Training's fust in August.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

An endless hill. That's a treadmill set on a slope. An evil thing to be sure, and yet ... inexplicably I've come to call it my friend. Perhaps it's something of a Stockholm syndrome, or just one of those "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" things, but I have to confess I'm finishing these tough training sessions on the endless evil mill feeling pretty damned good about it all. I've two more runs to report, and whilst they are still a long way off where I need to be, given we're still 13 weeks away from race day, it seems to be to have been a very positive start.

Last year I foolishly (in hindsight) included the Sydney marathon in my P2P training. That was a crazy thing to do (although I'm damned proud to have run the 42.2km) because it took my focus off hills until way too late in the campaign, especially as I returned to training too soon after the mara and ended up injuring myself which put a huge two-and-a-half week run-less hole in my schedule. Nothing like that this time. I've cleared all races out of my calendar so that my focus now is solely on the P2P, and I've started the hill training much, much sooner than last year.

So, this week's hill climbs have been necessarily short, but brutal enough for this stage of the campaign. A 30-minute climb on Sunday followed by a faster, 60-minute version of the same hill today has me feeling pretty good about myself, although I'm under no illusions about the work still to be done. I have a clear road ahead of me, and that road is up. Endlessly so. And necessarily so too.

This is my fourth crack at the P2P and this year I'm determined to give it my undivided attention and to train properly for it. Which is to say, by not missing training days, by including the requisite number of tough hill and speed sessions and in paying proper attention to nutrition, core and general strength training.

This is going to be hard, but it'll be fun. Oh yeah.

4.8km 30mins 5.4% ave incline (max 10%)
9.8km 60mins 5.4% ave incline (max 10%)

YTD: 758.0km

Track du jour: I might just adopt this one as my P2P theme music...