When I write eight weeks of training, of course I did not really have eight weeks. Smack bang in the middle of it I had already booked a week's skiing holiday. It was suggested to me by someone that I should run whilst I was out there, on top of the skiing.
[I met this 'someone' in a ski lift going up the side of a mountain in, I think, Val Thorens - we were spending the week in Bardonecchia, in Italy, and knew it was going to be a pretty bad week's skiing when we arrived in the resort and the sun was shining resplendently in the sky and there was bugger all snow. It was hotter than an English summer's day. The travel company organised a trip to France, through some tunnel that linked Italy to France, or maybe the other way round, for a day, to a resort that was guaranteed snow. So myself and these two chaps were in this chair lift. I was minding my own business, and the other two were engaged in conversation. Suddenly on of them addresses me. I had seen them on our bus, from Italy, and as I could not readily understand what he had said I assumed they were Italian. I said "Sorry, I am English" (which I think loosely translates as "I am too stupid/ignorant/arrogant (or maybe all three) to speak any other language than English) with a slight shrug of the shoulders and a pitiful look on my face. He looked at me, as if I were slightly mad, and then returned his attention back to his companion. It was then, as they were talking, that I realised they were in fact speaking English...in an Irish accent!]
I looked at them as they were mad. Ski and run? I paid my money to ski, not to run. Besides which, I doubt I had the stamina to do both in the same day.
So that only left me seven weeks to train. Of course, had I consulted a training guide I would have found out that one generally tapers for the last two/three weeks before the big day which would have meant I had four/five weeks to prepare. But I did not, so I just got stuck in. I can not remember exactly what I did - I did not feel it necessary to write every last detail about each run, as I do now - but from memory I ran three times a week; including once at the weekend, which was my 'long' run. Now, when I say 'long' I mean in comparison to the other runs, and what I had run before (10k being the longest). They went something like: 8 miles; 10 miles; 12 miles; Half Marathon; 15 miles 18 miles. Then the Marathon.
Now, looking at those Sunday long runs, I think it is safe to say that it is perhaps not the best preparation to do your longest run (which I did in 9mm, marathon pace) the week before your marathon. I did not realise this at the time, however. Encouragingly, for me, I did the HM in Hastings, and ran 1:52. Hastings is a particularly tough course so I had no qualms in calculating: two times 1:52 equals 3:44. Game on for four hours. To be fair, with the correct training (again, that phrase) you can calculate your marathon times from twice your half marathon plus six to ten minutes, depending on how good your endurance is. At the lower end of the scale, that would still give me 3:54, which would give me six minutes to spare to bag the £50...I mean, get my time that I had worked so hard for. I went into the day confident that I would get the job done.
No comments:
Post a Comment