Blog posts tagged 'training'

The London Marathon is now the last long run separating my 'it's not for ages yet' reverie from the Thames Path 100 monster.  It's on my doorstep, it's one of the best-organised races in the world and such a massive occasion that if you can get a place it's almost impossible to ignore.I've had a go at my pb here several times but my best time here is still 6 minutes down on my Amsterdam 2:37 desp…

Unless I have a sudden change of heart, and a sudden change of legs for that matter, this is the last ultra before the monster that is looming up just over 4 weeks away.It's a new event to the calendar this year and I reluctantly passed up the chance to go for another Thames Path recce with Rodrigo favouring some hills instead.  I felt somewhat guilty about that but he ran the second 50 miles of …

Second race in consecutive days, another 9am kick off and another drive to Loughborough.  I've entered this race 3 times now and never turned up so it was a minor victory even to make it to Market Square.  One of the previous occasions was lost to a night on the lash round Loughborough town centre followed by a massive curry and all the trimmings.  If you're going to miss a race make sure its f…

Just 6 weeks to go before the Thames Path 100-miler and despite having almost no clue how to train properly for it, the one thing that seems obvious is getting time on feet.  I thought I'd take advantage of a chance to visit the folks in Leics and take in the Charnwood Marathon on the Saturday and the Loughborough half on the Sunday.  It seems slightly selfish to spend most of the weekend away d…

It was always going to be ambitious scheduling this race, classified as 'severe' by EnduranceLife, just a week after the Thames Trot.  When I entered, the plan was still packing in the long stuff for the Thames Path 100 early to leave a shot at a decent London Marathon in between.  As last year's soleus tear injury has dragged on those plans have had to change. The London Marathon has been downg…

The original plan had this as my second ultra of the year, the first being the Country to Capital but the same team, GoBeyond. However, the soleus tear which wiped out the last couple of months of 2013 hadn't healed in time to risk that one so after a scant 3 weeks of training - and pretty low volume training at that - I'm on the 6:38 from Slough heading to Oxford Station. If I wasn't trying to ge…

Total cock up with the Loughborough Half - I thought it was the 23rd Feb when I booked it! So that's looking dodgy!I'd love to go for a full-on effort in London but it's only 3 weeks before a 100.  I'm hoping that as that's so much slower-paced that's long enough to recover.  I will try to keep some speedwork going throughout and up it from March for London.  Reckon you hang on to endurance so …

There's still plenty of 2013 to go and a target marathon to attack in 10 days but I've started filling out 2014's diary.  Looking at the races already booked in I can't help but think these are distances and challenges I couldn't and wouldn't have even considered a couple of years ago and yet here they are back to back!Something seems to have switched in my head and the more outlandish runs are n…

I'd planned to race the Maidenhead Half on the 8th September to see how the training for Frankfurt was going.  It's about as close to my house as a race gets - all of 5 miles away and this was the 3rd year the race has been held.  Unfortunately I managed to continue my shameful record of entering this every year and subsequently failing to turn up.  I can't remember what happened the previous t…

One last curry and a couple of pints of the local Windsor and Eton Brewery's finest polished off.I've had my pre-race massage and go-faster haircut which did it's usual trick. It looks great until precisely 3 minutes after leaving the barbers whereupon it forms into a ghastly widow's peak type of arrangement and needs several litres of wax to stop it looking like I'm about to protest about somethi…