Posts Tagged ‘half’

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Goals

September 23, 2009

I don’t mind running for the sake of running, otherwise I wouldn’t do it, but what makes running interesting for me is having a goal and working towards it. Starting many years ago with ‘I want to try running’ then again in 2007 with ‘I want to be a runner’, in 2008 we had ‘I want to finish a 5k race’ and so on.

My long term goal at the moment is to complete a marathon in 2011. I can’t give an accurate goal time at the moment but I’d rather it were closer to 4 hours than 5. Given the chances of getting a ballot place for London, I’ll probably apply for Brighton instead and then maybe try London another year.

Middle term (is that even a phrase?) goal is a half marathon in under 2 hours. I’m pretty sure I’m going to apply for the Great North Run next year so I have a whole 12 months to prepare! I don’t have a back up race at the moment, so if I don’t get into the GNR I’ll have to have a look around (or try to get a charity place). At the moment I can run about 12 or 13k without my legs getting too tired, and I’ve never run more than 16k, so I’ll need to work on my long runs to extend this.

Short term I have a few, more modest, goals. In May of next year I have the Bupa London 10,000 and intend to shave a couple of minutes off my 10k time. I also, rather embarrassingly, struggle to run too far without taking a walking break. Some of the time it’s because of my asthma, but some of the time I do it out of habit. I can do a 5k without walking fairly easily and so my immediate goal is to start doing 6 and 7km runs without walking, so that by May I’ll be doing 10k without walking.

So there we have it – this is what I’m aiming for!

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Blogroll

July 31, 2009

It’s been sitting there ildly for months. Sometimes new addresses appear and sometimes old ones disappear, but I’ve never really mentioned them. So here’s to the people that get a mention on my blogroll…

Running

Amy Runs a Marathon – 26 year old Amy has already completed a half marathon with her sister and is now training for the full 26.2. The blog is fairly new with the first post in May, but Amy updates on a fairly regular basis and often includes photos.

Bumblebee Running – A handful of posts a month from a twenty-something who has just finished her first triathlon. Worth checking out just for the posts about the big day itself, which are coming in at the moment.

Marathon Mummy – Mother of 4 Rachael is training for the Virgin London Marathon next year in memory of her father. Regular, honest, and often amusing posts – I check here every morning.

Sound Mind, Sound Body – An Irish girl living in Amsterdam and working for ASICS (hence the blog name). Her goal is the New York Marathon later this year. Regular and visually evocative posts. I like reading this one because I seem to be only a few months behind the author in my training.

Warriorwoman Running Blog – A well established blog that I started reading as I started writing this one. Posts have been sporadic of late but with so many new running blogs popping up, it’s good to see how a succesful long-running blog should be kept.

Wheels on Fire – Despite Ally telling me that I needed to create a new category (when commenting that he didn’t fit into either the ‘running’ or ‘non running’ categories), this is staying here, though I must point out that Ally doesn’t run. Still in it’s infancy (first post was in May) but going strong, Ally updates every Sunday on the week’s progress as he aims for paralympic glory in the middle distance track events. We’ve also been promised some more mid-week posts in the future.

Non Running

Borderlines – Borderlines is an online fiction serial written by my friend and up-and-coming author Jasmine Aherne. I’m not really into romance or chick lit myself but I like Jasmine’s short and sweet stories. Following updates online means I only read one chapter at a time – goes well with a cuppa :-)

Chronicles of Sai – My LiveJournal blog for posting day to day rubbish. Most of it is locked though so unless you’re also on LiveJournal you won’t be able to see very much!

Life Through God’s Sunglasses – Ex housemate Claire blogs about life in general but from a Christian viewpoint. Worth checking out for her latest mission to Nepal, which she’s training for at the moment.

The Adventures of Scribbleboy – The patient zero of blogs. The first I started reading and still the most bizarre. Ex housemate Scribs blogs about anything that’s on his mind, occassionally commenting on the challenges readers set him in order to better his life. A must read.

Those Who Know Me – A reasonably new blog from Stan, somewhat inspired by Scribs in that Stan has challenges to complete. 16 posts under his belt already, though with no real theme, this is starting to form into…something!

So there we have it. These are the posts I read on a regular basis. If anyone knows of a good blog that just has to be shared then plase leave a comment! Thanks.

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Book: Runner’s World Guide to Road Racing

July 1, 2009

I’m not really one for training plans. When running becomes too much like work and not enough like fun then I’m not as enthusiastic about it. Knowing that on this particular day I have to go out and do this many intervals isn’t nearly as good as knowing that I can go out and do whatever I like. This might slow down my progress slightly but that’s not really something that bothers me. I know that sometimes I have to do speed sessions and I know that I can’t keep avoiding hills, and that’s enough for me.

This is the Anglicised version. They say 'trainers' instead of 'sneakers'.

This is the Anglicised version. They say 'trainers' instead of 'sneakers'.

Consequently, a whole chapter of this book was a bit wasted on me. Yes, I knew that the book was going to have training plans in it when I bought it so that’s not really a problem. I was quite interested to see what they said, as I’ll probably use some sort of training plan if I ever do longer distances. As far as the other chapters go we have ‘Getting Started’, ‘Mind and Body’, ‘Fuel’, ‘The Big Day’ and ‘What’s Next?’.

The first three of the above chapters were pretty much old news to me. They reiterated a lot of the stuff I already knew, from either previous experience or picking it up from magazines, Ally or the internet. Some of the information about fuelling during marathon tapering was interesting and I’ll be going back to that as and when I need it. The ‘Mind and Body’ chapter seemed to be mostly stretches and some core strength exercises which, again, I knew. The chapter on preparaing for the day itself was predominantly common sense with suggestions like checking the start time the day before, finding out where you can park etc. The final chapter is a list of the more popular running events such as the Race for Life series, Great North Run and World Series Marathons.

Overall, this book seems to be stuck somewhere between a book for beginners and ‘how to’ for running. While it brushes over picking out technical kit and the right sort of shoes it misses out on other aspects of beginning to run. It assumes a certain amount of experience running but doesn’t get too technical. I get the impression it’s trying to speak to a wider audience (the tag line “Run your first (or fastest) 5-k, 10-k, half-marathon or marathon” makes sure that every road runner is accomodated for) when really it should have stuck to one or the other. On the plus side, it’s easy to follow and will make a good reference book for the future, but it wasn’t as useful as I was hoping it would be.

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26.2

March 27, 2009

I watched Run, Fatboy, Run again the other night (highly recommended if you haven’t seen it) and it made me think about marathon training. Now everyone knows that you can’t train for a marathon in 3 weeks, especially if you’re out of shape and haven’t run before, but I suppose you can get away with it when you’re making a movie.

For me, the idea of running a marathon crossed my mind a number of times back when I started running, but as much as I might have liked the idea of it, I knew that I would never be able to. Back then 3k was a good run for me and attempting a 5k would leave me gasping. 42.16k was impossible. Marathons were for other people, the ones that didn’t have asthma. The most I thought I could ever hope for would be to do a half, and that was so far into the future it didn’t even warrant thinking about.

Fast forward 22 months to Sunday 22nd. Running in the morning I was suddenly confident that I would be able to do a marathon one day (though this may have had something to do with the fact that I had only run 2km at the time). My new plan is to do a half in 2011 and then a marathon before I turn 30. Optimistic? Maybe, but then everyone needs a goal.

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