First training run for 2011 Marathon

Wow.

It's amazing how much fitness you can lose in just 12 months. This date last year I ran 26.2 miles. This morning, I struggled to do a mile.

Fair enough, I'm coming off the back of broken ribs but Jebus H. Christ I thought I was going to be sick afterwards. Ah well, every journey starts with a single step and all that!

Here is this morning's training route:

A new year, a new challenge..

This day last year, it was battered, bruised and quite literally broken but, having run my first marathon, I felt incredible. However, as good as I felt, I was very annoyed that an unfortunate injury meant that I didn't complete the course in anywhere near the time I wanted to.

Over the next year, I plan on correcting that. I am going to train for a full year, building up mile after endless mile with a view to not just completing the Dublin City Marathon 2011 but to do it in 3-3.5 hours.

I may well try and raise money for it again, as I did in 2009, but for now it's very much a personal goal. However, training to run a marathon alone can be a very boring and lonely (especially a years worth of training) so if anyone fancies joining me, please, let me know!

In the mean time I'll try to update this blog at least once a week, using Endomondo to track my routes etc.

So, here we go again....

Just Got My Race Number

Just before heading down to Oxegen I've just gotten my race number for the 5 mile race in the post. I'm number 24.... I hope that doesn't mean they think I'm any good!

5 Mile Race in 10 Days

For some reason, I woke up in the middle of the night last weekend and convinced myself I'd made a huge fuck up. You see, I woke up sure that the Irish Runner 5 Mile Challenge, the first in the Adidas Race Series, was going to take place on Saturday July 11, ie when I'd be at Oxegen!

Thankfully, I was wrong, and it was just my mind playing tricks on me in the middle of the night! The race takes place, as scheduled, on Saturday July 18. It's exciting as it's th first time I'll have done anything like this since school.

The training is going up and down. Lots of annoying little injuries (seem to be mostly impact related) means I haven't exactly got as many miles under my belt as I would have hoped to by now (maybe at 75-85%). However, I'm still very confident that I'm on course for a sub 4 hour marathon.

If I so desired, I could run this upcoming 5 mile race in sub 40 minutes. However, I'm hoping to use this race, and the entire race series, to practise my pacing for the big day. I accept that I'm going to run the second half of the marathon slower than the first half, that seems to be the one piece of advice that everyone is giving me. Therefore, to get over the line in less than 4 hours, I have to run the first half in 1.45. That's 8 minute miles for 13 miles.

Now, what I've to consider in this is that the start is going to be very slow, and so I have to assume the first 5 miles are going to be 8.30 per mile. Therefore, with this run, I hope to pace myself at that speed, meaning I should complete the race in (if my maths is working!) 42.30. It's not the fastest pace in the world, of course, but it's good practise for running in a crowd and pacing myself.

Getting excited now!!1

New Training Plan and Routes

I'm very lucky in that I'm surrounded by lots of varied routes in Rathcoole. Depending on my mood I can do circuts, hill work, cross-country and road training.

I went out with Cooper (the dog) the other day and walked a number of new routes with a peadometer and now have (including two reached by a short drive) one 1.5 mile circut, two 2 mile circuts, a 3 mile circut and a 5 mile circut. On top of this I also have the option of the gym for some cross training and to break up the boredom of road running.

Now who'd believe it's only 26 weeks until the marathon. More importantly it's just over 11 weeks until the first race of my 3 race series, the Irish Runner 5 Mile Challenge on July 18 in the Phoenix Park. With this in mind I've taken on, after advice from my trainer, a new training program. It involves something I've never done (indeed never heard of) before called Fartlek Training.

Typcial Fartlek training consists of shorter training sessions made up of jogging, walking and fast running. For example by the time the 5 Mile race comes around I'll be doing 5 minutes of light jogging, 4 5 minutes cycles of 1 minute walking and 4 minutes fast (8/9 miles per hour) running and then finish up with 5 more minutes of light jogging. By the time the actual marathon comes around I will be doing double.

Therefore, from here until the 5 mile race, my training schedule will be as follows.

Steve Turns Into A Solid

Well then. Training was going very well until the past week or so. A re-occurrence of an old injury (ribs) and a routine blood test put me off the road for a week.

Last October I suffered a very unusual injury to my ribs, popping a catelidge (I'll never get the spelling right) inbtween two of my ribs. It took me over 3 months to recover from it but over the past week it's started to flare up again but, after giving it a 5 day rest it seems to be ok after training last night. Fingers crossed it keeps away.

The other issue that had me off the road was cholesterol. A routine blood test with my GP showed my cholesterol was 6.4 with my LDL being 3.8. Now, being only 26 this is pretty high but my GP reckons that it is genetic rather than diet based and so I'm now on tablets to reduce it. I've to take these for 2 months and we'll see where it goes. DAMN GENETICS! Ah well, hopefully the tablets will work.

As far as training goes I'm about to bump it up to level 2 of 6 which will mean less time in the gym and more time on the road. I've gotten a good deal of really good advice from people that have run marathons before about the mental aspect of running for long distances so I'm hoping to put some of that into practise over the coming weeks.

This is not a very exciting blog is it!?

Steve's Year of Running Dangerously

Welcome to my blog. On Steve's Year of Running Dangerously I will be updating you on how my training and fundraising is going for the Adidas/Lifestyle Sports Dublin City Marathon and the Adidas/Lifestyle Sports Race Series Challenge.

This is just a blog to get started. More to come soon.