Training Report 9

12 weeks to the Lausanne Marathon.
10 weeks to the Phedippidations World Half Marathon Challenge (at Henley on Thames)
6 weeks to the Robin Hood Nottingham Half Marathon.

The Regents Park Summer 10k is this coming saturday August 5th. I have entered the Nottingham Half Marathon.

Week 1 - 40.
Week 2 - 39
Week 3 - 36
Week 4 - 31
Week 5 - 19
Week 6 - 26
My weight is now 87.5 kg (down 4.6 kgs in 6 weeks)

At last, at last we are back to some "normal" English summer weather with morning temperatures in the mid teens. We have also had some rain and right now it's a bit windy.

My calf problem has not yet developed into anything serious - was just a warning probably of inflexible lower legs. I ice it after each run and sometimes in the evenings, and take some ibuprofen with my morning cocktail of supplements of "performance enhancing vitamins and supplements.

This week I am planning a BIG WEEK - and hoping to get 50 miles under my shoes for the first time in a long, long while. After 7.5 miles monday and 9 this morning, I'm aiming for a 16 mile meander through the backroads of some local villages tomorrow at 6 am. I have to confess that I'm not meeting many (any?) runners these mornings, but each time I hit a stretch of main road the early rush hour traffic is starting to really piss me off. Most of them seem either to screetch to a halt and impatiently wait for me to go past, leaving far too great a space for me or they are oblivious and virtually run you off the road. So tomorrow's course will be hilly and very rural. It brings up the problem with drink stashing - but hopefully the early morning residents of Chearsley don't search their hedges! My nine miler this morning covered part of the same ground, a few real grunting hills, and some nice views over the Chiltern Hills to the east and the Oxfordshire valleys around us to the west. I am looking forward to tomorrow already.

Next week will be a lower mileage as the work schedule looks pretty awful, but it will be the official start of my fund raising plan linked to the Lausanne Marathon. A blog entry will follow at the weekend - along with a short report on the Regents Park 10k, my daughter Lisa's debut with a number on.

In the meantime I've found a couple of really cool sites while surfing.

Endurance50.com is the official site marking ultrarunner Dean Karnazes' attempt to run 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states of he USA, beginning on September 17 in St. Charles Missouri.

Dean should be running the Lasalle Bank Chicago Marathon on the day I run in Lausanne and if he makes it it will be number 36 in the sequence. I am going to follow Dean's progress as my training stiffens up in the last 5 weeks. Hopefully it will inspire!

I've also stumbled upon what must be one of the best runners' sites anywhere on the web. Check out Running Ahead.com. It is a FREE online training schedule, compiled by a real runner and linked into google mapping software that allows you to course measure and plot. You will be able to follow my progress on here if you like. I am registered as CoffeemanRunning.