London Marathon Training
Week 3, Day 1
After setting a new best time on Sunday for 10k since I got my Garmin back in the summer, I’ve only gone and done it again, this time over 5k.
Granted, neither came near a personal best, but it’s extremely encouraging to have recorded two decent times back-to-back.
Maybe, today, it was frustration that drove me on. Frustration at deliberately going slow on Sunday morning, only to go far too slow even for my liking. Maybe I needed to prove something to myself.
Today’s time was a full four minutes quicker than that first 5k on Sunday. FOUR MINUTES!!!! That just goes to show how easy I took it.
Or maybe today’s time was down to a strategy I decided to try, namely run for a kilometre then take a short 20-30 seconds walking break but absolutely no more than that (looking at my pace graph it was more like 10-15 seconds), and repeat at the end of each subsequent kilometre. Following that strategy I beat my previous Garmin best by 35 seconds.
Yes, I can run for over 30 minutes non-stop and if I worked at it I’m pretty sure I could stretch that further but I’m also realistic to know that I’ll never maintain that for the full length of the marathon, so it was in my head to start toying with different strategies to see what works.
If this proves to be a successful strategy I’ll extend to a mile at a time. Now is the time to experiment so that when the Hastings Half Marathon comes around in March I’ll be able to put whatever strategy I decide upon to the test in an effective dress rehearsal.
So what does the rest of the week hold in store? Another run tomorrow (Wednesday) night, a short-ish one on Friday (or parkrun the following morning) and 7.5 miles on Sunday …. not massive mileage but a slow, gradual build-up week on week which I hope is sensible given my legs.
London Marathon Training (24.6 miles – 7 runs)
Week 1 – 12.2 miles (4 runs; average 3.05 miles per run)
Week 2 – 9.3 miles (2 runs; average 4.65 miles per run)
Week 3 – 3.1 miles (1 run; average 3.1 miles per run)
HUFF, PUFF AND SHUFFLE 