London Marathon Training Week 1...

I'll try to be less than utterly boring for the next 14 weeks, but a plan has been drawn up.  A plan has been printed off.  A plan has been stored on every electronic device I have.

A plan to be followed as closely as possible, but with the experience of many runs to guide those weeks which don't go to plan.  I will get a niggle, I may get an injury, I will have a bad week or two... And I know I will probably get through them, with a smile and a grimace and line up in London.

So what was this week... a 10km, a 5 mile technical run (more in a bit) and the first Long Slow Run (LSR).

The 10km was first thing in the morning, and the 5 miler was delayed from the strict plan by 24 hours (come on, it was meant to be run on 1st Jan!!).  Which does make the days in the office long and coffee reliant.  So my plan is to shuffle the timings to give me an easier start to the day, most of the time.  The Sunday LSRs I'll aim to run out at roughly race time (again, I'm not fixed on this but it has a nice feel to it).

So, what's this technical run thing?  Other years I've just concentrated on distance and belted along as fast as I felt I could... This time I'm going to try and follow the plan, in shape of runs if not always the pace.  So the 5 mile tempo has a slow couple of KM warm up, followed by 5km at pace, followed by a 1km at warm up pace.  Simple really...

At the moment, I know I need to remember how to run continuously, so I'm doing 800m running and 200m walking for slow runs, and 900m/100m for the tempo.  With those splits it's probably more a head thing than a body thing, especially the 900m/100m.  But time will take me back up to running continuously, and I'm not worried it's where I started off and I'm a lot fitter now than then:-)

The LSR started at 800m/200m and then after 11km I picked it up to 900km/100km - and the last couple of KM are uphill.  Yes, I may be considered a hard taskmaster, but I'm an absolute bastard to myself.

The outcome, well 10 miles isn't a distance I run very often. But I'll take only the second time I've run sub-2h and a 30s PB as a good sign.  Who am I kidding - I'm seriously chuffed. 





Next week, its another new technical run - speedwork - which seems to be warm up, run at full pelt for a mile, half a mile recovery jog, another balls to the wall mile and then cool down... As that'll be an lunchtime, it'll be followed by a career review with my boss.  The LSR is 12 miles, so a little bit further out and a little bit further back...

The countdown to London has begun, and the Fellsman entered... So 2014's running and walking challenged have begun in earnest!

TTFN

Paul

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