Before diving into the training details, I wanted to share the progress I’ve made since I started documenting my journey through these blogs. Below is a graph of my ITRA score over the past eight months.
Month 6 began with the Budha Trails 30K as the main focus—my A race of the season. The plan was to incorporate longer intervals, including extended uphill repetitions, while keeping a steady eye on maintaining solid weekly elevation gain.
A week ago, my Coros watch decided to call it quits and stopped working. As a result, the data below captures the period from 1st March to 25th April.
Month 6 Mileage – I covered 266km in the month of March with a
total elevation gain of 7650m.
Base Fitness – The base fitness saw an upward curve too. However, it is far from my actual potential.
Training Highlight - Month 6
Since this was the final month of training leading into the big race, I focused on dialing in race-specific preparation.
- I incorporated one long-uphill-interval session each week.
- Included a few downhill repetitions to prepare for the final downhill section of the race.
- I eased off the intensity of the strength training sessions, shifting the focus toward single-leg workouts to build stability and control.
A typical uphill interval session looked like this –
5*5’ uphill done at closed to threshold effort with 1’ RIB
5’ recovery jog
5*5’ uphill with 1’ RIB
Another one close to the race day
5*4’ at over reaching threshold effort with 2’ rest in between.
All of this training, along with the base work leading into the month, helped me put my best foot forward on race day. However, I do acknowledge that this was not enough because I fell short of my target.
I believe, I should have included long progressive runs to build better fatigue resistance. The uphill intervals did move the needle to an extent, but there’s definitely room for improvement.
The Challenges
Apart from the frequent office travel to a different city, there were no major road blocks in March. Of course, family commitments are part and parcel of the routine and can’t be set aside entirely. I do my best to ignore them, though a few still manage to find their way onto my plate.
I haven’t written about my race experience, but I have shared my race day thoughts here.
Month 7 – April
Month 7 kicked off with a recovery week giving me some time to reset, before gradually building toward the first major race of the season, the Sinhagad Epic Trail 42K. Along the way, I will be doing Mawla Ghati, 25KM as well.
From 6th April onward, I started building mileage and elevation again. This time, I’ve also been keeping a close eye on the time invested in strength training, making sure it doesn’t take a back seat.
Training Highlight – Month 7
Strength Training – Started with regular body weight exercises and moved to Plyometrics. I’ve also incorporated resistance band work to target specific muscle groups. I’ve been sharing these sessions on my YouTube channel as well—feel free to check them out, you will find something useful there.
- From the third week of the month 7, I began adding longer easy runs, along with two trail sessions each week
- I’ve kept one hard session per week for now, with plans to introduce longer intervals and progressive runs as things progress.
The coming month will lean more toward effort-based training because I do not have any device to track load and intensity. This should be fun!
See you next month.
