of the month without any injury problems other than two small blisters.  In fact I think I am probably in better shape, injury wise, than at any other time this year!

Sleep:

As I mentioned in my training summary last month, I have realised that I need to focus on getting more sleep than the 4 to 6 hours per night that I have been surviving on over the last few years, and have set a goal of getting 8 hours sleep at least three times a week, and trying to average 7 hours sleep per night overall.

I use my fitbit to measure my sleep and as you can see I haven’t managed to achieve my goal this month.  Only 4 nights in total with 8 hours sleep and one of those was actually a 6 hour sleep and a 2 hour afternoon nap!  Average sleep for the month, excluding the two nights where I didn’t sleep at all due to the two races, was 6 hours and 31 minutes.

But if you don’t have a goal you don’t focus on trying to achieve that goal.  If I wasn’t trying to achieve 8 hours sleep a night, I would imagine that my average sleep during May would be less than 6 hours per night.  That’s 15 hours less sleep during the month.  15 hours less recovery.

So I will keep trying to achieve 8 hours sleep per night and hopefully be able to report better results next month.

Nutrition:

I’m now five months in to my new healthier eating plan.  It’s going well.  I’m definitely eating much better quality food for breakfast, lunch and between meals, and my dinner has always been healthy when my wife is cooking.  The problem has always been when she isn’t home, but I still haven’t had a ‘heat n eat’ meal all year.  I used to eat one at least once a week, if not twice.

But with two races of over 100 mile during May I have had the opportunity to eat a lot of chocolate and other sugary foods during May, and as I write this update I am also allowing myself a week of eating whatever I want before I resume training again after a short rest period following the Grand Union Canal Race.

Stretching:

In January I set myself a target of stretching for 30 minutes three times per week.  Unfortunately I went back to old habits in May and only did one stretching session all month!  And that was on the 1^st of May.  Time to get back in to the stretching during June.

Training:

As well as the two big races I did a few shorter training walks in the first two weeks of the month and three very short walks in between the two races.  In total I ended up with 502km (312 miles) for the month – the first time I have ever walked further than 500km in a month.

Year To Date Mileage:

Total hours: 246

Longest walk: 145 miles (233km) – being the Grand Union Canal Race.

Races:

• Continental Centurions Race (24 hours covering 114 miles)
• Grand Union Canal Race (145 miles in 36:42)

Plans for June:

May was a big month with two big races, and after a big month like that it is important to fully recover.  The training effect from any workout comes from the recovery after the workout, and not from the workout itself.  And the same goes for a big training month; it is imperative to fully recover before applying stress on the body again.

So the intention is to take it easy through the first half of June with absolutely no training in the first week.  I will be working in Guernsey in mid June and the fact that it is less than 40km (25 miles) to circumnavigate the island tells me that I will have to do this while I am there.   So I will probably start training again while I am in Guernsey and will put in reasonable distance over the last two weeks of June before another high’ish mileage month in July.  And then in August I have a similar month to May with the UK Centurions Race at the start of the month and the Liverpool To Leeds Canal Race (130 miles) in late August.

And why am I writing all this?

I have huge plans for 2016.  Everything is focused around the 6 jours de france (Privas 6 day race) in October, and I am breaking my preparation down in to individual months – May was month five of a 9 ½ month build-up and was all about two big races which were both mini goals in their own right.  June will be much easier in comparison but is still an important part of the 9 ½ month build-up.

And at the end of each month I will write another review and set my goals/plans for the next month.

Writing this blog post helps me to focus on what I need to do.

Richard