Total Mileage: 668.41
Target Mileage: 681.08
Monthly Mileage: 205.26
Eins! Zwei! Drei! Leaving Eindhoven i’ve navigated the last few miles of the Netherlands, across the border, and into the Fatherland. 3 Personal best times in 5ks and a half marathon, 3 runs over 20 miles and my biggest monthly mileage so far has seen me almost reach the German city of Hanover.
Training
WARNING: Skip this bit if you don’t like hearing about running programmes and the day to day element of running.
This last month has seen me hit the ‘business end’ of the marathon programme I’ve been following. I’m still behind on my target mileage by about 12 miles but in the grand scheme of things this is nothing. I’ve got 8 months to catch this up. The biggest positive is that I posted my biggest monthly distance of over 200 miles; 50 miles more than any other month so far.
I’ve been running solidly for over 4 months now and as a result of the overall increased mileage I finished the month ahead of the 5.5 miles a day average. Towards the end of March I was almost 50 miles down on this average which shows how many miles I’ve put in over the last month.
Week 1 in April started off pretty steady and short with nothing over an hour, mainly so I was ready for the weekly long run which was now hitting over 2 and a half hours. Weekend commitments and doing the Parkrun on a Saturday meant I shifted my long run day to a Monday, the first of which was a decent 2:40 run from work to Beverley and then home. It’s hard to explain but anything under 2 hours is fairly comfortable but beyond that it becomes much more difficult very quickly. This long run was the first time I’d reached the 20 mile mark. The next couple of weeks were going to add 10 minutes each time to my long run.
The second week of running was pretty big, starting with that first long run, a mid-week steady 1 hour 50 and my first track session of 800m intervals for 1 hour 35. Every other day between these sessions was the usual 45 minute recovery runs. That was my first 60 mile week and I definitely felt it. The interval session on the track gave me the first indication as to whether I was still on track for hitting my marathon target time of 3 hours 45 at the end of the programme. If I could complete each 800m interval within 3 minutes 45 then I was on track. Despite feeling the week’s exertions I managed it.
Week 3 was a bit more like week 1 with low mileage throughout except for long run Monday which was 2 hours 50, just under 21 miles. The route was much tougher than Beverley the previous week as I headed west from the city centre towards Willerby, Kirk Ella, Swanland, North Ferriby, Hessle and home. It was also pretty blustery; a runners worst nightmare. There was no way of planning a route which didn’t hit the head wind if I wanted to finish at home. However, I was rewarded with a much more scenic route overlooking the River Humber as I descended into North Ferriby from Swanland. The hills would toughen me up as well!
A bit of rejigging of the programme was required for week 4 to coincide with the North Lincs Half Marathon on the 28th. Monday was a big 3 hour 21.5 miles taking in two laps of the Jane Tomlinson Hull 10K route before heading home. The long runs are never easy but I found by slowing the pace just a little meant i could go just that little bit longer. It sounds pretty obvious really but it’s a fine balance because if you go too slow you can still struggle regardless of distance. You find yourself waiting to hit the wall after 2 and a half hours but I’m pleased to say that point seems to get later and later; a sign that the training is working.
Parkrun
Parkrun has featured prominantly in my running programme over the last few weeks. I mentioned last month how i finished my first Parkrun in 21:49. Since then I’ve completed three more Parkrun events all of which have been under 20 minutes. My first Parkrun of the month was at East Park clocking 19:38 and a new PB finishing 13th overall.
Two weeks later I ran the newly formed Peter Pan Parkrun. I finished in 19:48 coming 9th, just short of a PB but I was pretty pleased considering as I’d overslept and ended up having to jog over to the park beforehand with barely time to reach the start line before the race began.
A week later and the day before the North Lincs Half Marathon I set the alarm this time so I could head over to East Park again. This was my best run so far with a time of 19:14 finishing 7th overall, and a second PB in 3 weeks. Had I overcooked it for the North Lincs Half Marathon the following day? Time would tell.
Parkrun has been great for breaking up the monotony of running alone and has allowed me to get used to running in races. It also counts towards the 10%! So far I’ve finished 7 races covering almost 50 miles which means I’m slightly behind the 10% rule but there are still plenty of races to go.
Doing Parkrun has allowed me to measure how clocking up the miles has improved my fitness and performance. I’m 99% certain that I’d have never been able to clock a sub 20 minute 5k without suffering a heart attack before doing this challenge. It’s now given me the belief I can clock a decent 10k and improvement on my half marathon times.
North Lincolnshire Half Marathon
Fresh off the back of a new 5k PB at Parkrun, next up was the North Lincolnshire Half Marathon; a quick trip back over the Humber Bridge for my ‘home’ race. I won’t go into much detail as I’ll draft a race report except to say it was a very well organised event and i was pretty chuffed about knocking nearly 9 minutes off my personal best to finish in 1:31:52.
Run Britain
Back in January I came across an email telling me about the Run Britain website and how you can input your race results to get a national ladder ranking. Out of curiosity I signed up. It stores your race results from up to three years before and gives you a race handicap based on your results. There are also prizes given monthly to the top 10 national improvers, the caveat being that you had to have completed at least 2 races before the month to enter.
My last timed race before the year was the Hull 10k back in 2010 when i posted a time of 48:47. Uploading my results for the Ferriby 10 and Silverstone Half Marathon gave me a national ranking in the top 100,000… so I was doing well then! Ha ha. This was mainly because your handicap is based on your last 5 races. Coming into April it was fair to say my handicap was quite high. Knowing I had a half marathon at the end of the month and confidence to improve my 5k times the incentive was there to improve my handicap and win something.
Following 3 sub 20 minute 5ks and a new half marathon PB I finished the month 2nd on the national improvement leaderboard jumping up the national rankings within the top 21,000. My prize… a pair of Sennheiser earphones. Had I finished top I’d have won an Adidas Micoach but realistically I was never going to get close to the guy who finished 1st. Still, I’d set myself a target to finish in the top 10 and it was mission accomplished. You can check out my improvement here.
Heading into May!
April has definitely been the most successful month so far. Clocking over 200 miles and improving my PBs in 5k and half marathon distances is pretty satisfying and beyond what I expected to achieve. May will have a lot to live up to. This is where the tapering period kicks in on my programme, where the mileage decreases in preparation for running 26.2 miles and I’m still to decide on what marathon I want to do.
I’ll have my long last run of 3 hours 10 minutes before tapering for 3 weeks. This presents a bit of a problem as i have the Sheffield Half Marathon on the 12th May and the Hull 10k the following weekend so I’ll probably have to extend the programme before attempting a marathon distance. I can’t complain too much though, I’m heading into the fifth month having covered over a third of the challenge’s distance and I’m on track. It’s by far the most running I’ve done in my life and despite the little niggles I’m still going well. There’s still a long way to go and anything could go wrong but so far so good!
Paul Legard 