It’s week 15…. or week eeeeep!…. and I’m surprised by how calm I’m feeling. I truly was expecting to be more stressed. I’m tapering – which means running in short, sharp bursts – and resting. Marathon day is a mere 10 days away, and I’m feeling….. well. I’m feeling ready. I had a little worry,…
Category: Progress
Putting in the work
I’m going to write this today, before whatever’s going to happen tomorrow happens. The knee is improving – not quite better yet; it still doesn’t function well as a spring or a pivot, but provided all it’s asked to do is hinge the big bones in my leg, it’s fine. Unseen bumps in the road,…
You’ve never had it so good…
Yeah, well I see now that I’d more or less jinxed this marathon training malarkey. It was all too easy – I didn’t get ill, I didn’t skip sessions (well. Two sessions. But that’s pretty good going), I didn’t hurt myself early on when the miles were building. I let myself off too early, a…
Injury bench
There’s not much to say, this week. My knee hasn’t recovered from Silverstone, and I’ve spent most of the week with it heavily strapped, swearing colourfully as I descend every staircase… I haven’t been alone. One of my dogs has been very severely ill, for the last week and a half. He had horrible diarrhoea…
Silverstone Half Marathon
So. I just ran my first official half marathon. Round the F1 race track at Silverstone! Which should be pretty awesome, and the bling was certainly impressive, but let’s get the negatives out of the way… As it turns out, running round a race track is not the most interesting way to spend a lunchtime…
Swearing allowed…
Well. It seems I didn’t update on last week – perhaps because it was difficult to pull out positives… The week began with a set of two 25 minute threshold intervals. I set out to do them before work on Tuesday morning, in Oxford. Sadly, the traffic prevailed and I arrived at work without an hour…
Ooops
I missed a weekend update. Which is a shame, because it was actually a bloomin’ good weekend, from a training and pretty much an every other point of view… I took myself into Oxford on Saturday morning, with the intention of running the route of the Oxford Half Marathon. My training plan said 140 minutes,…
Roaring into the wind
It’s been a funny old week; heralded in by a storm pulling half the guttering off the front of the house which woke us up at 4am, and see-sawed its way into a migraine-filled, dehydrated, wakeful dawn. Heralded out by winds and rain and my longest ever long run… The migraine knocked my training out….
Gold stars
One of the best ideas from the training session at The Alzheimer’s Society in London, a couple of weeks ago, was to end every week by pulling out three positives. That way, the thinking goes, when you’re approaching the big day and full of the maranoia, you can look back over your training journal and…
Clucking Hills!
I bumped into my neighbour, last night. She’s a lovely woman; we always have a giggle. Anyway, a while ago she agreed to run the Silverstone Half Marathon with me, in March, and we’ve been meaning to train together ever since…. Even better, I’ve been desperate to find someone to do my hill intervals with;…
Reflect. Refocus.
Well a PB isn’t a bad place to start the New Year. It’s a PB by one single, solitary second but a PB nonetheless. I set out this morning for my first long, slow run of the programme. The target was 60 minutes – not a stretch, by any means. I’m comfortable running for an…
Running through Christmas
It’s a funny thing, Christmas. No matter how disciplined you are normally, no matter how much your body is a temple and your training routine is sacrosanct, Christmas is a time to indulge. The key to Christmas, in my experience, is to give yourself permission for that indulgence. Don’t get the guilts because you drank…
Running Between The Water Stations 