So about 4km into my run on Monday i realised that this was supposed to have been a rest week. Oops. Tempting as it was to skip it altogether, my training has been less than perfect so I needed to maintain some semblance of a plan and i’d certainly caught it early enough that it wasn’t really an issue. It was also a great time for me to reevaluate once again – and that’s really one of the main reasons you build in rest weeks at all!

That being said; riding the high of last week and with renewed determination, I’d predicted a fairly productive week and I’m pleased to say that I was able to realise that and also return to a slightly more rigorous training regime.

3 runs, 3 resistance sessions and 1 hiit circuits session later, I’m over the moon and hoping that I can maintain this momentum and do even better in the next cycle.

On top of that, my appetite seems to have receded slightly such that I’m eating less overall (although porridge and salad usually occupy two of my meal slots during the weekdays anyway – hardly a decadent lifestyle…) And I’ve somehow lost 2kg along the way!

All good news, but at the same time I really don’t feel that I’ve been putting enough effort and consequently I’m also not seeing much improvement in my actual running or overall fitness.

More. I need to do more. More running. More training. More consistency. There’s no real way around it and the only thing stopping me is me (how cliche).

I won’t be making too many changes to the plan right now – I’m dropping Pilates as I just can’t commit to the same time slot every week given work pressures and I’m considering a return to martial arts instead to try and squeeze in something else I used to enjoy immensely. The resistance sessions are now more focused (gotta start working on that summer bod now to give me maximum time to train!) and the long run needs to be 10km minimum now and I’m hoping to get to 15km by the end of the next cycle.

I’ve got another holiday coming up in two weeks that I will need to plan around but I have high hopes for this coming week too. Fingers crossed.