The Value of Easy Weeks

Ive been discovering lately that's its not just the easy recovery run that sets you up for a hard slog the next day but that easy weeks are also necessary.... Ive been finding that my body starts to break down after four of five weeks of hard training, with muscles getting tighter and old injuries feeling sore again....if i give myself a week of lighter training they disappear and i can go harder again....

I think the reasons for this are both physical and mental..physically Ive been trying to run faster on both my tempo and long runs and feel ive made some gains..my tempo run is down to about 5.2mins/km and I can hold 550 on a 15km run at the moment...this may not seem fast to some (or many) but its pretty good for me......Ive also increased my weekly kms from 35 to 45 in the past few months....physically I find Im having to stretch more and more at around the 4 week mark..mentally though i start to get burned out and less keen to get up for my runs....

Right now Im in a recovery week..I clock the same kms but go out to enjoy them rather than run hard...Im already feeling much better in my legs and looking forward to running hard again next week..

Im not the only one who has found this valuable...here's a great blogpost about it on The Running World According to Dean .....here's something on the Runners World website...