Janathon #10

Today was going to be a 10-15km run with a friend around Ladybower reservoir...we have a regular running date each Thursday, which this week was swapped for today. Sadly my mate woke up feeling rubbish...her husband has had flu so it looks like it's going round their house. As I'm running every day I decided to swap my longer run today and will do it tomorrow. Instead of the long run today I just did my barefoot run, which I would have been doing as well as the long run. This is a sensible approach given I'm running everyday this month, as rest is good for muscles.

I like having flexibility in my training, but at the same time I am starting to hanker after a bit of speed in my runs. Lately it's started to feel like I've been plodding a bit too much. That will ultimately mean a period of weekly hill reps and speed sessions to get my cadence up, to push my cardiovascular system and muscular strength so they adapt and get stronger. I've got a race coming up on the 25th (Kinder Trial which I did back in 2011 though I'm hoping there won't be snow on the ground this year!) so over the next few weeks I'll be adding slightly longer runs to each week. Looking at other things in the diary I reckon I shall be in a position to put in two structured training sessions per week starting from the last week of January. I'd like to start it a bit sooner, but at the same time I want to ensure that this run-a-day-Janathon challenge is completed sensibly and without an increase to intensity as well as frequency of runs. Until the end of the month I'm going to put in a few fartlek type sessions, just adding short bursts of speed randomly, and hill reps in an unstructured way as and when I am ascending.

Need to find an empty wall somewhere near home so I can practice these more often. Shoulder/upper body and core strength are great for runners to develop