Wednesday 12th Jan - 7 mile slow jog at 9m30 pace
Slow jogging! Hurrah for the lack of effort! Three cheers for the continual not-interval-at-all pace!
Nothing much to say here, really. It was a nice, easy 7 miles through Amazingstoke town centre and out through to the Black Dam area on the other side. Before returning.
Everything felt good today, although the legs were a little heavy after yesterday’s efforts. It’s apparently important to get a good mix of flats and hills in these types of runs and, with Basingstoke appearing to be far hillier than I’d ever believed, a good mix was got.
Music today was provided by Steel Panther and the Foo Fighters.
Thursday 13th Jan - 4 miles at a steady pace (8m 30)
Today I found out that Chineham Business Park goes on for far longer than I’d previously thought. It’s actually like a geographical Tardis. It’s funny how much you find out about a place you supposedly knew when you’re forced to wander around it on foot.
I don’t know why this pace and distance felt good, but it did. The legs were cooperating and the heart and lungs may well have been asleep, such was the lack of effort required to keep me plodding along.
It’s worth noting that this pace (8m30) is my ultimate expected pace for the marathon, if I’m to get the time I want, so to have it be comfortable (albeit for a much MUCH shorter distance) after the Sunday long run and the interval training is akin to finding out that the massive and angry man waving his fist at you is in fact merely a dwarf standing far away. On a hill. Or something.
Music today was provided by Muse and Stereophonics.
Saturday 15th Jan – Parkrun (5km, covered in 23m38)
You know, there might just be something to this training lark after all!
Managed to beat my PB by 1 second today. Now, overall, a second is neither here nor there over the course of 3.1 miles. The impressive bit, though, is that I was expecting to be here (in or around PB territory) in a couple of weeks. See, kids, this is what happens when you take training seriously! To do it on the back of a hard week of training too is a chuffing marvellous performance, I think.
Also, never underestimate the importance of natural competitiveness. During Parkrun there is always someone ahead of you and, if you’re lucky, there’ll be more than one and you can pick ‘em off. For me, it usually happens on the hills. For some unknown reason, I appear to have an advantage on hills, easily passing people that only moments before were holding their own. I hate this. I hate hills, I hate the pain they bring and knowing that I’m actually pretty OK at them pisses me off immensely. Still, it’s good to have a speciality.
No music today.
Sunday 16th Jan – 11 miles, scheduled completion time of 1hr 39, actually completed in 1hr 32
There are occasions when I do surprise myself. Mostly because I have a terrible memory and pay no attention to things, but that aside, I can also occasionally surprise myself with my running. I’m a decidedly average runner when comparing my speed over long distances to that of the really fast guys, but even so, this time represents an improvement of 7 minutes over last week’s run over the same distance and, if we extrapolate up to 13 miles, would mean a half-marathon time of under 1hr50.
The reason that this is surprising is because I’m meant to be training up to a half marathon pace of 1hr 45 and I’m not due there for a little while yet. In a race situation, with energy drinks, gels and people around me, a 13-mile run in 1hr 45 could well have been possible today, which is effectively my true half-marathon pace as required by this schedule.
Of course, this is only week 2 (or 3 if you’re normal and prefer to follow the standard calendar) and I have yet to suffer a dip in enthusiasm (interval training aside) or energy. When they hit, it will be important to remember these early gains.
The real issue with this run was that Basingstoke appears to be on a natural plateau, with everything around it being downhill. This is not necessarily a problem as long as you remember that what goes down must come up, and running practically a mile and a half up a constant incline after 8 miles is pretty much a bastard.
I try to take hills at the same pace as the flats if I can. The only thing you can do, realistically, to shorten the pain, is to keep your eyes on the horizon and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Don’t slow down, even by as much as a second a mile, ignore the screaming pain in the pit of your stomach and just get up there.
This advice is easy to write, but hard to put into practice when you’re a mile into it, STILL going uphill with no end in sight, and with your heart and lungs teaming up to write threatening letters to your legs. Keep at it, though, and eventually you reach the top. If, like me, you find yourself with a final 2 miles downhill, well, that’s a bonus, but it’s usually enough to find yourself no longer going uphill.
This hill coming out of Sherford St John and heading up towards Basingstoke hospital was the first time in a long time (not just this training schedule, but running in general) where I’ve had to grit my teeth and just force myself to keep going up the hill, especially coming at around the 8 mile mark as it did. In these times, I find that insulting the gods with a selection of curses and unfavourable comparisons with ugly stars of stage and screen works wonders. That, and of course, blaming it all on Nicholas J. Coumbe.
Music today was provided by Florence and the Machine, Plan B and a little bit of Bon Jovi. (I’ve discovered that it is actually physically impossible to avoid speeding up during Living on a Prayer. This is not fun on hills.)
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