Training Report 1

24 weeks to go to the Lausanne Marathon.
After some fairly regular running in the early part of the year, a good phase in Australia and a serious lapse of 2-3 weeks, I have now spent a fairly disciplined 4 weeks getting myself up to 25 miles a week plus. In the past two weeks I've made some good progress. I won't bore you with training diary type stuff. Other than:
- Did my first 10 mile plus run for about a year on friday May 5th, all offroad along the Ridgeway path between Princes Risborough and Chinnor. Plenty of hills, inspiring views, blossoms on the trees and even a "Beware of the Bull" sign on a gate as I entered the field. (My coffee blog should have that stuck at the top perhaps.) He'd never have caught me anyway......
- Last night I decided I'd better see if my ambition to run sub 4 hours in Lausanne was in any way realistic. Like most people I run on un-measured courses and only have a notional idea of my running pace from my stopwatch and the "feel" of the run. Last night I decided on a "tempo" run on a measured 7 mile out & back course on the roads and came back in under 58 minutes. I concentrated on maintaining my breathing and rhythm / running form. As it was the first time I'd done anything like this for about 5 years, I was chuffed to bits when my training diary spreadsheet flashed up 3.51 in the "marathon predictor" column. I like the 7 mile distance for this sort of run as it means you cannot go "eyeballs out" from the start otherwise the second half just won't happen, but it is quite horrific to think that I used to knock these out in 40-45 minutes!
- Having spent decades in contempt of people who run with headphones in their ears (not "proper" runners of course), I've now become surprisingly and pretty much instantly converted to running with an mp3 player. I guess most people just shuffle selections from their music collection, but I've found that podcasts are the way to go for me. The 10 miler on the ridgeway had birds singing in the background but Steve Runner was in my ears all the way. Steve's podcast of the Boston Marathon with him "blowing chunks" every 4-5 miles is one of the best bits of reality black humour I have heard in years. His crossing of the finish line brought a tear to my eyes. Another one I have found great is Ritmo Latino, just under an hour of sometimes surprising latin rhythms that supports your running rhythm perfectly. I am sure that the soundtrack now improves running form and puts off that moment in the run when inevitably you wish it would just be over.