 Good morning, welcome to FMR and welcome to week 12 of training episode number 13 of the Lakeland 100 training series. Now I'm recording this the day before the Lakeland 100. Training is done, taper is done, so all we need to do today is talk about my final week of big mileage. The week was divided up into 40 kilometers of running on the treadmill on Zwift and 120 kilometers outdoors and we started with an absolutely beautiful day on Monday. I went up to Winchester and met with my mate Dan from the Siaman Dan Channel and the Rundman Dan Channel and we went for 37 kilometers along the South Downs from Winchester all the way to Queen Elizabeth Country Park and that was absolutely beautiful. Obviously a game keeping it low heart rate, nice and easy and relaxed, but we had to in that hot weather. But that wasn't Monday done. We had 10k in the evening on the treadmill doing the Zwift community run. That's almost 50k by Monday night. I don't know if you can see it but just over there is the famous Aintree race course in Liverpool and the bit that we're at is known as the Canal Turn. Tuesday was over and done with really quickly. In the morning at 6.30 I got off and did 10k on the seafront and then at 11.35 I was on the treadmill for my Film My Run 500 climbing session on Zwift and that made around 14km for Tuesday so we're up to 64-65km now. Wednesday was another fairly big mileage day so I went out with my friends Matt and Haley in the morning and we did about 28-29km over the South Downs on the hills and then in the evening I was doing an interval session on Zwift so that was a relatively hard effort but it was very hot so I didn't do it quite as hard as perhaps I could have done or should have done. Bear in mind we are now at the end of 12 weeks of training where the last six weeks we've been ramping it up so I've done 100k for a few weeks then 110, 20, 130, 140, 150 and this week 160 so I am pretty tired now my legs are feeling it I just want to sleep all the time so this week to be perfectly honest hard efforts and high heart rate was hard to come by and to be honest things didn't get much easier on Thursday I did three sessions on Thursday starting in the morning with 10k and I did 5k intervals so I did 1k hard, 1k easy, 1k hard, 1k easy. Again it wasn't an all out effort because I'm so tired but I count that as one of my hard efforts for the week. Then we did the film My Run 51135 which is 4.2k and then I did 11k in the evening on the treadmill and that was doing the Bag That Badge series on Zwift so there really hadn't been any let up in the week at all I'd been doing a session in the evening and then getting up again early in the morning and doing another session but when you're doing 100 miles in a week you haven't really got much choice. However by Friday things were starting to get a bit easier. We did 10 miles on the seafront on the beach filming episode 12 of the Lakeland 100 training series and then believe it or not I had a day off on Saturday after my 10-miler on Friday we drove all the way down to Cornwall where I was live streaming the Roseland August weekend races run by Mud Crew down there so I was busy working all day Saturday there's no way I could have fitted a run in on Saturday even if I'd wanted to. By now I was up to 140 kilometers now the eagle-eyed amongst you will know that I've been upping it by 10k per week and that would take me to 160k this week but 160k is not 100 miles let's do 100 miles so Sunday when we got home nice and flat along the seafront 21 kilometers to finish off my 100 mile training week the last one the last run the last week of training take the time for two weeks so we've done 80k last week and then around 30 or 40k this week including today's run and we're ready for the Lakeland 100 tomorrow. So I guess it's time for a little bit of analysis of how the 12 weeks of training has gone what's gone well what's gone badly what could I do better next time what have I learned from this block of training. So I think the first thing I have to admit to myself about this book of training is regardless of the fact that we are training for a 100 mile run I don't think I've done enough hard efforts I don't think I've got my heart rate high enough for long enough each week it's just too easy to win power when you look at those hard sessions you know you've only got to do one or two of them a week and make them hard make yourself work but you know it's so hard to get it done but I think going into Berlin definitely going to put in some more hard speed sessions and fewer miles overall in the next few weeks. One thing I can say definitely has gone well though has been the mileage I think partly filming this training series has made me feel accountable to you guys to put the work in very rarely have I done a series a block of training where I have consistently kept up the mileage and increased the mileage I've done it before but perhaps not as consistently as I have done in this training block so we did those six weeks of 100k then every week after that we've added a little bit more so I really feel like I've put the miles in this time. Elevation gain has been pretty good we've done at least a thousand meters a week with the film my run 500 climbs twice a week but then we've also done plenty of elevation outside sometimes getting up to 3000 meters of elevation gain each week so I think we've pretty much covered elevation we've done good work climbing calf muscles and quadriceps are in good shape for tomorrow's lakeland 100. A couple of other negatives which I think if I was coaching somebody I would insist that they try and get right would be diet and strength training so I don't do really any cross training or any core strength training and I know I should and I'm lazy and I feel bad for it my worry is and and this is a genuine concern is that I rarely get injured why start doing something that could potentially cause me injury I know I know strength training should will make my core stronger and therefore less likely to get injured but I feel like if it's not broken I'm not going to fix it and that gives me a good excuse to be lazy and not do core strength work and again diet is always a problem and I I just can't resist sometimes you know having that sneaky cookie or having a bit too much full fat milk I guess like many of us I don't eat enough vegetables I don't eat enough fruit and I really should and I would I would urge you and advise you to not follow my example in that regard it's always a challenge to try and eat better it's always a challenge to try and be more disciplined about your diet and it's definitely one thing I need to improve on and let's finish on a small positive sleep really really important to help your muscles and your body recover and grow stronger and I sleep pretty well my wife would probably argue that I don't but I my body is happy with six to seven hours of sleep a night and I have regularly been getting six to seven hours of sleep a night sometimes more and I have felt refreshed in the morning I don't know if any of you have got a watch which gives you a body battery but it shows you on your watch how much your body has recharged itself during the night and my body charges itself pretty well I recover quite well and that's one thing about the mileage that's been really good is that I've felt that although I'm tired I am still able to go out there and do the miles because I'm not overly fatigued I'm not so tired that I can't get up and run in the morning and then do another session in the evening even though my race is tomorrow the Lakeland 100 training series is not over yet recovery post race analysis will follow in episode 14 if you have missed any of the previous episodes then please just click that link there that will take you to the playlist for all the other episodes in the Lakeland 100 training series and till next time take care bye bye