Ahem, I would like to start by apologising to anyone who was reading this blog regularly. As it's been three months since I last updated this, I guess most of you have since gotten bored and wandered off. Not that I blame you, as it has been a while.
So what have I been up to instead? Trekking across the mountains, learning the art of inner peace, just drinking lots of beer? Sadly, none of these things have been happening. I've mainly been lacking in motivation due to the relationship spilt and subsequent house move that I have been through. That's about it really. There's been no fan fares, no really world ending stuff going on. But there has been a lack of willing. I'm glad to say that that has recently changed.
In the interval between the my previous update and this one, I've only really been out for a few runs. 4 in May and none in the first two weeks of June.
Times, as is it's want, goes by. And this time, Time has flown by. So much so, that the far distant Great North Run, a half marathon that takes place in Newcastle and South Shields, is now less than three months away! I know this because they are wise enough to know that many people enter into such things with the promise that they will be training and ready in time. And many of those people then get the e-mail saying "There's three months to go, here's a training plan" and then panic as there's no way, no way at all, that there's only three months to go?!
So off I went, following a prompt from Hannah, to the PC to have a look at my training plan. There are four levels of plan: from the run/walk for total beginners to get you round, beginner/novice, improver and then up to the challenger level. I decided to have a look at the improver and challenger options. The improver one looked a bit easier than I had expected, and the challenger one seemed like it would be a push up from where I was last. Note, not where I was at the time!
Having had a chat with Hannah, we decided that we really needed to be doing the same plan, as one of us (her) training harder than the other (me) was a bit daft. So the challenger plan it was! With this in mind, I printed the plan off so that I had something akin to a running calendar which I could have a look at and see what I had done and what was coming up next. The challenger plan would involve a bit of a change in focus, ie from hardly running to running 4 times a week.
Only thing is, as I sit here now looking at the plan, and putting dates on it so I know where I am, I realised that I have been duped. I started my 12 week plan with 13 weeks to go! However, this is no bad thing as it means I have an extra week to train. It also means that I had one week less than I thought away from running so my fitness didn't drop quite as far as it might have done. Oh, and I now need to print off a new training plan.
The plan is a bit of challenge, but less so than I had feared. Some of the marathon plans have you doing something just about every day, and varied things as well. Which is all well and good if you live at the gym, but I don't. I like beer and ice cream and not being in the gym. I will happily road or cross country run, but I refuse to do anything on a tread mill. The plan has Monday as a rest day, which is a good way to start the week, Tuesdays are usually a 35 min easy run, Saturdays a 25 min run, which is ideal for Park Runners. Sundays are big run day and Thursday are the changeable day. Most are interval training, hard short runs with recovery times, or longer steady pace runs. For me, long runs on a Sunday are a problem so that has had to alter. As Hannah's running club, the Cherwell Runners and Joggers run on a Tuesday at 6 and 7 pm, this gives an ideal day to do a long run. The 6pm run is usually 4.7km for beginners and the 7pm run varies according to who is there and how far or fast you want to go. This gives good opportunity to push either pace or distance with a group, as I still can't pace myself well. I'm getting better, but it's not something I'm good at.
So with my plan in mind, I set about finding a local route that should take me about 35 mins, and a way to shorten it to 25 mins. As I don't like running round the village very much when there's plenty of light, I found a route round the local lanes that would suffice. It also has a roughly kilometre long climb in it, so that will help with the training in general. As much as no-one really likes hill running, it does wonders for fitness. The first time I did this run it took me 32:55 to get round the 5.5km, an average pace of 5:53/km. Maintaining this pace would give a half marathon time of approximately 1:58, which is below the target time of 2 hours dead. This is good, as it's my usual easy run pace and I feel quite comfortable at that pace too. I doubt I will agree at the end of a half marathon though!
Then came Tuesday, and the chance to do a big run. I was a bit nervous about this, as I hadn't run any sort of distance since the Wolf Run and not in one go since March! But off we set at a nice, steady pace. It was only at about the 2.5km mark that it was announced that we were going to be doing "probably 11km, maybe 12"! It had been more than 3 months since I'd managed that, but the group is a good one so everyone gets encouraged along and no-one is left behind struggling. The run went much better than I had thought it would in the end! It was a bit hillier than I had expected, and really warm, so managing the distance and the hills was a good confidence boost as I knew I could still do it. It's also good to know that Hannah still hates hills more than I do too! It was much more than the training plan called for, but I guess that's no bad thing.Week one's long run was only meant to be 50 mins, but we were out for 1hr 10 in the end! The pace was a steady one, at 6:30 over 10.8km, not bad for the conditions and those in the group.
Thursday was another 35 min run, so I decided to use the same route as before. This time it only took 32:15, not a massive improvement but not bad at all for 7 days either!
As Saturday's are a 25 min run, I decided to use much the same route as the 35 min runs, but with a bit snipped off either end to give a 4.7km run, roughly the same as the 6pm run with Cherwell. The hill is still there, but I now stop at the village shop so I can get some bacon for breakfast on the way home. This also gives a gentle stroll back to the house so I can cool down slowly too. The run took 28 min dead, giving a pace of 5:58/km
As Sunday was Father's Day, I gave myself the day off as a present and went to see my son instead.
But then Tuesday came round again. I had a dentist appointment at 5.20, which is rather close to the 6pm run time, but way before the 7pm long run I'm meant to do. Being a bit of a masochist, I decided to go and do the 6pm run, see how I feel about things and then maybe do the 7pm too! The 6pm run went well, if a little gently. As I was looking at doing the later run too, this was fine with me! The run still only took 28:33, so a not bad pace of 6:09/km. And then came 7pm. There were enough people for three groups this time. One being the fast blokes. These guys run a lot, and some can boast sub 3 hr marathon times. So not the group for me! The second is the regular women runners, again these girls can go some with a couple being recent Iron Man finishers. That leaves everyone else really! The last groups is mixed and was more joggers than runners this week. We opted for a slightly shorter version of the 11km route that we went on the week before, only we took about the same amount of time to do 9.4km, giving a pace of 7:25/km. If I'm honest, I could have done with going a bit quicker, but it gave me a chance to chat with the others at the top of the hills whilst those who were happy with the slower pace followed on. Equally, if I'd gone along with the more regular women, I would've struggled as they came back 10 mins or so after us but had done just shy of 9 miles, or roughly 14km! That would have meant going at 5:45/km, which isn't loads faster than where I am now, but doing both runs would then have been a bit much for me. As it was I'd managed 14 km, very nearly the farthest I've ever run. This week I will just do the 7pm run I think and see if I can push things in a more focused way.
Thursday was then my first go at interval training. The basic idea is that you run at a higher pace for a short time, 6 mins in this case at 10k to half marathon pace, then walk or jog to recover for 2.5 mins. Sounds simple right? It's only 18 mins of running, after all! Or at least, it might be if I had warmed up a bit more and had a clue what pace I was running at! Having done a bit of a jog as a warm up, and not really the 10 mins the plan suggests, I sent off for my first 6 min interval. I later discovered I set off at 4:00/km, and that's a bit much, especially when trying to go up hill. By the time I got to 5 mins I was stating to really flag. I cut the time down to 5 mins as I clearly wasn't doing this right! I did stick to the 2.5min recovery period and then set back off down the hill, again going too fast to start with, with my pace dropping to 4:30/km at one point. After 5 mins, I had to cut it back to the recovery again. The final run was more even, partly I suspect as I'd made it back into the village at this point, where it's flatter. I was still pushing 5:00/km though, so both good and bad. Having done my first go, and buggered it up, I was feeling rather hot! I can certainly see how interval training works, as it felt like I was sweating more in the 18 mins than I had all of Tuesday. I expect I'll do better next time, but having a way of live tracking my pace is needed to do it properly. So I guess I'll be buying a running watch after all, as my iPhone just won't cut it.
The weekend just gone had no running in it at all. Saturday I ended up busy and doing other things, but Sunday wasn't a total loss as a group of us went to GoApe to celebrate Hannah turning 30 again. It was good to do a different and fun form of exercise, as well as the exhilaration of zip wires.
As I will be running more regularly from now on, I probably won't be updating this after every run, but more like a weekly update. Unless something happens that warrants an update of course! If my legs drop off, I might just mention it.
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