Early March
At the end of the last report I wanted to go on a short run and then a long run to finish that weekend off, after missing a few sessions earlier in the week. I can confirm this didn’t go well. After work last Saturday I attempted the 6km run to Finsbury Park – only to bottle it just over half way due to previous nights endeavours with old friends until late hours. Then followed Robbo’s 30th in the evening, which fully wrote off all plans to get out and ticket off 25km on Sunday. Bad start to the week
The rest of the week went well, I added sessions that I had expected to miss, including getting back into swimming classes, a catch up with friends on the Tuesday was planned and achieved. This was only for my fancy Garmin watch to inform me during my struggles on Wednesday’s 10km run that my recovery status was good. Now that’s a fair point Garmin, but you weren’t taking in my alcohol intake over the previous 4 days and I can tell you my recovery was not good.
Friday I introduced myself to a new session – hill training. This is exactly what it sounds like, I dragged myself to Primrose Hill, ran up and down it 7 times and then to Kings Cross. Positive start, felt good. Happy me. Sundays run was the important one – I targetted 25km and wanted to see what pace I could achieve this at. I finished the run tired, but ecstatic. 25km ran at 4.38 mins/km, which is pretty much my target marathon pace. Happy days.
This week was always going to be a bit off, Monday was spent travelling to Manchester and watching the Arsenal dismiss Man U out of the cup, followed by copious drinking until silly o’clock, very little sleep and then the journey home. Not good for my body, all that sitting and drinking. The next milestone is 30km, to attack this Sunday with Alex. Alex has recently rediscovered his love for running that he had as a teenager, and is making me look very slow. So Sunday could be the day that he realises he isn’t quite able to keep his rapid pace for 20 miles, or the day that I collapse by trying to keep up with his pace.
In the next few weeks I’ll introduce Interval training into my regime. This will be based on what most people consider the ideal stats for marathon running. Running can be measured in many ways, but with my fancy watch, I get to discover what my cadence is. With my runs (half marathon, 25km, 10km – whatever distance) I am always averaging between 165-168. The apparent ideal marathon cadence is 180. This means that for 5 minute intervals, I shall run at 180 cadence, with 3 minutes jogging along at a recovery pace. Repeat 5 times, get home, get in a cold bath and hope that I am not in agony in the morning.
I realise this has been a lot of uneventful text, but hopefully after Sundays run I shall be able to give you a bit more analysis about my progress towards my target marathon time of 3.15 and the training shall be less missed. On a final note, this Friday is my final day drinking until July 19th (Zurich Ironman finish line). That’s 127 days without drinking. I’m not counting. Honest.