Last night’s task was to run for 45 minutes including 10 faster runs of 1 minute or more.

I managed 8 or 9 faster sessions of between 1 and 2 minutes and did the overall 5 miles a minute or so quicker than usual in 41 minutes.

The faster sessions didn’t feel too bad – though I couldn’t push it much further than the minute, and presumably the slower recover sessions took the pace back down to my average pace. Hopefully, the more I do runs like this, the more used to the faster rate I will get. Fingers crossed.

It is 2 months until the NSPCC MK Half marathon. The pack arrived yesterday, so that is a nice impetus to training. [I’m number 235 in case you’re interested.]

I must admit that 2 months seems like quite a long way away. I had it in my head that it was nearer than that, but I guess that means I’ve got another 8 or 9 weeks to prepare. If I manage to train through that it will certainly be the most prepared I’ve been for any of my half marathons so far.
I don’t know if that means I’ll run faster, or more comfortably. [Or neither.]

Well. Whose silly idea was it to enter a race in July?

It was a lovely day today and it had cooled down a bit by half-past six. Not enough though!

Today was a 75-minute run on the training plan. It wasn’t too hard, though a little warm. I managed eight miles in about 73 minutes; not the fastest, but 9-minute miles which will do for now.

 

Not a bad week all round:

5 miles on Monday;

5 miles on Wednesday;

Squash on Thursday and Friday;

5 miles on Saturday

Let’s hope I can keep it up for the next few weeks..!

After a week off, it was back to the plan this weekend.

I kept the fitness ticking over during the week with a few miles of cycling, and a hard game of squash on Friday, but no high-impact work.

A 40 minute run on Saturday, slower than usual. The dodgy leg felt reasonably OK, but still a bit painful.

60 minutes on Sunday – and it was really hard. I was really heavy-legged. I could have gone on, but it wouldn’t have been much fun. At least I’m back on the plan though. Let’s see if I can keep it up for more than a week this time.

Well, it didn’t take long for the wheels to come off… though not literally.

I was supposed to be doing a light form of Fartlek training as per the plan this evening. 10 x 1minute fast, 10 x 1 minute slow. Unfortunately, I thought I could do better than that, so I ran slowly down the hill and then quickly up it for as close to a minute as I could manage. By the fifth repetition I could only manage 50 seconds. Probably not ready for running quickly up hill yet.

I injured my leg at some time yesterday too; probably running to keep up with Rory on his bike!
It’s quite painful, so I’ll probably have to sit this week out to give it time to recover. Good timing!

Yesterday was day three of the new plan (the second run – I get rest days you see) and all going well so far.

I was actually really looking forward to the run for most of the day. That changed a bit towards 10 o’clock when I actually had to tear myself away from the comfort of the sofa and into my running kit, but the plan said I had to go, so I went. And it felt pretty good too.

I took it much more gently than on Tuesday, and it took me about 90 seconds longer.
So does that tell me that the difference between taking it easy and my usual running style is approximately 18 seconds per mile? If it does, it hardly seems to be worth all that effort does it? I mean, over 13 miles, we’re talking small beer – I can’t do the maths instantly, so I’ll type some filler while my brain works on the multiplication, ah yes, 234 seconds – less than 4 minutes. Hmmm.
Or does it tell me that my ‘usual running style’ is barely more than ‘taking it easy’ and that a few tweaks, and some proper training could result in significant time savings?
Or thirdly, does it tell me that I should be running at ‘taking it easy’ speeds in order to maintain some energy for the last few miles? In my two half marathons to date, I have maintained a steady(ish) 8min mile rate for the first two thirds of the run before tailing off very badly towards the end.

I think I’ll take the optimistic view that it is the third case, and the even more optimistic view that with a structured training plan, the speed at which I am ‘taking it easy’ will get faster and I’ll get the best of all worlds.

I downloaded a new half marathon training plan (devised by Mike Gratton, a former London Marathon winner) a while back.  He’s  got some other plans on the Runners World website too.

With only 20 weeks to go until the Great North Run, I decided last week that it is high time that I started training to a plan. Last night was the first step on that plan.

My previous training has been a bit hap-hazard, and as a result it has been easy to not bother going out one night. The hope is that by following a more structured plan, I’ll be more likely to do the miles.

The plan follows a 12 week cycle, so I’ll need to adapt it a bit, but it has four categories – “get you round”, “under 2 hours”, “under 1h 40m” and “under 1h 25m”.  I plan to follow the sub-2hr plan for the first 12 weeks, and if that goes well, I might try to do some of the sub-1:40 work in the last 8 weeks.

So. I found myself in Xscape in Milton Keynes at the weekend with an hour or so to kill.

There is a SweatShop there, so I took the opportunity to look for some new running shoes. My current pair may be less than 6 months old, but I was told that they only have a life of about 500 miles, and I’m starting to feel it in my hips and knees again.
They didn’t have many in my size, and no Asics at all (I’m pretty happy with my Cumulus 9s). They had a couple of pairs of Adidas and a pair of Nike shoes. I ended up with a pair of Adistar Ride  – the most expensive of the three (naturally).
They feel pretty good so far, but at £95 they should be in my opinion!

[That was also the first time that I have ever spent over £12 on a pair of socks. Or  indeed had a two-year guarantee on a pair of socks.]

Well.

This is getting to be a habit, this not updating the blog. I guess I thought that the dullness of my style and the lack of any interesting content would mean that no one was interested. However, it appears that I have readers. (The fact that I am in some way related to them should not be used to dampen my enthusiasm.)

I also got sucked into the Twitter fad. I know, it’s sad, but when all I use the blog for is to record my training, then 144 characters is probably enough. [You can see that I've fallen off that bandwagon too, if you look here.]

So maybe I ought to update this blog again. Maybe I can be inspired to think of something original to write once in a while, in amongst all those dry training updates.

Perhaps I’ll finally get around to backfilling some of the less dull stuff I’ve been up to in the last 4 months.

I broke 2 hours. Which is nice.

I did it in 1 hour 55 minutes 14 seconds. Results here.

It was pretty good run; the wind was a  little stronger than I would have liked – especially when we ran round Willen Lake – but it was a good flat course.
I ran the two thirds in a pretty steady 8-and-a-bit minutes per mile, but got slower in the last third. I (thought I) had enough energy left in the last mile to consider kicking on though, but as soon as I did, my hamstring cramped up, so I gave that up as a bad idea and limped over the line instead.
Still, a sub-2 hour time will do me.  11 minutes off my GNR time. What should my next target be? 1:45 or should I just be happy to get round the GNR course in under 2 hours?

 

[backfilled, a long way after the event]