Update — Change of Plan
A small pivot in the plan.
The target race,the Synesis Half Marathon Night run – 5k, tunr out to be a bust, the 5 was actually just 2k of the lake at That Luang, which falls well short of 5km. To add insult to injury, the 5k would kick off after the 10 and 21 events so the lake loop would be a whirlpool of runners, fast and slow, and walkers
Taken together, it wasn’t an ideal setup for a proper 5k effort.
So the plan shifted. The idea was to stick with the 5K training block, run a time trial earlier on the same day, and then treat race day as something more relaxed—walking the course with the family rather than forcing a performance in less-than-ideal conditions.
Not the original plan, but we roll with the punches, which unfortunately kept coming.
Weeks 2–5 — Disrupted
Unfortunately, plan only further derailed from there.
Week 2 started with some disruption—work travel meant a missed run—but I did manage to get one solid speed session in on the wednesday. The workout was 1600 m fast followed by 5 × 300 m even faster, which I lined up with a lake segment to defend a Strava crown. i extended the effort to 1.8 km to cover the full lap and came out with a 7:28 loop (~3:58/km), putting precious seconds on what was before only a 1-second lead on the Strava leaderboard. and in the process set a new mile MP of 6:00 (3:44/km). The 300s were a bit scrappy but still landed around 3:17–3:30/km.
That’s about where things peaked.
The next day, I came down sick again, and that effectively shut the block down. I didn’t run for the rest of that week, and the following week was a slow attempt to come back—short treadmill runs building from 15 to 50 minutes—but nothing really clicked. Energy was low, and running just wasn’t coming easily.
In the end, I took another full week off.
That meant no time trial as planned, and no real attempt at the 5K fun run either. Between illness, missed sessions, and inconsistent weeks, the block never really had a chance to come together.
That said, it wasn’t a complete write-off. There were still some positives—a few Strava crowns, some decent PRs, and a strong opening 3000 m time trial that showed the speed is there when things line up.
Not the outcome I was aiming for, but a reminder that sometimes the right call is to step back rather than force a block that isn’t there.
What’s Next — Quick Turnaround
So, that brings me to the next step.
Just seven days to prepare for the Vientiane International Half Marathon the following Sunday. Not ideal, coming off a disrupted block and a couple of weeks of illness
At this point, I was wondering if I should even run the Half but figured I would just go out there with no expectation, and manage effort to not bury myself.
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