Monday, September 14, 2009

Marathon Announcement

Hey folks,

Well I'm imagining that I must have told 99% of people who come on here in person anyway, but after realising yesterday that I still hadn't told my parents!, decided I'd make the announcement on here as well.

I've decided to make my marathon début next year and the aim is to do so at London. This really means three things.

1. I need to run a sub 75 half OR get in via the ballot OR get in via a club place.
2. I'll begin my marathon specific training after the Herts County X-Country in early January.
3. My track season next year probably won't begin till very very late after which I'm intending to shift all the way down and have a go at running a 1500m PB.

The target to begin with will be 2:30. This obviously might get shifted slower(likely) or faster(I wish!) as I go along but given my performances over 10k and a few long-runs I've done together with my aerobic profile- I think I've got a serious chance. Added to this I'll hopefully be aiming to run a serious 10k PB by the end of the year at either the Leeds Abbey Dash or the Telford 10k (accommodation in Leeds the night beforehand would be appreciated!) .

I'm well aware that this is relatively early to run a marathon but having watched London the past two years I really wanted to be out there running and it was killing me not to be. I've known since I was a kid that I'd have to run the marathon to make up for my complete lack of base speed and whilst I still have a lot of unfinished business at 10k- I think a while of training for a very different event will be fun as well and probably help my 10k time. After my first marathon unless I run an absolute stormer the intention would be to wait 18 months until my next one - probably Berlin though I'd love to run New York or Chicago.

So - what does this mean? Well for a start I'm going to be bulking up my long run. My rather paltry 90 minutes, whilst sufficient for a 5k/10k runner, is going to need to upped to a regular 120 and probably look at running it faster as well. Even though I'm not starting the block until January I'm keen to start getting used to a few of the work-outs now and in particular I want to be doing some of the work-outs suggested by Canova. Big volume interval sessions which most people seem to hate I really enjoy doing.

Tempo running I'm relatively poor on at the moment but will become an integral part. An easy 8k tempo run on Friday went really well keeping up 5:40 pace very easily on rough terrain, which is exactly the marathon pace I need! An awful lot of my training over the next 5 months will be at 5:40 pace and I want to be able to lock into it automatically. Thankfully it's slower than the current 80/lap I lock into but the difference will be continuous efforts as opposed to reps of a couple of miles at the most.

I guess that's about it at the moment. Race plans, training emphasis and goals! I'm really very excited about shifting up to the marathon and hopefully it'll be a success. If I'm ever going to run internationally I really only have one race as an option and that's the marathon. I need to start getting used to them now so that when I'm 27/28 I'll be sufficiently conditioned and experienced to make a serious drive for a quick time.

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Bryn Running

Training diary and musings on running in general.