It is easy to focus on building your strenghts rather than addressing your weakness. Translating this to my own running - I find myself a decent long distance runner, but I am feel I underexposed strenght and speed workouts for too long.
With my eyes on my 2026 goals:
- Running >= 4 marathons (check, I can do this)
- Running 1 marathon within 3 hours (got serious work to do!)
- Running a mountain marathon (Jungfrau 2026 is the target!)
I realize I would benefit more from incorporating speed and strenght than just keep doing what I have been doing for the last 10 years.
Last week I added interval to my weekly workout schedule, starting with 1 session building towards 2 sessions a week.
This week I started with a 2 day strenght program for runners - this means you keep your milage but add 2 days of functional excercises in the program.
On Tuesdays (trainings day 1) this ment starting with squads, deadlifts, lunges, calf raises, planks and glute bridges... well doing so, confirmed that there is some improvements to be made in this area, so I will definitly keep making progress in this area aswell (hoping it will translate to a positive effect on my running goals for 2026).
New shoes!
Last week I ordered 2 new pairs of running shoes. The saucony omni 22 (for road runs) and the salomon sense ride 5 (trail shoes). While these Sense Rides are not suitable for the Jungfrau Marathon, they should be a great match for the upcoming beach marathon in februari. In the 2025 edition of this beach marathon (which I ran on road shoes) I had some difficulties crossing a swamp that was located in the dunes.
Today I took my new shoes for a little test run! While honestly I just don't get the lacing for now (will get there eventually...) I experienced a world of differences in terms of grip running up and down muddy paths!
Hill repeats!
Just like last week, I decided to add interval training to my schedule. Last week I went for flat underground, today I went to "Alp 010" to do some trail hill work outs. One hill, 3 different climbs - 1 modest, one hard and one very hard one.
I focussed on the very hard climb, meaning I would alternate a very hard climb with a modest or with a hard climb but at half of my intervals would be the grassy hill.
To illustrate the difficulty:
My run today may have been just 5 km - but I felt the effort of a > 25KM run ( in a very good way) so I am looking forward to keep this as a integral part of my running schedule!
Looking to the remainder of the week, tomorrow I will do the second strenght workout (which I hope to combine with a recovery run), on Saterday I aim to do a short zone 2 run and I got a nice long distance run scheduled for Sunday!
Going to be fun!
Happy running!