London Marathon Training: Week 8

I’ve been looking at training plans again.  There are so many of them on the internet; Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and so many variations on each of those.  I was just looking to see how I was shaping up at this point compared to their programs.  As I may have said already, the idea of following one particular plan feels too much like being told what to do and I’m too contrary to do that for more than a couple of weeks.  The beauty of using my own plan, my cobbled together amalgamation, is that it can be adapted a bit, revised a bit, occasionally disregarded a bit, but that’s okay because I don’t feel like too much of a failure when I don’t hit the spot.  And sometimes, when I exceed my expectations, it feels terrific.

I had a half marathon race this last Sunday, in Coventry, my home town.  I’d planned to just enjoy it as it was one of my ‘take it easy’ weeks and I was looking forward to not having wobbly legs by the end.  I had expected to run at my normal long run pace which is about 10.5/11 minute miles as that’s what I’d been automatically doing the last few weeks in order to try and conserve my energy.  My old school friend Salena was also running and we started off together.  Somewhere along the line I left her behind and got a little faster and I felt strong and comfortable for the whole distance.  This was the first Half I’ve done since my marathon training began and I could really tell the difference.  I know that the big day is double this distance and I’ve still got a long way to go but how cool is that when you’re not struggling to finish 13.1 miles! I even knocked off 3 minutes from my previous PB and came in at 02:04:24.  Getting closer to the 2 hour mark!  Salena did really well too, getting 02:19, and we celebrated with a well deserved beer and pizza too.

Back to the grindstone this week as I’ve got no excuses to shirk from my program.  Still on a little high though!   Oooh, and I have worked out how to put a picture on this blog!  For a computer programmer I’m sooo not technical!