It's been a while since I updated last.
The class last week Tuesday actually was well timed. As I had missed out on my interval session, the class had sprint intervals as part of the workout.
Then Wednesday I did some real intervals. It's amazing how much lack of sleep affects your running.
Apart from training obviously, pre-run nutrition, fuel, hydration (before and during) and sleep are super important.
Saturday I had only a 75 minute run to do and Rachael asked me to really push hard.
Right now, with the tempo runs I'm doing on my long runs, I'm still far off the 5h30 I want to finish the marathon in.
It's more likely to be 6h30, which is really not what I want.
So pushing I went. The first few minutes in a run are always hard. So after 12 minutes I decided to take a short break, drink, eat a few bites, and walk 3 minutes. Which made me think I should push hard again for 12 minutes and walk 3, and keep going like that.
I managed a better pace. Still slightly slower than the pace I need for my 5h30 marathon.
This Sunday I am running the Hampton Court half marathon. I've done one half marathon before, and obviously would like to beat that time.
Let's see what happens on the day.... Here's hoping it stays dry. The weather forecast is quite mixed, so fingers crossed.
And today, I've seen my next months programme.
I was a little worried, but seemingly because of the lengths I've ran up to now, it's actually not that bad.
Most runs, I've done the distance before, so I can now really start working on pushing the pace. Which will give me much more confidence comes marathon day.
The short interval sessions with the sprints that I really enjoyed are gone now. And replaced by medium length tempo runs, so I can really push the pace.
Let's see what happens in the coming few months.
Today, I've baked my energy snacks for Sunday and the coming few weeks.
I don't like drinking energy drinks or gels, so these will do very nicely I think.
The cold of the previous week meant I developed a cold.
I was determined for it not to let it go into the chest.
So, with a stuffed nose and head I decided I would take it easy this week, recover and be ready for the long run of 10 miles on Saturday.
On Friday I finally could breathe properly. Came Saturday I made sure I had some good food in me before the run, but also some snacks.
I baked some nuts and dates biscuits on Friday. Nearly had my house on fire when the greaseproof paper caught fire in the gas oven.
Together with Rakhee, we ran from New Barnet to East Finchley and back.
We needed a comfort break at the cinema in North Finchley and were very tempted to go in and watch a movie. But we didn't ;-)
Good hydration and nutrition proved super important. So that's a good lesson learned.
Like last week after the 8 mile run, my right calf muscle was quite achy and sore.
Luckily I have my appointment with Lucy Howe on Thursday, and I'm sure she'll find out what's going on.
Funnily enough, I was sure we had plenty of time for our run. However somehow I forgot about the warm up, and had organised to meet some friends for dinner at 7:15 in Borehamwood.
I managed to get home, jump in the shower, stretch while washing myself and drying myself and while drying my hair, and off we went.
It was great timing for the food, however, I would have liked a bit more time to allow for proper stretches.
This week didn't start as planned. With my broken down car this morning, I had to miss my run and running group.
Quite annoyed about it, but will make it up at some point this week.
Back to the gym tomorrow morning. Am looking forward to this mad class, but also to the stretch session.
Last week, we had our 10k race in Hyde Park.
It was freezing cold!
Running in the morning is not the same as running mid day, which is what I've been doing so far.
Two big lessons I learned from the race:
1. Warming up is even more important in the morning, when you haven't done much. Especially when it is so cold out there.
2. It's super important to be properly hydrated, and take some water with. When you run mid day, you already had quite a bit of liquid in you. If it's morning time you don't.
I got really thirsty about 30 minutes into the run. Normally I would go out without water when I go out for 1h.
Obviously that did slow me down. With cold muscles and no hydration, you can imagine that keeping on running wasn't easy.
I knew there was water at 5k, so I walked a bit of the remainder until Richard was waiting with the camera just before the 5k mark. He had a small bottle of water on him, which was really useful.
Still even though the walking along the way, I still managed to finish the race in 1h20, which was the goal.
Since then, the weeks training has continued with strength training sessions, mobility work and some short intervals.
Yesterday we had an 8mile run on the cards.
It was sleeting, rainy and windy.
But it had to be done.
Rakhee and me went out as agreed. It was really hard. Probably the hardest run so far. Not just because of the distance, but also because of the conditions.
And, another lesson learned: always eat a good meal of protein and carbs before going out.
My protein smoothie seems to be going down well.
I only had a roll and that was totally not enough. And I had nothing with me except for some water.
Lesson learned!
It's all a learning process at the moment.
