In this great ocean of temptation, my nostrils remain just above the surface, while my feet are a blurred tumult of frantic paddling. Eh? Nothing to do with a weakening of my resolve. I’m more certain now than I was at the start of the week that this is the time to start recovering the lost ground of the last several weeks. But I’m having to absorb some long-standing commitments this weekend that are not going to get me in better shape for a new spell of marathon training. It started last night with a visit from M2, the Dublin sister. We managed to stay on the saintly side with the food but the liquid accompaniment was more problematical, and … …
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How interesting are other people’s slimming statistics? Here’s a test: on Monday I needed to lose 0.41 pounds per day to reach my May 18 target, and by today it’s down to 0.35 pounds per day. [distant sound of gentle snoring] I see. Still marginally less dull than traffic jam stories I’d say, but I get the message. Award For Best Thread Title on the Runners World Forum Today: I’ve had enough of selling Pizza and want to open a running shop. What a corker. ***** The new campaign is up-and-almost-running. This evening I went for a good spin on the exercise bike to remind myself what it feels like to have blood pumping round my veins. It felt … …
Tomorrow’s arrived, and with it, the start of the Dublin Marathon 2003 campaign. Not the official start of the training, but the nine-week preparation for the training. I didn’t run today, and didn’t plan to. Perhaps I’ll not run this week at all. After five weeks of inactivity and over-eating, I’m about ten pounds heavier than I was for the Reading Half, and I need to get rid of this ballast before I do anything else. Every new marathon brings a new attitude. For Chicago, I resolved not to be too obsessional about eating and drinking. I was 40 minutes less slow in Chicago than in London, but I was also 6 pounds heavier. This time I plan to drop … …
Great news. We’re expecting carrots. Loyal readers without a drink problem may recall that some months ago, when the Running Commentary garden was carpeted in two inches of snow, I mentioned my plan to become vegetably self-sufficient by the summer. Crunching through the January snow, it seemed like a good line. Struck the right balance between impressiveness and unaccountability, I thought. But snow melts. Since then, I’ve been nervously genning up on the subject. More than that. I’ve made the horrifying discovery that you can’t grow vegetables by computer. You have to go into the garden and actually make holes in the ground and throw stuff in there. Bizarre – and grubby. Anyway, I gave it a go, and today, … …
The sun beats down on my inertia. What a great position to be in. Saturated fats and alcohol continue to slither down my gullet, and I get plumper by the minute. But all the while, I’m allowed to feel holy because, you see, I have this plan. Monday. The revolution begins on Monday. On Monday I start my meta-training. Training for training. The continuing 2003 journey is scheduled to stretch from the back-to-backs of Woodley to the palm-strewn streets of Havana. Date Event Remarks Sun 18 May Woodley 10K Definite intention Sun 08 Jun Wargrave 10K Definite intention Sun 22 Jun Boreham Wood Half Marathon Definite intention Mon 23 Jun 18 week Dublin training begins Sun 17 Aug… …
Crikey. Two entries in two days. I must be getting serious about the possibility of considering getting serious. I’ve even found myself drifting in and out of the running forums in the last couple of days. Watching the London marathon on TV on Sunday morning must have helped to shake me up a bit. It was another magnificent run from that woman whose surname we have all now forgotten. Like Nayim, that bloke who used to play for Tottenham, and Madonna, and Prince, and Bono, Paula is now a one-word entity. In the running community, at least. Paula sprinted from start to finish in 2 hours 15, hacking another couple of minutes or so off the world record. It was … …
If I owned a running hat with Give Peace A Chance on it, then…. then it wouldn’t have been much use in the past few weeks. What a hilariously miserable month it’s been. Since the Reading Half – five weeks ago yesterday – I’ve barely had a run. What started out as a period of recuperation and recovery from a calf injury has turned into a full-scale beer and chocolate extravaganza. I’ve put on around ten pounds since Reading, and no doubt lost a lot of fitness. It’s time to… to what? I can’t just go out running tomorrow as though nothing had happened. I don’t even know if the calf is better. I had planned to visit a sports … …
Things are not good. My toe-in-the-water three miler the other morning was proceeding… swimmingly until the last half mile or so, when the twinge in my calf reappeared. The twinge then became a sudden stab of pain – bad enough to make me limp home the last few hundred yards. I’m fed up now. After a week of inactivity and recuperative pub visits, I’d dusted myself down and decided to get back to work. But I underestimated the resilience of this injury. It looks like I’ll have to get some proper advice and treatment. I’ve looked up Calf Specialists in the Yellow Pages. Interestingly, they all seem to live on farms. I didn’t think I’d miss running like this. Sigh. … …
The final day of an anticlimactic month. It’s ten days since I last ran. In this brief period I’ve put on about 5 pounds and devoted most of my evenings to getting mildly drunk. It’s been pleasant enough – war notwithstanding – but it must be time to try again. This week is supposed to be the start of the Hal Higdon 12-week Spring Training Programme. It’s designed to keep you ticking over, and to prepare you for a more rigorous programme. The twelve week schedule finishes just as the 18 week Dublin marathon schedule is due to begin. The intention is to test the water tomorrow with a leisurely three mile run/walk just to test out the calf. I’m … …
Yesterday I put my calf to the test with an early morning three miler. It failed. The first mile I felt nothing, and was beginning to feel smug. But then mile two exposed a twinge, and mile three turned the twinge into an ache. It was bad enough to make my 300 yard warm-down walk quite a painful affair. It’s a little depressing, but I have to be glad that I’ve no races coming up. If I was doing the London marathon in three weeks time I’d be panicking. On the other hand, had I planned to do the Washington DC marathon this weekend, I’d be fuming. The organisers have called it off for unspecified “security reasons”, much to the … …