Training Week 12 - Half marathon done, ...half way there

3 months gone, 3 months till the marathon, On Saturday I ran a half-marathon distance in an incredibly impressive 1hr 52 minutes, thanks much to flatmate, trainer and soon to be 3 time London marathon runner Gareth.

Unfortunately I wasn't particularly 100% during the week and only after being given the medical ok did I do some training so only the 2 runs for the week, the half-M and an easy 10km run which by accident turned into a bit of an 18km journey. Still although the weekly overall distance wasn't great both runs were pretty huge and I managed to sustain a good pace of over 11km/h for both.

Ok so training on track, I'm a couple of weeks ahead of most 16 week training programmes, however where I am lacking is sponsorship, only a third of the way there and time is starting to get short. If anyone has some fund raising ideas (I have been given a few already which I'll be looking into) please let me know, they just have to be reasonably simple without much work at this end as my nights and weekends will be coming increasingly running dominated.

Anyway thats it for now, onto the home stretch

-Josh


Week 12 Results:

Distance Covered: 39.3km
Total running time: 3 hours 29 minutes
Average speed: 11.3 km/h
Money raised: £0

Training Week 11 - The big 50, now for the half marathon

50km run this week, thats right the equivalent from the centre of Stratford to the centre of New Plymouth via Bell Block..except with no hills..and for the most part bored to tears running on the spot..

Actually it wasn't too bad just the 3 treadmill sessions 2 of which were combined with some personal training to keep it interesting, I've started some weights work to give me a little more power and endurance in addition I've been looking at increasing my stride length and therefore optimising my energy to distance\speed output...which loosely translated means after each session I'm shaking like a leaf and am weak as a kitten, this has led directly to a new addiction to gummy worm lollies on the walk back from the gym..which is probably a good thing as I seem to have misplaced another couple of kg's and my belts now don't seem to have enough holes.

I finished the week with a nice but still exhausting 8km run in my local park as can be seen in this picture. Now originally I was planning to top this 50km mark and hopefully include a half marathon distance, unfortunately my body has conspired against me and I will have to wait on the outcome of a doctors appointment tomorrow to determine this weeks running chances, fingers crossed I can at least squeeze in a half marathon somewhere!

Week 11 Results:

Distance Covered: 50.1km
Total running time: 4 hours 42 minutes
Average speed: 10.7 km/h
Money raised: £100.00 (Massive thanks Dad!)

Training Week 10 - My Date With Gym

Week 10 already and what a week it was, with England in one of its worse cold snaps in years, temperatures as low as -9 I was finally forced inside and join my local gym. After so much time running outdoors its been a little challenging adjusting to a treadmill. On the plus side its warm, little chance of slipping over, I don't have to worry about traffic/chavs/local violent offenders or crazy people and the treadmill provides more cushioning which is helping keep away the old shin splint problem..The only real downside is if I thought running outdoors was boring for 2 hours at a go.. try running on the spot for that long! The treadmills do have TV's so to get over this I'm really going to have to go through the old tv guide to find something that can keep the mind occupied.

Anyway 4 runs for the week 3 indoors and 1 early morning run on the weekend.

My goal this week was to up my weekly running limit to 42.2km, coincidentally the distance I'm gonna be running in the Marathon.

My first run at the Gym went superbly, 13km and I felt I could go further..but it was getting pretty late. I had to start pretty slow to get the legs charging but after a good half hour I really hit my stride running up to 13.5kph at my peak.

Wednesdays run was just on 11km, I had a session with a personal trainer before the run and as part of my evaluation for my run I had to give him my best speed over 10km, I pushed probably a little too hard and had to have a bit of a sit down afterwards due to a bit of post run nausea still I beat my previous best and did a 55.05 minutes for 10km.

Thursday's run I approached at a little more leisured pace and did 12km, I think my legs could have handled more but my brain had had enough. I had forgottan my ipod and spent the running time watching antique roadshow..not the greatest.

My final run was an outdoors during the day, for some reason I thought I had to run 8 more km to make up my 42 for the week..not 6km, I was on an unfamiliar route running very cautiously on snow and on the road when the pavement was too icy, needless to say I took a couple of wrong turns and ended up with an 11km run taking my total to 47km for the week, 5 kms more than planned!

Hopefully the weather will warm up in the next couple of weeks as I think I'm due to give a half-marathon distance a go.

Week 10 Results:

Distance Covered: 47.4km
Total running time: 4 hours 44 minutes
Average speed: 10.0 km/h
Money raised: £12.00 (Grazie Mille! Donatello!!!)

Stai Attento!

-Josh

Training Week 9 - Bloody Cold!

Well England has just been hit by a cold snap and this is really starting to affect the running!.

Absolutely stoked to say I finally managed 4 runs in a week! Adding to another record weekly run.

First run was on Thursday 30th December, the plan was to run 10km or so to get to a gym to sign up, as clearly the weather is not meant for running in..unfortunately it became clear about 2km's into the run that with all the ice developing on the pavements that it was fan too risky to be out running, I still carried on and took the most direct route home resulting in a small 7km run.

The following day was New Years Eve and since I was due to finish work earlyish I figured I could squeeze in a bit of a run before the ice hit the pavements..unfortunately work didn't finish as early as expected..not that it would have mattered much since the pavements were icing up by about 2pm, still I didn't realise until I was out there.

The plan was to run to my mates place near Wimbledon from West Croydon..now I'd run out that way some time ago and was reasonably sure there was a stretch of road near some parks that didn't have a pavement. I looked on google-maps and when I printed my route I turned on satellite view and printed out the tracks I needed to run on when I got to that road. So I figured I was well prepared..



The run was going pretty smoothly despite the occasional ice sheet, about half way through I hit the road without a pavement and made my way into one of the parks, turned the page of my printed out map-book..and what do you know? Satellite view didn't print, all I had was a blank section where my carefully planned route should have been.. Seeing as it wasn't quite dark I figured I could bluff my way through it..turns out I have a lousy sense of direction. What should have been an 11km run taking a little over an hour turned into a very cold and frustrating 13.5km run taking over 1 hour and 40 minutes! ..and in turn led to me leaving the New Years do a little after midnight as I was feeling tired..either that or maybe I'm getting old.

After a night off I was back into it on the 2nd, I did absolutely nothing on the 1st to make sure my legs were in fine form for a good run, things didn't go particularly well with both shins and calves playing up again nearly pulled out about 2 km's in but powered on and after about 6km's they came good and I finished an 11km run pretty strongly. Think the problem might have been something to do with circulation, I didn't move from my desk much during the day then when I ran it was in the cold and up hill.

My final run for the week was on Saturday morning around a park that's close to my house, it was a nice change to a) be running in sunlight b)running on a soft surface and c)running in shorts, think I might make it a habit of having at least one park run a week.


Bring on week 10

Week 9 Results:

Distance Covered: 38.8 km's
Total running time: 4 hours 13 minutes
Average speed: 9.2 km/h
Money raised: £35.00 (Cheers to Rich & Sarah, little sister Mary, Mum and Mark..and also to whoever dropped that $40.00 back in Stratford New Zealand, be assured its gone to a good cause)

Cheers,

-Josh