Week 5 has proven to be one of recovery and slowly building to manage my body after the slight niggle I experienced in Week 4.
I decided that this week I would set myself a goal of running five days, as long as my body was up to it, and only a distance of 5km each day. Intensity wise, I was aiming at completing my runs at a 6 minute pace, this being a minute per km slower than what I had worked down previously. As I said, my aim has been to slowly build again and monitor my body to ensure that I am not going to cause any further damage to the strain as this would take me out of running for even longer which would be incredibly frustrating.
Monday’s run started ok. I did feel a little sore through my right abdominal side but it wasn’t painful just not comfortable. I decided to try to compete the run and am glad I did. While not setting the world on fire, I did manage to complete the 5.32km course in 32:09 with an average of 6’02” per km.
The remainder of the week saw ongoing improvement in the times but also how the body was feeling. I have found that the first km I am quite stiff sore am taking a little longer to warmup and get up to speed, I also did not really push myself, keeping to an average pace of around the 5’30” per km. The time throughout the week were as follows:
 |  |  |  |  |
I am not going to attempt any runs over the weekend, instead taking the time off to give a few days recovery for the body before increasing some distances next week. My aim will be to complete 2 x12km runs on Monday and Friday with only 5km runs on the other days. If this goes well, I will look at increasing the distance again in the following weeks.
