Week ending 06 sep 2026
First week back after the marathon: three easy runs, nothing faster than 4:30/km, and a social half with 69 minutes of stops. Recovery week, not a fitness week — nothing here is interpretable as form.
- runs
- 4
- distance
- 43.7 km
- time
- 4h 18m
- elevation
- 419 m
| day | session | km | time | pace | hr | load |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| wed 02 sep | Herdsman | 12.4 | 59:38 | 4:49 | 150 | 73 e |
First run post-marathon, D+3. Flat. Fastest 1 km 4:32, fastest 5 km 23:01. Heart rate flat and low throughout. | ||||||
| fri 04 sep | Strength session | 32:10 | ||||
32 minutes, no exercise breakdown recorded. New load stream, second week running. Ran 62 minutes later the same morning. | ||||||
| fri 04 sep | Cottesloe | 10.1 | 50:37 | 5:00 | 156 | 67 e |
Hilliest run of the week, 193 m gain over 10 km. Heart rate hit 183 on three separate climbs, sustained 180+ for 30 s at a time at roughly 4:30/km — genuine, gradient-driven, not a strap artifact. Ran an hour after a strength session. No quadriceps or ankle response on a descent-heavy course. | ||||||
| sat 05 sep | FCTC Beer Half | 21.2 | 1:55:17 | 5:26 | 152 | 145 e |
Club social half. 5:26/km moving, but 69 minutes stationary across four long stops (11086 s elapsed vs 6917 s moving). Afternoon start. Not a fitness data point. The 185 max heart rate is a strap artifact: the trace jumps 30+ bpm between adjacent samples at constant pace. | ||||||
good
- Two full days off (Mon/Tue) then straight into 12.4 km at 4:49/km with an average heart rate of 150 — a D+3 run at that pace and cardiac cost is a fast, unremarkable return from a 2:50 marathon.
- Heart rate reached 183 on the Cottesloe run, held across three separate climbs for 30+ seconds each. The trace is gradient-consistent and multi-sample, so it is real, not a strap spike. The 180+ ceiling has been touched for the first time since the May half — via hills rather than speed, but touched.
- No symptoms anywhere. The ankle carried 193 m of vertical and 21 km on consecutive days without a report, five days after a marathon. Quadriceps, sore at D+1, did not resurface on a descent-heavy course.
note
- Nothing at or near 10 km race pace, anywhere. The week's fastest kilometre was 4:30 and the fastest 5 km was 23:01. Longest continuous block at or near goal pace: zero metres. Expected in recovery week one; recorded because the metric only means something if it is recorded every week.
- Strength work is running — one session logged Friday 05:08, 32 minutes, no exercise detail recorded by the watch. It stacked directly against the week's hilliest run, which started an hour later, and that run produced both the highest average heart rate and the most vertical of the week. A cost-of-recovery observation, not a fault.
- The Saturday half is not a data point. 21.2 km at 5:26/km moving, but 11086 s elapsed against 6917 s moving — roughly 69 minutes stationary across four long stops. Its 185 max heart rate is artifact: the trace jumps 30+ bpm between adjacent samples at a constant 5:00-5:30/km, which is a sweat-and-strap signature, not an effort.
watch
- The pace bands in use are marathon-era and now stale; no 10 km band framework has replaced them yet, so paces this week are reported against raw 10 km anchors (3:24-3:42/km) rather than any band.
- Nine weeks to Fremantle. The projection is unchanged at 34:50-35:20, sub-35 more likely than not, 34:30 the stretch — anchored on the measured 1:18:56 half of 24 May 2026, adjusted 2-3% for the residual fatigue of a 78 km ultra fifteen days prior and for 21.7 °C. Nothing this week moved it in either direction, because nothing this week was measured at pace.
- The binding constraint is time, not capacity: of nine weeks, the first one or two remain recovery and the last is a taper, leaving roughly six productive weeks.
- The two live criteria, reported weekly: (1) a continuous 4-5 km at 3:30/km or faster — NOT SHOWN; the fastest continuous effort on record is still a 1 km rep. (2) heart rate reaching 180+ — SHOWN this week at 183, but on gradient at 4:30/km, not at speed. Whether the top end opens up under fast running is the thread to follow.