This week is a slightly easier week after a tough one last week, nothing too complicated and mainly easy runs with one stamina session in the middle of the week. Weeks like this are important to allow some recovery to your body ready to get the focus back on track. It’s important to hit peak performance at the right time but also not to rest too much otherwise you’ll lose the fitness. It’s about balancing fatigue, fitness and form.

Session 1: Easy Run 45 – 60 min

Continue building endurance to get you through the race.

Session 2: Tempo Run 50 – 70 min

Warm-up, then 3-5 miles at tempo pace, warmdown. This session is working on your stamina, it needs to be at a pace slower than your 5k pace. As a guide breathing should be laboured but you should be able to snatch one or two work sentences and your heart rate will be in the zone above your endurance pace. At the end you should feel like you’ve had a good workout but shouldn’t fall through the door and collapse in a heap. It will be a good solid pace but not your race pace.

There’s lots of different methods for calculating your HR zones and you need to find the one that works for you. I’ve shared mine in the pic, but they change all the time as my fitness levels change (and at the moment as the pollen levels change). Some methods have fewer zones, I use a Lactate Threshold method and from this I’m also able to determine my pace zones which helps when I need to calculate training zones during speed sessions and help me to estimate a target pace that I can work towards. But whatever method you use, just remember it’s a guide, on the day things might be different. There will be lots of factors that will change from training day to training day such as the weather, pollution and pollen levels, humidity as well as how you feel.

Session 3: Easy Run 45 – 60 min

Same as session 1. Session 4: Long run up to 2 hours. Don’t worry if you want to do less that’s fine, just do what you want but the main thing is it should be a gentle pace, jogging not running today.