24 weeks to go, a new training plan and some more cross-training exercises.

This week was the first proper week of training I’ve done towards my next race. The week following the Skiddaw race was largely uneventful apart from nearly falling off the treadmill trying to do 10 miles at my usual 10k pace.

Luckily this week I have had some life in my legs and managed to get 6 training runs in and 2 cross training sessions. I have decided to enter a race called Last One Standing which takes place in Belfast next February and consists of a 4.2 mile loop around the grounds where Castle Ward is and everyone has an hour to complete each lap. I’m aiming to do 12 laps which would be 50.4 miles but the winner could feasibly do 4x that if they make it to the maximum cutoff.

There is a plan which I’m going to use that Hal Higdon (the running coach) recommends for training towards the Comrades Marathon which takes place in South Africa each year. I’m a big fan of this race and like the idea that they have an 11hr cut off for the 54 miles and if you’re late to the finish they turn their backs to you and you don’t get a medal. There is probably an apartheid joke I could make here, but don’t want to upset anybody.

The start of the week was good because I managed to complete a 45min spin cycling class at the gym and force myself to sprint and push harder when told to add extra resistance. I did feel a little deceived though when the instructor told us to raise the resistance to a level where we feel we have to stand on the bike, then after cycling in a standing position for a short period, being asked to sit and still pedal at the same resistance!

I did 4 training runs between 3 and 4 miles mid week and was settled into my usual pace for all of these. The lack of fatigue was very different to the difficulty I faced trying to run both times last week.

I met up with 2 of my friends at 6am on Friday and did a core workout for just under an hour. This was very challenging as I haven’t done body weight exercises in quite a long time. Balance also isn’t one of my strong suits and it must have been obvious to other gym members I was struggling to adapt to what must be a regular session for the other 2. I’m certainly going to keep trying the exercises we did in the next few weeks as I’m not a big fan of being a black sheep.

Back in my comfort zone, I managed to do 7.5 miles after this in the afternoon and finish the week with 15 miles today. The 15 mile run was surprisingly manageable compared to the difficulty I had running 10 miles this time last week. I used a quote about guts from George Sheehan which was good to keep in the back of my mind and kept me motivated.

Hopefully using a different quote like this each week will maintain my motivation as the race feels a long way away at the moment. I’m sure once I settle into the new plan the weeks will go by very quickly though.