This week was all about learning the value of quality over quantity

Monday

Speed work 3.8 miles – 40min of 1:20 sprints at 7:30min/mile with 12min/mile cool down in between.

Tuesday

5K cycle and Strength/Core training

Wednesday

1 hour outdoor bootcamp class with Military Fitness Bootcamp

Thursday

90 mins Stand Up Paddle Boarding @ Sunset

Friday

Running day – AM – 4 miles with the running club – Club run.

Friday & Saturday – Running and camping at Zekreet Peninsular – 4 miles Friday PM and 5 miles Saturday AM.

Sunday

9 miles endurance run at the Aspire Indoor track – all miles run at marathon pace with consistent and even splits. Felt promising.

Obsessions

I have been obsessed with quantity recently – 2 cross training sessions a week, 3-4 runs per week, 30+ mileage per week, etc etc. All to do with numbers and not really focused on what I was actually achieving within them. But this week I not only found a more productive way to cross train but learned about what it is going to take to get to where I want to be for Marysville and, in many ways, how far I have already come.

Cross Training R’ Us

Well, QSUP were back this week, briefly, so I made use of the opportunity to get back on the water. I also tried out a new bootcamp this week. The BMF (British Military Fitness) guys have a Qatar franchise, which runs most nights at Sheraton Park. I wrote a brief review of it in this blog here. These military fit guys are the way to go, me thinks, I always respond better to group participation fitness classes – it is harder to give up when you and 30 odd other people are in the same boat plus the military fit guys threat of punishment for easing off is enough to motivate one to push through the pain.

Straight And Turn Left

One of the runners at the Zekreet run (more of that later) – an experienced marathoner I should add – stated, quite simply, that running outside in the Qatar summer for long runs can do more damage than good. In fact, the only time it is good is if you are training for a hot desert run and you need to hone that particular type of desert endurance. So I am going to have to learn to love indoors for a while longer.

Luckily Splash&Dash reopened on Sunday, so I headed down there for a 2 hour session on their indoor track where I ran 75 laps of the 200 meter loop at consistent 1:20 per lap – covering 15K’s at a steady pace of 6mins/K which is my marathon race pace. Not only did I maintain the pace evenly but I felt pretty strong at the end too. This bodes well for my marathon. Just need to keep pushing and do some hill work.

Zekreet – The highlight of my week.

I went camping in Zekreet with some of the members of the running club. We camped by a bay on the western side of Qatar. The plan was to run in the evening and then have a swim in the bay to cool off, then sleep overnight under the stars before running in the morning, then swimming, then head back to Doha before it got too hot.

We did all those things, it was magical. We ran a total of about 9 miles in the rocky peninsular desert. We visited film city and had some sweet tea, we saw Oryx and Lizards, weird rock formations and dusk felt like we were on another planet. For the first time since March, I felt like a runner – like I was running. I have tried to compose a blog to convey the emotion but I am struggling to sculpt appropriate words. Luckily I shot the evening run on GoPro.

Happy Trails