1) £10 isn't a bad price for a pair of socks
2) you only have 9 toenails at any one time
3) you can't afford a new winter coat because you're saving for your next pair of trainers
4) a bag of Haribo isn't a wicked indulgence, it's long run fuel
5) you don't think in miles per hour, you think in minutes per mile
6) your colleague has a picture of Robert Patterson abover her desk. You have a picture of Paula Radcliffe
7) your tummy may be a bit wobbly, but you have calves and quads of iron
8) the teenager next to you on the bus is listening to some pumping choons. You're listening to Marathon Talk
9) holidays are planned around destination races
10) your New Year's resolutions consists of a training plan and the PBS you hope to set by following it
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Marathon Training
Last week I was back in Guernsey 'revising' for my accountancy finals. I use this term loosely, as it mainly involved watching the Commonwealth Games, eating out and getting in some corking runs.
The nice thing about Guernsey is that everything's very small, so you get to see a lot for your milage. On my favourite run route in Leeds, I run two miles before I get to a roundabout, passing a church and a school on the way. I then run a further two before I reach Golden Acre Park, passing a two garages and a small parade of takeaways (torture). Then I turn around and run back. On a similar distance run I did in Guernsey I passed the hospital, two schools, four churches, a neolithic burial mound, some Napoleonic forts and two miles of coastline.
That's all very well when you can run during the day. I have never run in the evening in Guernsey, because doing so is an invitation for early death. There are very few pavements, the roads are very narrow, the few main roads that have streetlighting are only lit in 'peak' hours, and motorists have developed an unfortunate habit of minimal brake usage. The sharper the corner, the more fun it is to take it at speed it seems.
So I used those long autumn evenings after the Commonwealth coverage had finished and Agnes was in bed to do some work on my Brighton training plan.
Being a novice marathoner, I've decided to use a standard programme and more or less stick to it rather than being tempted to freestyle. I've chosen one of the Runner's World 16 week programmes and, utilising the advanced Excel skills that I learnt on my secondment to audit, turned it into a training spreadsheet with formulas to drop out actual and target milage (I really didn't want to do that deferred tax revision).
I then set about examining my training log on Fetcheveryone.com to see how what sort of weekly milage I need to do in the base building phase. My log reveals that in the last 3 months (adjusting for the Scotland Coast to Coast, a fairly exceptional item in anyone's book) I have run 2-4 times a week, with an average weekly milage of 18. In those weeks I have typically also done 2 cross training sessions of about 1 hour each.
My training programme starts with a 27 mile week and builds up to peak milage of 47. Not being a true accountant, I can't even do the quick mental maths to figure out how much more this is, but it's quite a lot. I started thinking about how much time it would take to run this many miles in a week. And suddenly a sweat broke out on my top lip.
Reader, I am afraid. I might even have to do some revision to distract myself...
The nice thing about Guernsey is that everything's very small, so you get to see a lot for your milage. On my favourite run route in Leeds, I run two miles before I get to a roundabout, passing a church and a school on the way. I then run a further two before I reach Golden Acre Park, passing a two garages and a small parade of takeaways (torture). Then I turn around and run back. On a similar distance run I did in Guernsey I passed the hospital, two schools, four churches, a neolithic burial mound, some Napoleonic forts and two miles of coastline.
That's all very well when you can run during the day. I have never run in the evening in Guernsey, because doing so is an invitation for early death. There are very few pavements, the roads are very narrow, the few main roads that have streetlighting are only lit in 'peak' hours, and motorists have developed an unfortunate habit of minimal brake usage. The sharper the corner, the more fun it is to take it at speed it seems.
So I used those long autumn evenings after the Commonwealth coverage had finished and Agnes was in bed to do some work on my Brighton training plan.
Being a novice marathoner, I've decided to use a standard programme and more or less stick to it rather than being tempted to freestyle. I've chosen one of the Runner's World 16 week programmes and, utilising the advanced Excel skills that I learnt on my secondment to audit, turned it into a training spreadsheet with formulas to drop out actual and target milage (I really didn't want to do that deferred tax revision).
I then set about examining my training log on Fetcheveryone.com to see how what sort of weekly milage I need to do in the base building phase. My log reveals that in the last 3 months (adjusting for the Scotland Coast to Coast, a fairly exceptional item in anyone's book) I have run 2-4 times a week, with an average weekly milage of 18. In those weeks I have typically also done 2 cross training sessions of about 1 hour each.
My training programme starts with a 27 mile week and builds up to peak milage of 47. Not being a true accountant, I can't even do the quick mental maths to figure out how much more this is, but it's quite a lot. I started thinking about how much time it would take to run this many miles in a week. And suddenly a sweat broke out on my top lip.
Reader, I am afraid. I might even have to do some revision to distract myself...
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Embrace the madness
Some people run for fitness, or to manage their weight, or to achieve their personal goals. Certainly running does all of those things. But for me, there's always been another primary motive: Runner's High. That moment when the feel good hormones kick in and nature gives you a shot in the arm that pharmacy can't imitate.
There, I've admitted it, I'm a running junkie.
Even given the compulsive nature of my running, I never expected that it would become such an important part of my life. I started running in June 2009. I was depressed after losing a family member and decided to run a 10k for Cancer Research.
I knew so little about running that I didn't even know how far 10k was. As a result of some dodgy metric conversion, I went for several months thinking that it was 4 miles before twigging that if the ratio was 8:5, that couldn't be right. The revised distance of 6.2 miles seemed like a massive achievement, and I was sure that once I had managed that I would feel satisfied and hang up my running shoes. If I even survived.
Of course, it doesn't work like that. In the 12 months since I completed that race I have run over a dozen more races, including 2 half marathons and a suicidal off road 10 miler. Then there was the matter of a madcap 2 day adventure race. I realised after spending a weekend in the rain traversing Scotland that I had ceased to be like normal people.
Normal people don't think that trotting through the countryside in the rain singing 'Don't Stop Me Now' is a good way to spend their days off. Normal people think in miles per hour, not minutes per mile. Normal people don't think that £11 is a reasonable price to pay for a pair of socks. Normal people don't know what they're missing.
Even given the compulsive nature of my running, I never expected that it would become such an important part of my life. I started running in June 2009. I was depressed after losing a family member and decided to run a 10k for Cancer Research.
I knew so little about running that I didn't even know how far 10k was. As a result of some dodgy metric conversion, I went for several months thinking that it was 4 miles before twigging that if the ratio was 8:5, that couldn't be right. The revised distance of 6.2 miles seemed like a massive achievement, and I was sure that once I had managed that I would feel satisfied and hang up my running shoes. If I even survived.
Of course, it doesn't work like that. In the 12 months since I completed that race I have run over a dozen more races, including 2 half marathons and a suicidal off road 10 miler. Then there was the matter of a madcap 2 day adventure race. I realised after spending a weekend in the rain traversing Scotland that I had ceased to be like normal people.
Normal people don't think that trotting through the countryside in the rain singing 'Don't Stop Me Now' is a good way to spend their days off. Normal people think in miles per hour, not minutes per mile. Normal people don't think that £11 is a reasonable price to pay for a pair of socks. Normal people don't know what they're missing.
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