Intervals

3 x 1600m intervals with 400m rest intervals @ 14.5km/hr completed on the treadmill (incline set to 1% to compensate for the lack of wind resistance)

V. hard work - didn't think I was going to manage it, and had to cover over the display because the distance was going up so slowly I couldn't bear it.

Future aims for these intervals - jog the recoveries! At the moment I have to walk, and gasp, and hold onto the railings like some knackered old dear (no comments please!).

Aching slightly from yesterday's weights - which is, I think, a good thing.

Weights session #1

Actually used the new weights - brilliant - really felt like I had done a good workout, didn't have to go anywhere.

Need to get some better / quicker to release collars for them, and a pad for the bar to protect my back/neck when I have the weights on my shoulders for squats - but otherwise, a good investment.

Weights

The other weekend I bought some weights off ebay.

There was method in my madness - resistance training (working with weights) is, apparently, the most amazing thing since sliced bread, and I thought that if I had some of mine, I might actually use them.

Anyway, we went and picked them up yesterday (they cost me £26) and today I used them for the first time.

They are a great solution to my cross-training nightmare. A full body session of weights takes 30 minutes, I don't have to go anywhere and it is really good for me.

Brilliant.

Woo Hoooooo!

Today I ran 30km - which is 18.6 miles to any imperialists!

• It took me 2 hours and 38 minutes.
• I did it in 3 laps of 10km each - passing the house each time.
• Jon joined me for the middle lap.
• I wore my new Macmillan Cancer Support running vest
  
• I was tired but extremely pleased at the end.

After the nightmare of the other week when I had to catch the bus home when I failed to run the 17 miles that was on my programme, I was a bit worried about how today would go. That was one of the reasons I decided to do laps - at least that way if something did go wrong, I should never be more than about 2 miles from home at any point.

Also, but running laps it meant that I didn't need to carry any water - I just tucked a couple of water bottles up on top of the hedge outside our house, and picked one up each time I went by. A much better option and, I guess, more like it will be in the actual marathon.

The picture above is the information download from my running gadget - the very marvellous Polar S625x which I have had for nearly 3 years now, and am, on and off, thinking about trading for something newer and more sparkly. But, I do love it - and it produces such pretty pictures! The red line on the graph is altitude(looks more impressive than it actually is in terms of height climbed!), the blue is my speed. Just thought you might like to see it :)

Not too much in the way of soreness after the run - as is usually the case, my feet are the worst victims, both sides are quite sore, and my knees feel a bit creaky, otherwise - not too bad.

I am, despite doing nothing but stuffing my face since I got home, absolutely starving though!!!

More cake............

Charity chosen..........

I got back home ( a mere 5 hours after leaving Malmo - not bad I thought) to find that my 'pack' had arrived from my chosen charity.

I didn't mention the charity thing before I don't think.

Well, I thought that since I had got my own place in the marathon (remember? the BAD white tracksuit thing?) and running 26.2 miles is VERY hard work, that I should really use it as an excuse to raise money for a good cause.

The problem then was - which good cause to support.

There are so many.

After much to-ing and fro-ing, I decided to support Macmillan Cancer Support - because, unfortunately, it seems like lots of people I know have been affected by the big C - and Macmillan do lots of great work in supporting them.

So I have put together my sponsorship page : http://www.justgiving.com/trishmonks and I hope that lots of people will support me, and Macmillan in this crazy adventure!

Home time...........

Home time today - but not before I did my 6 mile tempo run.

It was a tropical 2 deg C today - but unfortunately, due to a little snow 'n' thaw - it was incredibly slippy out there, oh, and it was blowing a small gale.

Still, nothing ventured and all that - once I was out there it was fine, and once I was on my way back down towards the house with the wind finally on my back (how could it be in front of me for the other 3 sides of the rectangle??) it was all good.

That done, I was showered, packed and off home (eventually).

What a lovely week I had though.

Decorating as cross training

Does it count? It was certainly hard work - so I'm sure it counts for something.

Today we decorated the nearly nursery (nearly because there is not quite a baby to put in it!) which took us about 5 hours longer than we thought it would!

Looked great though - a big improvement over the initial purpleness of it - oh, and we MADE those curtains! How rock 'n' roll is that?

Chilly

Intervals completed - 4 x 1k with 400m rest intervals.
It was -2 deg C.
It was a bit slippy
I was glad to get it done and inside for a cup of tea.

As an added bonus, we went to Ikea (which is exactly the same as at home) and had meatballs for lunch!

How Swedish is that?

Sweden!

I flew to Sweden yesterday to visit Julie, so here I am.

I was supposed to run today - according to the programme - but instead we went for a 2 hour walk around where Julie is living, which I'm sure definately counts as cross training!

Got to run tomorrow though - and a bit worried due to the slippiness of the underfoot.
Could be exciting.

Bleurgh

Despite going to bed at the relatively sensible time of 3am (the rest of the party continued past 5am!), getting up at 9am to go and do an 8 mile run wasn't really high on my agenda this morning.

But, I paid my money, I was going to do it - also, it was on the training plan, and Tom was going too - so I had to drag myself out of the nice warm bed in the van (yes, we were sleeping in the street outside our own house!) and get ready to run.

The race was from Lakeside (where they have the darts) and was a mixture of road and canal tow path.
It wasn't too bad - the worst bit was definately the long slow uphill at about 7 miles, just when you are really starting to feel tired - great timing!

I finished in 63 minutes, which made me 4th senior lady (out of 57 before anyone asks whether there were only 4 ladies!), so I reckon without the weekend of beer and stupidly late night, I might have won me a prize.

Still, it was a good trip out, and both Tom & I felt pretty good with the world when we got back to the house to find that most people were still in bed - which was a bonus because the shower was free!

Enjoyed the rest of the day - sunday lunch in the pub, tea and cake for afters, everyone pushed off by dinner time.

Exhausted now!

Happy Birthday to me!

Can you believe I hadn't had any alcohol since New Year's day till now? Amazing. Me neither. Making up for it this weekend though - perfect preparation for tomorrow's race :)

Lots of people joined me for my celebrations - and it was lovely to see everyone.

32? Ancient.

Bugger

Today I was going to run 17 miles.

Because of a race I am doing on Sunday, and it being my birthday weekend and we are expecting lots of guests and drinking and the like, I swapped my long run for today.

After last week's glorious and triumphant 15 miler, I was feeling pretty confident that I could do the distance. But today wasn't the day for it.

I knew I shouldn't have done it.

I got up early to eat and do some work, but it was really, really windy outside, so I was going to bale out and postpone till tomorrow.

I shillied and shallyed around for ages - hours in fact - before deciding that I was going to run after all, but by then the food that I had eaten as preparation was wearing off, but it was too late to eat.

I went anyway.

The weather was terrible - sooooo windy it was amazing - and I was getting slower and slower, and I started getting stomach cramps that made it feel like I couldn't breath.

Eventually, after narrowly missing being taken out by a flying estate agents sign that was blown across the road - post and all - about 5m ahead of me, and turning directly into the wind, I stopped. I just couldn't go on any further.

Some of this is phsychological - I know that - you start thinking you can't do it, and eventually that voice gets louder and louder until you are stopped, but some of it was that my stomach was so sore, running was really uncomfortable.

I think it was the combination of wearing my waistbelt with 1.5liters of water in it - pressing on my stomach - and not having eaten anything close enough to the time, not to mention the 'usual' jiggling that goes on with a run of that length.

Whatever the reason, I was really disappointed - I 'only' made it to 8.5 miles, and then had to walk to the nearest bus stop to catch a bus home.

Dreadful :(

Lack of cross training!!

So far this week I have completely failed to do any cross-training, although I am remaining hopeful and convinced that the hour I spent on the Playstation dance mat on Monday night counts in some way - it is certainly very hard work - honest!!

I did manage my interval session yesterday though - in the gym - and it was pretty good. It was one of those that I thought would be pretty easy before I started, but it turned out to be anything but. A big advantage of the treadmill though is that you just can't slack off - or you fall off!

I did slot in a 1km swim after that session as well - so maybe that counts as cross-training, although strictly it's supposed to have been on a different day.

must try harder.

End of the week

This week has gone pretty well - I've done some cross training, my tempo run on thursday went well, and yesterdays long run of 15 miles was fab.

It was really hard work - let's not pretend that it wasn't - but I did it, too quickly (that is possible you know), but pretty consistent pace wise and I am happy.

I made this run into a double loop so that I did a 9 mile loop, and then came back past the house and picked Jon up so he could accompany me for the next 6 miles. Nice to have a bit of company, even though I wasn't really up for much chatting - especially as the first mile after meeting Jon is up hill - and that really hit me quite hard.

Still - the mileage is building, and I'm feeling positive.

My worst problem at the moment? Sore feet. Stupid but important - I must look into doing something about it somehow.

Did my run on Saturday (Sunday is the usual day) this week so that we could head off for the night in the van! Ended up near Swanage (actually slept in a car park in Wareham - and yes, we are basically gypsies), and had a lovely time - including some stunning weather and a good stroll round Corfe Castle today.

We love that van - even if it is covered in blobs of lovely, rust stopping, non-colour matched, Hammerite at the moment.

Cross training

1 hour of badminton with Jon - haven't played for years, really enjoyed it, especially as I won!!
Jolly hard work though.

Intervals

First interval session at the gym on the treadmill - 4 x 800m - much 'easier' (although still very hard, if you see what I mean) doing it on the 'mill than on the road - and a really good session.

Also did an upper body weights session.

Go me.

Training partner

Before I forget, I have to mention my friend Tom, as he is also running the marathon this year, and is my virtual (and sometimes real life) training partner.

We (or rather I) have set up an online spreadsheet using the rather marvellous Google Docs & Spreadsheets, which has both our our training programmes in, and then we are both going to update it as we complete our sessions - providing motivation (you don't want to be seen to be falling behind) and a record of what we did.

So far it's working great.

Away from home

No matter that we were away for the weekend - the marathon training programme stops for no-one.

We had a great weekend in Hereford, Jon's mum was really suprised to see us waiting for her in the pub where we were eating dinner, which was fab, and then it was just great to catch up with the family and hang about.

Of course my run was on my mind for much of the time - and setting it up was a bit of a challenge, finding 6 miles of route where I wasn't going to get mown down by passing Herefordians was the first problem, but was resolved by my being dropped off out of town, doing my run into and through Hereford, and then meeting Jon and his brother James in a carpark somewhere.

The run went great - really good, I felt like I was flying! Marvellous.

My shoes

Just incase I haven't shown you before - these are my marathon training shoes!

They are a pair of Nike Free 5.02 's and I designed them myself on the Nike ID website, and yes, I did chose for them to be orange, and yes, that is my name on the side :)

Don't you just love them?

13 miles today

Because we are going to Hereford for the weekend, for a suprise meal for my mother-in-law's birthday, I decided to switch my long run from the weekend to be today instead - so 13 miles was on the menu.

I was fairly happy to be doing that distance, I thought I should be able to do it pretty comfortably, and I was right, it was fine - better than fine in fact.

I did an average pace of 5min/km (I know, I know, I mix my measurement units up a lot), which gave me a time for the distance that i would have been ecstatic to get in a half marathon race 12 months ago! It's incredible - and I'm convinced I owe it all to Top-Bike!

My training plan

Today was my first planned training session.

I am going to be following the Furman Institute's "FIRST to finish" training programme, which is essentially 3 days of running per week (compared with a more 'traditional' training programme which would be 5 or 6 days), with one interval session, a tempo run and a long run. Also, I am supposed to do 3 sessions of cross-training, which is - inevitably - going to be the bit that I struggle with.

Today's session was intervals - 3 x 1600m at a pretty feisty pace, with 10 minutes warm up and cool down, and 400m rest intervals between each interval.

It was rubbish to be honest - I warmed up by running from the house out onto the footpath that runs along the A30 (about a mile away) - thinking that would be a good place to run as it is a nice straight road. Somehow I forgot that, depsite being a nice straight stretch of road, it is also a bit of a hill! This meant that my first and third intervals were up hill - very tough.

I have to admit that I only managed to run at the right pace for the downhill interval - the other 2 I slowed down in the middle because it was just too hard. I was very disappointed - especially because this was the first session of my training programme - such a bad start!

I learned a lesson though - intervals will be much easier to do on a treadmill, and that's where I plan to do them from now on. Mostly because I will be forced into maintaining the right place - no going off too fast (a classic) and if I go too slowly I will fall of the back of the 'mill!!

You live and learn.

And so it begins...........

Conveniently my 16 week training programme starts today - 1st January 2007 - and even better, the first thing on it is a rest day!

This is a very lucky thing - New Year's Eve celebrations have never (as far as I know) been a good start to anybodies training regime - all that wine/beer/drinking games - as far removed from good hydration and carbo loading as you can get, despite being more fun.

Still, today's the day when it all begins - 16 weeks from now, on 22nd April 2007, I will be lining up on the start-line of the London Marathon, and then running 26.2 miles with 40,000 other people.

Scary.

Even scarier? The shell suit that I had to wear at last year's London Marathon in order to get the place run this year (picture below)!

Actually, shell suit aside, that was a great experience, spending 4 hours putting medals on marathon finishers - quite fantastic!