Growing up in Public

BRR is a virtual well of information lately, so I’m just going to post an organic piece on my running itself, I’m looking to tap into my own well of inspiration..

Since the struggle I had in a recent race I’ve tried to pick up the pieces and get my training together, I’ve mixed up a variety of runs, intervals on the treadmill, some further off road undulating trail stuff, over and hour or two per session, and then last night ran from work at Filton to the Downs Water Tower, 4 miles in 40 mins fyi, so clearly not breaking any records at the moment! Not that I ever have..

I was glad to have a group to meet there, as that spurred me on, and I then did some further 3 miles in company, and felt I’d had a good midweek session.

However, as stated before, too long off has caught up with me, 43 years old, at 5 foot seven I’m currently lugging some 14 stone, a good stone heavier than last October’s two marathons, and it feels like it. I’ve started this blog while on the comeback trail, and hope you will bear with me, I really hope to prove to be worthy to write here..

This weekend I will put in at least a 10 miler, then following that have three halfs (Hogweed, FOD Trails, Taunton) on consecutive weekends, all local and indexed by Mike. Unfortunately for me they start harder in order, but I can only hope by that third easier one I have got my mojo back. I know from past experience the suffering I am experiencing now will pay off later, and it’s certainly what I’m reminding myself of!

Into April then, and I have to put in a couple of two and a half to three hour runs before tapering for my first Marathon of two in May. It’s going to be my tightest turnaround yet, however, I have been here before, and will spread the load accordingly, I’ve only got injured by overtraining before so have an idea how to space it.

To some extent, taking note of all sorts of people running daily marathons made me realise we don’t have to be too precious at our level if we are careful, and hope the method in my madness pays off.

Where I want to be in the second half of the year is at least a stone lighter, and approaching old pb’s that weren’t achieved that long ago to be too unrealistic, 10k’s at 46 mins, halfs at 1hr41, and Marathons at 3hr51, and it’s the Marathon PB I really think I can bring down. As you can all see, I’ve been a plodder all my life, but that’s where I’m from and where I’m at..

The next few months of blogging will either prove to be my rehabilitation as a runner, or my requiem! I’m following you, are you following me?!       

37 miles

It always sounds better when you add up your weekly mileage rather than count individual runs. My training for Stockholm is going to plan and I clocked up 37 miles this week, doing an average of 8.1 minute miles on my steady long run yesterday…not fast enough yet but I’ll have to fartlek that figure up, so to speak. 

37 miles…that’s about 3700 calories too. We replenished a few of those lost calories after our long run yesterday with a delicious lamb tagine, accompanied by potatoes and parsnips mashed with coursegrain mustard and parsley and a crisp frisee salad. Potatoes and parsnips are great veggies to eat after a long run as they have a good level of high G.I. carbohydrate to work on replenishing your glycogen levels…and they are very easy to cook (I didn’t even bother peeling the potatoes).

Pud was some homemade walnut and white chocolate chip brownies with a fresh fruit salad of strawberries, blueberries and very expensive blackberries (very non-eco, I know, I expect they came from Peru or somewhere). If you discount the few glasses of Shiraz we washed this down with, this was probably an almost perfect post workout feast.

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