Laura was out for the day at an event held by Liz Yelling. After a morning of household DIY involving undercoating 4 doors whilst it was glorious outside, I donned my shorts and grabbed my Oakleys and headed into town.

Dumping my kitbag in Baker St gym I set off towards Regents Park after a lap of the outer circle I headed inwards to try find ‘The Hub’ where Laura was. I failed miserably with that running around the inner inner circle numerous times – eventually after revisiting the same ‘You are here’ maps about 5 times I gave up – tracked back to the outer circle and came in after London Zoo. I wasn’t overly bothered about times or distance today so when in the corner of my eye I saw three Giraffes I got my phone out and snapped away, a rarity for me!!

Plodding onwards I eventually found The Hub then left Regents for Hyde Park. I was trying out my new camelbak waist belt with water carrier so had plenty of fluid with me today which was fortunate as it was so toasty!!

One lap of Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens eventually took it out of me. I struggled today much more than a number of sub 13miles which I have done. I can put this down to the heat and to an extent poor fueling before I started. Whilst I did take on an energy drink I didn’t each much which left me feeling quite weak by the end.

If I’m totally honest though I wasn’t too bothered. I managed a reasonably long run in the heat on the back of a 7/6/4 day meaning in 4 consecutive days I ran just under 30miles injury free.

Spinning day on Monday which I’m looking forward too as always then swim Tuesday, Serps Wednesday…Lets hope the sun stays out so I can possibly get another run in somewhere, maybe Tuesday lunchtime…

Till next time

Thurs morn was listed as a 9miler which I decided to do as a morn run towards work. Having pre-arranged giving my bag to my dad so the run was from home-ox circus. The run checked in at 11 miles and before starting for some reason I always thought it was going to be less, even though I have already run it a number of time. My run time was good, was deliberately trying to slow my pace down to race pace but was still up on that. Think I averaged 8:36 (race pace is looking to be sub 9). Calves felt a little tight at the end and on the whole my body fealt a bit tired but all good miles and it wasn’t a race!

Think on Saturdays long run I’m going to look at the heart rate function of my watch and set it to force me to run based on that as it may slow me down a bit, will spend some time looking at my garmin data to work out a race pace heart rate. Need to invest some time pacing myself and ensuring I don’t end up overdoing the first half.

As I just said, Saturday marks an 18miler, shifted from the normal Sunday run this is because for some reason I decided to enter the ‘Newham 10k’. It turns out this is completely unhelpful for my schedule but it’s local and I get to see and run round the 2012 Olympic Park which should be cool. Don’t intend on coming close to my pb on that as it is really going to be a recovery run following Saturdays long slow run.

Rest day tomorrow, wooo

N

I think I have the early symptoms of a mild cold as recently I have struggled to sleep and suffering from some aches, a runny nose and other ailments associated with a cold and today was no different. Following a poor night sleep I still got up and ready as I didn’t want to miss a run even if I didn’t completely do the distance. The run was really tough, for such a slow speed I was feeling tired and getting aches in places I don’t remember experiencing before. Hopefully, a good night sleep tonight coupled with some fruit maybe my savior as I suspect with my skiing hol next week if I follow the schedule I won’t have a rest day until Sunday – not ideal.

Tomorrows run is my interval day which should push and challenge me if my body is up for it! At the moment I’m spending a lot of time on the treadmills which I’m not really enjoying but the pavements around home are far too treacherous to go out on – not the best start to the training schedule!

As an aside, after my skiing I think I will spend some time focusing on my diet, increasing the amount of fruit and veg I intake as well as cutting out the chocs and sweets, the problem is the sweet cupboard is still fairly full from Xmas so may need to palm that off to others soon – any takers?

That’s it for now until tomorrows run – 1.5m fast intervals…

Having faffed a little and had a relatively long lie in (for me) I didn’t manage to get out the door until about 11am. At this point the demons were already telling me not to bother but fortunately I had the willpower to ignore those ones. Having barely made it to the bottom of the road I knew instantly today was going to be hot (well hot for England anyway) and stuffy and at this point I was trying to work out how I could cut my run short thinking things like “maybe I’ll just do 5km – it doesn’t really matter how far I go anyway, I’m not really working towards anything”.

The route I chose was the much flatter Longfield track along 1 road and then turning back on myself. I ran it once during my marathon training and remember thinking it was a little dull and not quite as flat as you would expect it to be. However, it was this or the hill route of last week an for some reason that route really wasn’t appealing to me that morning.

I got to 4km a couple of km’s short of where I turned on my last attempt and decided that that would be a good turning point. I could add a km at the other end easily taking the run up to a currently respectable 9km and what’s one km between friends anyway! Turning back on myself I reran exactly the same path (Ive never been a fan of tracking back on yourself I’d much rather a loop…) that said it has a little scenery including a few fields with horses, there was also a mirror on the route which provided a rather amusing annecdote but I don’t think I can do the story (or my stupidity) any justice on this blog…



There were a few runners out that morning (hopefully all thinking it was too hot!) including one chap from the ‘Dartford Road Runners’ who overtook me when I least expected it, made me think I should contact the running club in Woodford. I have always been a bit apprehensive as I don’t feel good enough to be a runner in a club but maybe they have a few slower people like yours truely that I maybe able to go out on runs with every so often?

Back at Lauras it was immediately obvious I was hot, it took me absolutely ages to cool down, not even the shower seemed to help. Have a 10km in a few weeks time, 930am start but no doubt the sun will be out, Bluewater was also v hot, blue skies no clouds and I made it round there, hopefully if I can get a bit of liquid in me and down my back to cool I should be able to charge round…

I have done this route once before, last time I only did the uphill stage and got a lift back, this time I was going to do both stages, after all the down should be the easier part! After a 3.5k incline (first 1.5k high gradient) I reached the summit At this point I decided that I would run this as a 10k so added a loop at the top (and at the bottom).



The run itself was fairly non-descript, no amusing things to keep me entertained, saw a number of other runners and walkers out and about. I assume this was because the weather was fairly pleasant and this was further demonstrated by how sweaty my t-shirt was when I got back.

Glad I did the run as it made me feel less guilty about the 2 barbecues I was about to have that day! Going to try be a bit more self-motivated this week. Under a month till the London 10k and with a sub 48min possible I’m certainly not going to get this by being so lazy. I suspect it’s also time to prob start thinking about the next run as come mid July I have nothing to train for which will feel slightly odd!

Whilst in my hay day when training for the marathon I may have taken this opportunity for a run home but aware that the distance hadn’t been covered for a few months and also the knowledge that if I ran home on one of the strike days I would still have to get back again, I decided this wasn’t an option. Instead I decided that Victoria station was a manageable distance from work at 4/5 Miles depending on the route so I would run there and head back to Laura’s which required an over ground train so all was fine.

It’s funny how my running has subsided over recent months, it was clearly obvious after the morning run (run no 2) that long gone were the days where I could put in multiple runs in a short span and still do fine. I’m not going to lie by run number 4 in 36hs I really struggled. A 6k ish run suddenly was really hard. I think that it may have been a case of lack of energy amongst other things but regardless it was a tough run.

There were certainly some pro’s to these few days above and beyond the general fitness benefits. I added to my knowledge of the geography of London, suddenly I knew where shepherd bush is in relation to Victoria and hence now having done London running for my marathon training I now know my way in a fairly straight line between a number of points of the city! This is a great thing to know, it means that if for some reason I can’t get a tube I am able to realistically determine where I can get to from a number of places in the center and the East.

It has been a tough few days of running and with an iminent run in the Bluewater 10k on Sunday this week has been a lot more intense than I had ever intended, it actually felt like one of the busier Marathon training weeks….odd, i’m not sure whether I enjoyed it or not! Sometimes I wonder why I do it! Then I book another run or read a blog/book about how others have enjoyed some event and i’m applying and hooked all over again…

The Niketown run is nothing new for me ( to any of you who subscribed to my marathon blog apologies for the repetition) however I think it’s probably a good time to advertise the concept again – not that it is under subscribed! If you head over to the nikeplus site make sure you are on the UK site (union jack on the bottom right), then click community, niketown runners, sign up (free) select your preference 3/4/7 miles then turn up at NikeTown Oxford Circus at 6:15 Monday(for girls) / Tuesday night ready to run! I will also make in the next few posts a conceited effort to write a review of my Nike+. If you want to go for a free run on a weeknight it’s a good wheez in my humble opinion.

This week I opted for a seven miler and had the previously rare benefit of having a running buddy. Soo, who is also doing the 10k in July decided he would join me for my first lap. I really enjoy running with others as it tends to push me a bit more, I’m a bloke hence I’m naturally competitive. Anyway we set off and the pace creeps up, I’m breathing fairly heavily after 3k I was aware this wasn’t going go be a gentle one. My problem is when someone drops back a bit I slow myself a bit to let them catchup but then tend to find myself speeding up when they do cause I feel like I’ve dropped too much, viscious circle. After the first lap Soo dropped off and headed back to the shop, by this point I was aware that it was going to be a fast one realising we had put in some 4:35min kms. I knew I wouldn’t be able to maintain the same pace on my own on the second lap but endeveaoured to stay at a faster than 5:00 km pace which it turns out from looking at my garmin data I managed.

Over the next few blogs I really want to pull out some info from both my watch and my nikeplus to embedd on the right and in posts. There is some really cool stuff including heart rate / pace info which I don’t feel the way garmin presents it does it much justice. I think I have found some graphing software that looks good and a way of extracting the info so hopefully it should all fall into place a lot better!

I don’t know Greenwich at all or to be honest any of that part of the course, fortunately however Laura’s dad volunteered to get his bike out and ride alongside me. At 1030 on a dull and wet Good Friday we were all set to go, stood in Blackheath Common.

Perhaps much like the second half of the route there are long areas of dullish and scenery-less roads, it is also very flat which is nice! The only hill I really encountered was on a street aptly names “Hillreach” a few miles in but following that it descended again and remained flat.

After a few detours off the route, to avoid a busy Cutty Sark area and also a one-way road system that Martin could not go down on his bike we arrived at Surrey Quays, unfortunately having missed the earlier right and thus the extra 2mile loop. After 10 miles I decided it was fine to call it a day, my legs were fine I had energy in me and all was promising. Just another 25 mins and I would be at Tower Bridge and heading over for the second half I did last week…

See below the route I took. This will most likely be the last route I publish before the big day as baring a NikeTown Run which is already featured I wont be doing many more street runs.





Only wanted to run a mid-distance today as my plan is to run to work on Tuesday hence doing my long run then. Went back to one of the ‘old routes’, this is my dads running route – just over 7miles which is fairly hilly. The first time I ran I hated it with a passion, now its not too bad.

The run went really well, really enjoyed the sun being out – it makes a massive difference to moral. Much like tuesdays run, today was a real moral boost – just what I needed.

Now its time to take the afternoon off, and relax in preparation for Tuesday….



This run for me was somewhat pivotal, having struggled on Sunday on the half marathon I was a little bit low, doubts were starting to set in my mind – am I taking on too much, will I manage to get round this course….?

Well the run went pretty well. Did it in a really great time, fealt like I had plenty of energy left after 7 miles, bring on my next run!



Neil