Hello, all

[marathondan]

I’ve hardly done any running since November.

Firstly, we (me, my wife, and our nearly-3-year-old son) had a protracted house move to get through – only round the corner, and the sale itself was straightforward, but we had a couple of months’ building work done before moving in, and there seemed to be things to check, phone calls to make, visits to B&Q, every evening.

Then I badly twisted my ankle playing football (or twisted my ankle playing football badly), and walking was hard enough without considering running. (NB: Let me know if I mention football too often. Although "Football Commentary" has a certain ring to it…),

And, most happily, my wife is expecting our second child in May, and (less happily) was having some serious morning sickness (in the afternoon, and without physically you know what, but otherwise it was morning sickness) and so I was trying to give her as much support as I could whenever I wasn’t at work.

Now, the building work is complete, we are in the house, my ankle is 99% better, and my wife is in much more of a blooming phase. A new year, and a 4-month window in which to revitalise my running, before the baby arrives and family life goes crazy for 6 months or so.

The ankle healing came as something of a surprise. I realised I needed a target quickly, and the rearranged Reading half in April seemed ideal. And my local race, the Maidenhead Easter 10, is a week later, if I’ve recovered. However, my training is undoubtedly constrained by the following:

- Football – counts as a (rather poor quality) speedwork session, but as mentioned before is not an ideal complement to distance running.

- My employer’s New Year present of a compulsory 48 hour working week for 6 weeks (paid, but I’d rather have the time than the money). I’m up at 5.00 every day, with the consequent early nights.

- Decorating and suchlike of our new (old) house, with a toddler around, and his mum needing some rest at the weekends. We’ve had the luxury of renting for the past year – bliss on the DIY front. Now it's back to a never-ending list of jobs.

Even though it’s not my first, Hal Higdon’s novice half marathon program is way more than I can fit in at the moment. So as an experienced marathon runner (ahem), I made up my own, and the mighty "newrunlog.xls" was born. Each week consists of:

- one “speedwork session” (football)
- two midweek runs, rising from 3 miles to 6
- one weekend run, rising from 4.5 miles to 11

Actually, that’s not all that different from the Hal Higdon – but without all that namby-pamby stretching. However, I’ll probably struggle to manage both of the midweek runs.

And so it begins…