Week 4 - In which I bounce back!

Miles this week: 5.4
TOTAL MILES: 89.4

Tuesday 25^th Jan – Interval day!

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(1 mile warmup, then 12 x 400 mtrs at 7m 10 pace followed by 200m recovery, then 1 mile warmdown)

Today something quite alarming happened.  Joe, the 3yr old son of the beautiful girlfriend, ran up to me and shouted “Gary Gay!” before departing with a smug look that suggested he felt his work here was done.

Now, this obviously hurt.  It was a bad week, last week, one of the worst I’ve had since starting running, but insults from a 3 year old are surely a bridge too far!  What we had here was a clear-cut case of the need to reassert my authority.

However, he is a big lad for his age, with mean fists and a penchant for violence, and I wasn’t feeling particularly good about myself.  In this situation, the double humiliation of not only failing to knock down a 3yr old with the first hit, but then having to rely on my superior footwork to fend the youngster off as he moved in for the kill would have been enough to see me give up completely and join a monastery.

So instead, I decided to redouble my efforts in the hope that maybe I could once more gain his respect.  Luckily, Joe’s brother remains on my side as long as regular doses of Justin (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/somethingspecial/) are received.

Unfortunately, I only ended up doing 9 of the expected 12 reps today, since my watch wouldn’t actually go up to the 12 reps.  This is not an excuse, but a true story!  In any event, the session went well and I easily spent most of the 400 mtr sessions in the 6 minute bracket, which is somewhere I have spent little time in of late.

Today was a good day, so hopefully we’re on the up again!

Miles this week: 13
TOTAL MILES: 97

Wednesday 26^th Jan – 8 miles easy pace (9m 30)

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I am back on the up!  Today’s run was dispatched in 1hr 07, at an average of 8m 42, well inside the expected time for the run.

It felt good today, even with the hills of Basingstoke trying their best to dampen my ardour.

The heart and lungs were coping well, the legs were a little sore but generally happy with things and the most important part of all was that I was under the expected time by some distance.

I am back on track!  If the rest of the week goes as well, I’ll consider myself over the bad spell for now..

Miles this week: 18
TOTAL MILES: 102

Thursday 27^th Jan – 1 mile warmup, 3 miles at half-marathon pace, 1 mile warmdown

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This is more like it - I'm starting to get into my stride now.

A nice flat-ish run, in which I managed the middle 3 miles at an average pace of under 8m per mile.  The entire thing, with 2 slow miles, was an average of 8m 16, which basically means that even with the warmup/warmdown miles, I averaged my half mile pace for the whole thing.

Tomorrow is a day off before hostilities resume on Saturday, but so far I'm feeling good and it's starting to come together!

Miles this week: 21
TOTAL MILES: 105

Saturday 29^th Jan – Parkrun

Now here's the thing.  Today called for an easy parkrun of 3 miles in 28 minutes; a little over 9 minutes a mile.  I understood this and I was happy to obey.  After all, tomorrow's run was looming and it was a long one.

And with that in mind, I set off, with the key aim of taking it easy and basically mooching round.  I didn't complain when the lady with the pushchair came past.  I uttered not a single word of complaint when the group of schoolkids half my height came past.  In fact, at no point did I feel the need to accelerate, happy as I was at the pace that my schedule had dictated.

And then it happened.  20 stones of tubby, sweaty, heart-attack-waiting-to-happen lycra came past and looked at me as he did so.  If he hadn't have looked, I'd have enjoyed my slow pace and carried on.  But now it was personal.  He may as well have insulted my mother.

My head said "forget it, you've got your pace, stick to it."  My heart, however, said "he's mocking you.  Make him pay by going past him at speed.  That'll show him."  And so, finally obeying a 20 yr old request from Roxette, I listened to my heart and accelerated.

 I looked straight into his eyes as I went past, trying desperately to convey that I had meant to speed up all along as part of some sick plan involving toying with the emotions of an overweight runner, and that now I was going to kick sand in his face by effortlessly disappearing into the distance.

Then, just ahead, I saw the group of schoolkids.  Again, my head said "don't worry, fat boy has been taken care of, you've proved your point."  My heart screamed "little bastards deserve to be overtaken!"  As a result, my pace quickened, my rage increased and I flew past them with all the speed of a cheetah that had just been kicked square in the nuts.

That pattern continued for the next 2 miles, with me overtaking people downhill, uphill, and with a steadily increasing fury that meant that I came out of the final corner like a bat out of hell and finished in a little over 24 minutes.  So I was about half a minute off my Parkrun personal best despite starting at a ridiculously slow pace for the first mile.  So much for a slow, relaxed run...

Miles this week: 36
TOTAL MILES: 120

Sunday 30^th Jan – 15 miles slow pace (2hrs 22m)

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I’ve been simultaneously looking forward to, and dreading, this run for weeks, ever since I saw it on the schedule.  Now, clearly I’m training for a marathon, but this run here represents the first and only time in my short running career in which I have run further than 13 miles.

I’ve always been a half-marathoner.  This is basically because I generally have a boredom threshold of 2 hours.  Anything that can be done in 2 hours is fine by me.  Once over that, my interest rapidly diminishes.

I knew that it wouldn’t be that difficult; I’ve run 11 miles for 3 consecutive weeks and coped.  The last of these was a horrible experience and yet I still met the time requirement, so I knew I would be fine.

But still, this was the first time that I had stepped over the line from half to full marathon and I did so with a fair bit of trepidation.

As a result, I started pretty much on the nail in terms of expected speed.  I felt so good after a mile, though, that I started to wind the pace up a little bit.  The expected pace was 9m 45 per mile, and so I tried to maintain it under 9m.

The iPod was on shuffle, the air was cold, but I felt good and had gels, isotonic juice and gloves.  And a buff.  And tights.  But manly tights, not those girly ones that other runners wear.  These tights, were they to become self-aware, would rob a bank, such is their manliness.  So not girly at all. Just getting that straight.

In spite of being wrapped up, the temperature was in the minus degrees Celsius and it was a struggle to maintain heat, leaving me with little option but to keep the pace up, even when I would occasionally want to back off a little bit for a breather.

I also managed to get lost going over a bridge straddling the Basingstoke ringroad.  Not my proudest moment, since it was technically a single direction thing, as bridges tend to be.

Still, I got back, got in, got a bath and a Lucozade and felt good.  I felt drained, and my legs were hurting, but I felt good.  Monday is a rest day, before the joys of intervals hit me once again, but after feeling completely demoralised and miserable after last Sunday's run, this week has been a revelation.

As a result, I'm feeling good about next week.