 Another 80 mile week, another 20 mile long run and topping out at 2,000 meters of elevation gain. But just how important is it to keep up with those speed sessions? This week, I raced a park run and I did my first ever double threshold day in the Britson style. This is week six of UTMB training. So I hope your week has been going well. Do let me know in the comments down below. What have you been training for recently? How is that going? And if you haven't subscribed to the channel, please do that and click the like button as well if you find the video interesting or entertaining and let's get right into it now. So a very easy start to the week. 10 kilometers on Monday evening, on Zwift live on the treadmill on the Zwift run channel. Tuesday was a bit of an odd day, if I'm honest. I did two runs, but both of them were in the morning and both of them were hill sections. Don't ask me why, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's just what I did. So I did hill reps first thing in the morning, just a short session, three hill reps. And then later in the morning, I did my film, my run 500 session on Zwift where we put the treadmill at 12% and climbed 500 meters. So that was my Tuesday morning and I didn't run at all in the evening. I think I was just a bit too tired. And so we come to Wednesday where I decided I wanted to try out the Norwegian double threshold day. So I started in the morning with a rather tentative six by one kilometer. Tentative because I was worried that I would tire myself out for the evening interval session. So I tried as hard as I could. I went pretty much threshold, maybe a little bit higher than threshold pace for six kilometers with 90 seconds rest in between each of those kilometers. And then in the evening, I did my usual interval session on Zwift on the treadmill. If you want to follow any of my Zwift sessions, they're all on the Zwift run channel live on YouTube. And I did 600 meters just above threshold, 400 meters just below threshold. So that was my double threshold day on Wednesday. I think it went relatively well. I didn't feel overly fatigued at the end of it. Maybe I could have tried a little bit harder in the first session. So after the VO2 max high heart rate sessions on Wednesday, it was back to base fitness training and a bit of leg strength training on Thursday with the film My Run 500 in the morning. And then we did bag that badge on Zwift in the evening low heart rate, nice and easy. Double day on Wednesday, well, double threshold day on Wednesday, double day on Thursday. Let's make it three in a row with a double day again on Friday. A nice long run on Friday morning up on the downs, up on the beautiful hills of the South Downs. And I did 21 kilometers. Nice and easy. Again, low heart rate, nothing special. Just training the legs, getting used to the downhills, smashing my quads on those downhills. And then nice and easy again in the evening, nine kilometers on Zwift on the treadmill. But by the way, if you're interested in buying a Noble Pro treadmill, which is what I use for a lot of my Zwift runs, the Noble Pro treadmills are a fantastic value, really good value for money. And a referral link is in the description below if you want to get a discount off buying a Noble Pro treadmill. A lot of the Zwift runners use Noble Pro, great company, great support, and really sturdy solid treadmills. So get your discount in the description below. Saturday arrives and of course Saturday is park run day. Unfortunately, my local park run here in Worthing was canceled. So we went along the coast, a couple of kilometers to Lansing where we did Lansing Beach Green Park Run. I met a few of my club mates down there. We had a bit of a club get together and I tried to go as hard as I could. I was hoping to get under 20 minutes, what with all the long run training, obviously your speed isn't really there. And so I did 20 minutes and eight seconds, just a little bit over 20 minutes. I can't be too disappointed. It was very windy on the turnaround. So Lansing Beach Green Park Run, you go out down the sea front for a couple of kilometers and then back along the sea front and coming back it was pretty windy. So that was a hard effort on Saturday morning. I didn't run on Saturday evening, so just a few kilometers on Saturday. But those few kilometers did get me to 100K for the week, which left only Sunday's long run left to do. So Sunday morning, I headed out with some of my friends and we went for a 20 mile long run. Now normally I'd go all the way on the hills, but I was convinced to do the first half of the run, well the first two thirds of the run on the flat. And so pace was fairly speedy. But then I did go up on the hills for the last part of the 20 miler. And that brought week six of UTMB training to a close, topping out at just over, a smidge over 2,000 meters of elevation gain. For those of you in the US, that is 7,000 feet and we did 133 kilometers of distance. Again, that's around 82 miles or so. 48 kilometers of that was indoors on the treadmill on Zwift and 85 of that was outside. So 85 kilometers is around about 52, 53 miles. But what's really interesting about this week's training was that I managed to fit in three hard sessions, three speed sessions, the park run on Saturday and the double threshold day on Wednesday. But I'm training for a 100 mile mountain ultra. Why am I sticking in speed sessions? And at the beginning of this training block, I did say we're going to be concentrating a lot more on elevation and distance. And indeed, we have been doing that. But it's still important to do those speed sessions. What we want is we want to increase or maximize VO2 max. So currently my VO2 max was down at 55. I'd really like to get that up because having a good amount of oxygen in your lungs and having a good ability to supply oxygen to your muscles is still important when climbing a big mountain. So if you're doing a hilly trail marathon or a sky race or a mountain ultra, yes, make sure you smash your quads on those downhills. Make sure you get that elevation gain in. Make sure you get some long distance training in. But don't forget to do some speed work because speed is still important. Look at the VO2 max of some of the greatest mountain ultra runners in the world. Kylian Jornette, Francois Dane, Tom Evans. All these guys have huge VO2 max and they get that by doing high heart rate sessions, either climbing hills at high heart rate or doing fast speed intervals. That's the way to get your VO2 max up. And that's why I'm trying to get at least a few speed sessions, interval sessions into my training each week, especially as we approach the UTMB race just to make sure my VO2 max is maintained. If you're interested in running one of the UTMB races, then you might be interested in this video here, which will tell you how to go about it. If you haven't subscribed to the channel, then please do so if you found this video useful, interesting, entertaining, and then also click the like button as well and share it around with your friends. And we will see you on the start line next time. Bye bye.