Week 7 — Steering the Ship, Not Following the Map

Week 7 started as the complete opposite of Week 6.

Last week the body rebelled.
This week the mind was ready, but sleep wasn’t.

The plan was a 75-minute easy run to start the week. After 45 minutes the legs felt unusually heavy, the kind of dead weight that doesn’t come from training load but from a few nights of poor sleep. There’s good evidence that sleep restriction alone can impair endurance performance, increase perceived effort, and reduce neuromuscular efficiency (Fullagar et al., 2015, Sports Medicine). That felt about right.

So I cut it at an hour.

Once upon a time i might have forced it. Fitness doesn’t disappear because you stop 15 minutes early. But digging a hole when the system is already under-recovered? That’s how things can start to unravel.

Midweek I ticked off 45 minutes easy on the bike. The second run of the week was 9 miles, just over 14.5 km, structured as a couple of miles easy, into 3 miles at threshold, 5 minutes easy jog, then another 2 miles at threshold.

And it was hard.

Harder than it should have been.

This was one of those sessions where you have to properly focus, dig in, and stay present to get it done. It wasn’t smooth. It didn’t flow. It felt like I was miles off. Which brings with it a new psychological wrinkle in this three-runs-per-week model.

When you’re running five or six times a week and a session goes badly, you park it. You put the shoes back on the next day, run easy, and often “run yourself out of the funk.” With this project, I don’t have that luxury. If a key run feels poor, there isn’t another run tomorrow to smooth it over. There might be days before the next one.

That builds a subtle layer of anxiety.

You start questioning whether this can actually be done on three runs a week. When one run doesn’t land well, the margin feels thin.

Friday was gym day, all round workout inc plyometrics. Around 50–60 contacts of pogo jumps and 20–30 contacts of drop jumps. There’s solid evidence supporting this approach. Saunders et al. (2006, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research) showed that adding plyometric training to distance runners improved running economy and 5 km performance without increasing VO₂max. Similarly, Barnes and Kilding (2015, Sports Medicine) demonstrated that neuromuscular training can enhance endurance performance through improved stiffness and efficiency.

There’s even data suggesting that neuromuscular interventions can improve running economy by ~4–5%, which in marathon terms is significant.

Saturday was two hours aerobic on the bike. Sleep still wasn’t great, so I kept it controlled. But this session sparked an important thought heading into next week. Last run of the week was 16 miles on Sunday - longest of the season so far, mostly easy with the last 10k gearing down slightly towards that 3hr pace. Feels too hot to handle right now for a hours on end. There is still time but it’s getting more scarce.

With only three runs per week and typically only one true run session, there are long gaps between higher-intensity stimuli. I can feel a slight flatness creeping in between sessions, almost like muscle tension and neuromuscular sharpness dip when the runs are spread out. Research on muscle tendon stiffness and elastic energy return (e.g., Spurrs et al., 2003, European Journal of Applied Physiology) shows that maintaining neuromuscular tension and stiffness improves running economy. Too much purely easy work can allow that system to detune slightly.

That’s where I think some controlled bike intensity might help.

Nothing silly. Nothing that steals from the run. But leaning slightly into higher aerobic or tempo work on the bike could maintain central drive and neuromuscular engagement without the impact cost of more running.

Long, easy cycling builds capacity.
But I feel like I’ve now built some base resilience to tolerate some more serious bike work.

This week also reinforced something bigger.

Before this project started, I mapped out a full 16-week plan. Every run session. Every bike session. The whole thing neatly laid out.

By Week 2, it was already being tweaked.

By Week 7, it’s barely recognisable.

Life. Sleep. Travel. How the legs respond. How sessions land. That’s the reality of training. The best-laid plans often end up in the bin within weeks. The real skill isn’t writing the perfect 16-week programme, it’s steering the ship when the water gets choppy.

That’s coaching.

Each week the questions are the same , the same questions I ask with every athlete I work with:

Are we still on track?
Do we have enough time to move the needle?
Do we need to press harder — or protect the system?

I’m nearly halfway through this project now. I’m not where I need to be. I can’t panic, but blindly following the original layout isn’t going to cut it either.

This is the bit most generic plans miss.

Athletes don’t need rigid templates.
They need re-steering. They need outside eyes. They need someone willing to say, “This isn’t quite landing, let’s adjust.”

And lastly, the goals have to stay realistic.

There are plenty of people targeting big spring marathons. Wanting a time means nothing on its own. It doesn’t mean you’re ready for it. I’m honest with my athletes about where they stand and I have to be just as honest with myself. It’s not always “you’ll smash it.” It’s often, “this is where you are let’s work from there.”

I’ve got a couple of weeks ahead where I need to move the needle.

If that doesn’t happen, I’ll have to consider moving the goalposts.

Si