First Week of Training!

Well hello there! It’s been a while hasn’t it?

Since I last wrote, my marathon training has properly begun. The first week of my plan has included a couple of interval sessions, short runs and a 12 miler. It’s been a pretty good week aside from the fact I have chillblanes (a rash caused by exposure to the cold) on both my shins which are really quite painful!

Last Sunday’s 12 miles was the longest run I have done since Christmas Eve, which is a long time ago! I covered the distance in 1 hour 57 minutes, it was a slow and hard run, made worse by the fact that I took a wrong turn about 3 miles in that resulted in me running 1 and half miles up an extremely steep hill. Not fun, I felt like I was about to keel over! Once I finally got back on track the run improved. The last 6 miles took me through the grounds of Kirkstall Abbey and along the canal back to Leeds and despite getting freezing cold feet from all the icy puddles on the path, was actually quite nice.

Sunday was also my first time using energy gel on a run. One problem I have found on many of my long runs is that I get about an hour in and my legs begin to feel heavy and my energy levels drop dramatically. This something that I am keen to address. The marathon will involve roughly 4 hours of running so being properly fueled is extremely important. On Sunday’s run I took an SIS tropical flavored Gel. It was odd, I wouldn’t say I liked the flavor (or texture for that matter) but it did feel like it gave me a bit of a boost after the massive hill. From now on I am going to try and use Lucozade products as these will be supplied for free on marathon day!

The rest of the week went as follows:

Monday: 5miles – 47.04 minutes

Tuesday: 7.3 miles – 1 hour 7 minutes

Wednesday: Interval session 3 minutes hard followed by 1 minutes rest, 6 times (this was pretty killer!)

Thursday: 6 miles – 57 minutes

I have a (hopefully fast) 6 miles planned for this afternoon, and then I’m off to London for the weekend to see a friend and attend a session called ‘Meet the Experts’ presented by some former Olympians including Liz Yelling to learn about training and fueling for endurance events, so that should be interesting.

My blogs will become much more regular now that my training has properly started (I'll be running more often for one!)

See you Monday!

xxx