Having agreed to run a gentle session with colleague Adam I was up early and heading to Holborn for 745. He wanted a 7mile session and at a 9:30-9:45 which seemed perfect to me as I knew that Tuesdays run was tough.

When I woke up I instantaneously felt some weakness in my right ankle I suspected today’s run was going to be a bit painful but as I knew it was to be quite gentle I went for it anyway. The run went quite well other than the pain in my ankle, was a bit wet but becoming used to that at the moment. It was nice to run down the river and with company, it’s been an odd couple of weeks as I have had someone to run with for all of my sessions – perfect!

I am now slightly concerned about my ankle, writing this blog 8 hours or so after running it’s still a bit achey, Sports Clinic Chris recommends it maybe worth seeing a physio which I will think about (I can claim if back on healthcare I guess!). This niggle follows a conversation over dinner where Laura talked about how I seem lucky to not get injuries….tempting fate!

May hold back on my Thursday run, may look at what I should have done this week and do one of those on a treadmill but if my ankle is still bad prob best to keep off it for another day or so.

Till next time.

N

Once again I opted to meetup with Neil and run from his work to Liverpool St and once again I reached the desination in a pretty bad state!

Fortunately the rain had stopped for us this week but Hyde Park was still full of puddles to avoid. Setting off from work at a reasonable warmup pace, still pushing a bit I got to Knightsbridge with an average of 8:40M, this was soon to change!

Judging from my garmin about 2mins after meeting Neil my heart rate started to climb and remain constantly high till the end. We hit consecutive 8min miles or less until one my from the end about 8.5 miles in for me where due to the desperate need for the toilet my pace dropped to an 8:40. Looking at the data even in a week my ability has improved and Sundays long run certainly seemed to have helped that.

These threshold runs are what I was missing from my schedule, someone to push me harder than I would normally go. It is evident that my body can do it yet on my own I give up to early, clearly a weakness of mine!

Thanks to Neil, I’m sure I slow him down so hope these are at least of some use to him and not just helpful to me!

Is anyone else planning on running this on Sunday? Just wondered whether to look out for any other Havens Runners?

The weekend saw two contrasting days of weather. Awaking on Saturday to a blue sky and the sun out (still cold!) I relished the opportunity to get out and go for a run. Saturdays run is only a short run at slow pace and I did a 5M loop up to my old school and back, used my new trainers again to try bed them in a little more as I’m not sure my other trainers will see me through to the big day.

The run was great, no issues and nice to be able to run with the sun in my eyes – makes a pleasant change to the previous runs I have done recently.

Sunday, on the other hand, was the opposite. Heading down to Southend to participate in a training run, I had to wake early and was greeted with rain hitting the windows and the hum of wind circling the building – perfect!

Leaving the house at 730 was a challenge, especially having had to rat and prepare for the 16 miler I was planning to do but eventually got out. My lovely girlfriend, perhaps foolishly, offered to get up early on her last day off and drive me down there so I got to ‘relax’ on the journey down.

As mentioned the plan was to do 16M, looking at the schedule this was to be done in 2hours 30 (a 9:20 pace) this was not going to be the case today it became clear fairly soon. Making the most of running with company I latched onto the shoulder of Neil D and another runner Ian, they had said they hoped to run at 8:30 also, after running about 4M I also found out they were going to do 18M rather than 16M.

11M into the run still maintaining a sub 8:30 pace I finally started to flag, clearly my body isn’t up for that quite yet- I dropped down and did a mile at 8:45 but then managed to get back to 8:30 for the final half marathon mile. Managed to run the 13.1M in 1:49:57 I think it was which considering I could still chat and wasn’t completely passed out I was pretty damn happy with. That said from 13 on things went downhill pretty badly, possibly because I was on my own my legs became lethargic and I slowed down.

I decided to call it a day at 16, my body didn’t need the extra few miles of which one of was all uphill. I wanted to be able to train again on Tuesday and didn’t want to risk injury. I had to get a lift back to the hospice but managed another rather slow mile to bring my total to 17M in 2:25 of which I’m thoroughly happy with 15ish – considering the final two miles were poor I still averaged an 8:37 run!

One of the things I’m going to have to work on is my pacing – there is no point running a 1hr50 half and then not being able to run the second half!

Cheers to all the chaps I ran with on Sunday, makes a change to get pushed which is brilliant!

Till next time.

N

Just before the 2008 I set up this blog to follow my training and push people towards my sponsorship pages. Back then I thought some people may find it enjoyable to follow my ups (and many downs) and learn a bit from it (I was also hopeful that people would get over the poor spelling, punctuation and grammar!) Over a year later I’m running the marathon again and still blogging – and hey here’s a new link to my sponsorship page of 2010…

Anyway for many months I suspect the readership of the blog was minimal, a few cursory glances but that’s about it, however in September 09 I published a blog post about my weight loss and general health. From being the kid in school who would use almost any excuse to get out of running I was now doing it of my free will and enjoying it! Just last week I was talking to a school mate and his brother (who is still at Forest – my old Secondary School) whilst out on my 4M warm up jog and said I bet if you told the teachers who you went out for a run with this morning they wouldn’t believe it – that’s if they remembered me! Anyway, I spammed that post over face book and Twitter and it actually got read a few times and it appears there is at least one person who read it and took notice of it.

A school mate is about to embark on a 50k trek and as is typical for every sponsored event I got the obligatory ‘Facebook Sponsor Me’ email. I had a squint as to what it was as it didn’t look like the typical race for life one plus it had a silly name! Anyway the challenge looked cool so I emailed saying I’d send money and he replied that day saying I had been a bit of an inspiration to him – he had read some of my blogs, gone out and bought a nike+ and was now running and had roped in more and more. How cool is that!

I don’t think he is alone in picking up running because of me, I’m pretty certain a number of my uni friends took seeing me run that 26 miles and realised that running is possible for anyone, I ran a 10k last summer with mates who I never expected and know there are others running 10ks this year too. I think people see what I was and think well if he can do it so can I.

I love the fact others are running and that maybe I have been an inspiration for them, I would love to reach out to others too and help get them the confidence to put a pair of trainers on and go for a run of any distance!

Keep running and this time next year it maybe you training for the marathon!

N

ps please feel free to comment on this post – would be great to know who has read this all the way to the end

Wednesday was to mark my first run with a combined work group for some while. It was nice to get out with the chaps as it provides a nice break from solo running, accompanying me on my run was Ad, Dan and Darren. The pace was to be quite slow which I was happy with there was chatter of 930 pace before leaving and I was down to run just short of 6M which was perfect for my schedule. Following a relatively slow start the pace soon crept up and I think by the end we were running a 9:10 ish average, which, following Tuesdays run felt quite refreshing

Thursday morning I met up with another colleague who wanted to do a Fartlek session as it turns out I think we only ended up doing a couple of sprints as he was complaining of calve issues so we slowed the pace to a 9:10 ish and ran the remaining mile or so slow. Possibly not the most helpful session to my training today but it was still some more leg miles in the bank. I did miss out on my hill session this week which isn’t ideal but nevermind – can’t have everything and to run with company is so much more enjoyable.

Rest day tomorrow I believe although may take some kit and do some core work in the gym…may

N

So yesterday was the first opportunity since starting training to meet up with another HavensRunner (Neil Dobson) and as he is a faster runner than me I was looking forward to doing a session at a slightly quicker pace. Before meeting up we had chatted about the pace I was looking to do and I’d asked to try run it at an 8:30 pace which should see me complete a sub 4 hour Mara.

He works about 2.5Miles from where I do so I opted to do a warmup on the run over to him and then follow it up with a faster run from Knightsbridge to Liv St where both of us would part, him back to Southend and me to Woodford.

From my watch it looks like the warmup was at the 830 pace I was after following that my intentions for a sub 830 were certainly achieved…

So pretty much straight away I realised this wasn’t going to be the run I’m used to, the weather was shocking the route was (in place) water logged so much so that my shoes are now out of service for today and also Neil is a lot quicker than me! Looking at the stats, we were a lot closer to 8min Miles than 830 which is incredible – that’s not to say I could maintain it as it was apparent in the final mile or so my speed was dropping but even during that mile it was an 8:20 which I cant grumble about.

My watch reported me as having covered 10M in 1h25 which includes waiting around at Knightsbridge to meet Neil. I was shattered as we got to the station but adrenaline was certainly up – ready for the next one now!
Mile Split
1 00:08:36
2 00:08:25
3 00:08:32
4 00:10:49
5 00:08:09
6 00:08:14
7 00:08:25
8 00:07:52
9 00:08:21
10 00:07:35

Slightly slower pace eve sesh with some colleagues today…

This weekend is possibly one of the first weekends since before Xmas where we had no concrete plans and intended on doing very little, mainly catching up on the hours of stuff we have sitting on the Sky+. This lack of plans made getting out for a run on both days pretty easy…

On Saturday I went out for a 4mile jog with a school mate and his brother. I thought it wouldn’t be a problem for my mate as he is always playing squash, cricket, hockey etc. Evidently, his body is cut out for short sharp sprints with recovery sessions and not longer slower runs. Anyway, 40mins later, I was running with his brother as we had been told to go on by my mate…hope he joins me again before the Mara – in 9 weeks if he wants he could get to half mara distance but 4M will do me Having company made the run fly by and the normal feeling of it being a pointless run didn’t seem to hold true today!

On Sunday I was scheduled to do a 14M run, I didn’t really fancy heading into London so opted for a local course using one of my dads routes as the main chunk of it. Not being in London this route is hilly! Heading into Loughton I started to make my way towards the roundabout at Epping but the final road aptly named ‘Goldings Hill’ got the better of me and as it was only going to be a turnaround point I stopped halfway and headed back on my way. » Continue reading “W6 D4&5 Warmup and long slow run”

According to the schedule today was a 4M brisk run working out at a pace of ~11.3km/h. I’m not to sure what brisk really means, should I be able to talk? Anyway, treadmill set to my current base rate of 12km/h I ran the 6.4kms without any real issues and suspect I could possibly just hold a conversation at that pace.

Rest day tomorrow which is cool, think I may target the hills for Saturdays short run although plans may change with that and Sundays long run may have to be moved to Sat because of what day it is…

Till next time

N

I’m going to try my best to make weds morning a run to work session. At the moment my long slow run is 14M and I did 13.1 today but stopped a couple of miles short of work.

The run went pretty well, I picked up the pace from normal and came in at 2hours but didn’t feel knackered at the end which is promising, still feel I have a long way to go to drop effectively a minute off a mile but will carry on training and see what happens! Got caught in a snow storm which wasn’t so great but fortunately didn’t last to long! My pace dropped a fair bit at around 7M I’m not sure whether this coincides with hitting busier pavements around London, guess it would make sense but I didn’t feel myself slowing down when I clearly was
» Continue reading “W6 D2 Long run to work…”