21 weeks left, 32 miles, 4 days battling a cold that would kill some small mammals and 3 days of taking Decibel Nutrition Pre-workout

I don’t really self identify as a religious person, but have long believed it is part of God’s plan to make sure whenever I get into some sort of rhythm with anything, he will throw something into the works to test me! After 3 weeks so far of following this plan, I was looking forward to the first rest week. This is normally where the mileage drops a bit from the previous weeks and some recovery is supposed to take place.

This lasted until Wednesday! I had taken some of the Decibel Pre-workout supplement before my run on Tuesday which made a massive difference. I felt I had really benefited from my rest day on Monday and was energetic throughout. There is one of the active ingredients in this called Cinnulin PF that is meant to support glucose levels and blood pressure, for some reason on all 3 of my sessions this week taking it, I felt energy was getting to my muscles faster when I was running.

On Wednesday I went to the gym and did 3 miles after work which was painfully slow compared to my normal time for that distance when training for marathons. I had created a nice little jogging group with the people on the treadmill either side, I was plodding along steadily at 11.2kmh and across the 3 machines our paces were 11.1kmh, 11.2kmh and 11.3kmh. Everyone likes to pretend they don’t focus on the people training either side of them but this clearly illustrates the 3 of us don’t follow that.

When I got back from the gym I felt really rough from having coughing fits and headaches. I was also struggling to hold food down. I managed a few spoonfuls of my tea and retired to bed at 8:30pm

By Thursday evening I was marginally better and managed the 5.4 mile loop with 4 layers on. It was nice to feel warm for the first time in a few days for the last mile and I had preheated the living room while I was out so it was good to come back to somewhere comfortable. I resurrected my tea from the night before and enjoyed feeling a bit more alive than the night before.

I took Friday off and did another lap of the 5.4 mile loop on Saturday morning. This was the first time I had ran in daylight all week and it was good to be able to feel my fingers and toes at the end of the run which was a luxury I was bereft of during my running on Tuesday and Thursday. Using the Decibel Nutrition Pre-workout certainly helped and I felt I could focus on the run better and my energy levels were good throughout.

I finished the week with a 7.5 mile run that’s an extension of the 5.4 mile loop, followed by a 6.4 mile run with my friend Paddy. This was the first time I had tried taking the Decibel Nutrition Pre-workout twice for one morning. (Once at 5:45am then again at 7:30am) Me and Paddy have a good understanding of when the other one is trying to set a faster pace and are both really stubborn about getting dropped (left behind). I found the 2nd drink enabled me to set a really good pace for the last 3 miles. He managed to keep up and it was a great feeling at the end of nearly 14 miles to finish with enough energy to believe I could have gone faster.

I’m looking forward to next week and having my long training run back up to 18 miles. I will be interested to see if my midweek training is more settled as I tend to relate this to being a sort of building block for the longer runs at the weekend so hopefully it’ll be better this time around.