Week Three

Tuesday - 8 miles

Thursday - 9.5 miles

Saturday - 3.5 hours (19 miles)
Sunday - 2 hours (11 miles) 

 

After last week's plea for help, I was contacted by the legendary George from Midnight Runners, who very kindly offered to overhaul my training plan.  We met on Tuesday and he gave me loads of advice and tips, changed around some of the runs and cut out a chunk of excess mileage that I'd been dreading.  Straight after our meeting we headed off to Midnight Runners, I was feeling full of confidence and inspiration and had an absolutely cracking run.  I think 4:39 might be the fastest 1km I've ever run!  My heart rate is usually pretty stable during my runs but the sprints followed by bodyweight exercises results in a pretty cool looking graph:

 

Midnight Runners was great as fun as usual, I unexpectedly bumped into Elisabeth from uni there, she's also training for London so it was great to catch up.  This photo is at City Hall, where we jumped every time they said "jump" in the song Jump by Kris Kross. I suspect I was in the minority being old enough to remember this song coming out!

Thursday's run was always going to be tricky as I didn't get to bed until 1am (I had to finish some work for placement) and was working late Thursday evening too.  I learned last year that you have to give yourself every opportunity to run so, extremely reluctantly, I set my alarm for 6am.  However when the moment arrived, I found myself feeling totally fine and was out of the house by 6.30 for a quick 9.5 mile burst around the Thames.  George had advised me to try to do a few miles in the middle a bit faster than the rest.  I'm not always that good at pacing but I just tried to push myself a bit harder every time I noticed I was feeling comfortable, and that worked (I found out afterwards when I checked my Garmin).  On the way back there was even an epic sunrise and I was home, showered and ready for work by 9am - not bad!

On Friday night I went to my best friend's birthday dinner in Milton Keynes and ate an enormous quantity of Indian food and two-and-a-half pints of lager.  Imagine my joy at 6am the next morning when it was time to get up and run for 3.5 hours in the dark and cold, with the temperature being -2 degrees!

Friends, I did it anyway.  This was taken near the start, but fails to convey how utterly freezing it was.  I had to keep curling my fingers up inside my gloves to try and restore feeling, I was wearing all the gear but it was still SO COLD. 

Once I'd got to about 6 miles I started to warm up and it was plain sailing from there.  This picture was taken at the halfway point (that's a lake in the background!)

Today my boyfriend needed to run 18k for his half marathon training and I needed to run for 2 hours, we calculated that those were approximately the same distance as long as we didn't go too fast.  So off we went, me moaning incessantly about my legs hurting, how horrible it is getting up early to run, not having any milk and having to have toast for breakfast, how much I hate my new headband, etc. etc. (he has the patience of a saint!) until about 7k in when suddenly the endorphins kicked in and I was full of the joys of spring again. 

Next week has less running - my programme takes a step back every 4th week or so to consolidate - which I'm grateful for as this week has been tough.

If you'd like to sponsor me the link is here (please do!) : http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/marathonmadness