A new beginning

I am still on holiday in Italy enjoying the sun and the focaccia. Most of all I have been trying to run as much as possible (51km total) alternating one day on the coastal roads and one day on the trails.
I have explored different paths on the hills but I always end up roughly in the same places except today in which I was going uphill as far as I could via a new track. Unfortunately it’s hunting season and I met a guy with a double barrelled shotgun who advised me very kindly not to continue up the hills. Not wanting to be shot as a boar I decided to head home.

To prepare for the ultra I would like to do (and all the other races I have in mind) I have decided to follow the training schedule from the book The Cool Impossible. It’s a very good book if you are interested in training seriously. I suggest you read it after Born To Run.

I have been trying to run with proper form after the books suggestions for quite some time, I will probably not be able to follow all the dietary suggestions or do all the strength exercises, but I will definitely follow the 5 month training schedule.

The first things you need to do to follow the schedule is run two tests. A 1 mile run test and a 20 minute run test. In both you go as fast as you can and record your time and heart rate. Those results will help you define your Speed Zones and Heart Rate Zone to be used in the following weeks of training.

I did those test this week, probably I should not have done them both too close to each other.

I did the 1 mile test in 5:22 which gave me these speed zones (in min/km, not very readable):

I ran 5.3km in the 20 minutes test and got these heart rate zones:

I will try to follow the schedule as much as possible and will report the results here.

Have fun!