My final week of light training ahead of London Marathon has been tough. I haven’t lost as much weight as I’d hoped to and don’t feel well enough prepared. Monday night training with Lordshill Road Runners – Avenue of Pain On Monday, I went to my usual Monday night training session with Lordshill. My heart sank when I realised it would be a hill training session. Even more frustratingly, Group D (the group above mine) had a track session so several people from Group D joined Group C. I decided to do the session but I didn’t want to push too hard. I jogged up the hills and walked when I felt ti ..read more

It’s starting to get real – I’ve now received my email from London Marathon letting me know my start colour and wave – I’m in Blue 9. I’ve also got my bib number: 54632. This means that you can track me, either online or using the London Marathon 2023 app. Remember that Blue 9 is supposed to start at 10:36, so with a slightly late start and a congested first 5km, I wouldn’t expect to see anything on the tracker until ~11:15am. Stair climbing at PK Portcurno After my long run around Hayle, we had to find some other activities during our holiday as the weather forecast was dire. I did a bit of ..read more

I’ve now done my last really long run ahead of London Marathon. I’m onto the final countdown to the race with just a 16km run to go. I can’t believe I’ve got this far, but I’m frustrated that I’ve not lost weight and am not as fast as I’d like to be. LRR Monday night training session After my 20 mile run around Southampton and a busy day at work, I wasn’t feeling ready for training with Lordshill. M was at holiday club for the day. I’d walked to work and tried to keep moving throughout the day. I didn’t want to seize up, but I did want to give myself recovery time. After walking home, I had ti ..read more

Today was my first race since last summer. I was asked to arrive by 8:30am for the pacer photo, which was 90 minutes before Southampton 10k started. I also needed to fit in a 32km run according to my training plan. As a consequence, I planned to run 10km before the race, do 10km during the race, run 5km home and then go out for 7km this evening. However, things didn’t quite work out that way. 5km run to the start I woke up early, but faffed around and didn’t leave as early as I had hoped to. Being late is one of my worries, so I decided that I would just do 5km before meeting the other pacers ..read more

The last week has been really busy and I’m finding it hard to fit everything in. Work is always busy, so fitting in studying and London Marathon training around that isn’t easy. The final Sunday Runday Last Sunday was the final Sunday Runday ahead of ABP Southampton Marathon, Half Marathon and 10k. My training schedule said that I needed to run 24km, so I planned to run 8km ahead of joining the group. Unfortunately, I ran for a while before I realised that I hadn’t turned my watch on. I also dawdled a bit, so by the time I got back to the start point for Sunday Runday, I had only done 7.1km. F ..read more

This has been such a week of highs and lows. I’ve been away from home, so have missed some training sessions and haven’t eaten healthily, but I’ve also run my fastest 5k in over 3 years! Trip to Birmingham After missing my long run on Sunday, I had a busy day on Monday. I spent the morning at work and then caught a train to Birmingham to go to Digifest. For previous work trips, I’ve taken my fabulous triathlon transition bag, but this time I had some new kit. For my birthday, M and Stu bought me a beautiful green suitcase and I also got a useful new rucksack. The teal suitcase is from Tripp ..read more

After having a good time at Monday night training, I was looking forward to this week’s running. I planned to do the Thursday night endurance session, Netley Abbey parkrun and then a long run on Sunday. Lordshill Thursday night endurance session Several of the usual runners weren’t at the Thursday night session, but it was nice to chat with Elaine and others during the warm-up. I was pleased that I was not too far from my targets. I ran 10.56km and averaged 6:46/km. Other exercise On Friday, I managed to squeeze in a long walk at lunchtime with Rachel. It’s been ages since we’ve been able to h ..read more

Yet again, the last few weeks have been so busy that I haven’t had enough time to blog alongside working, training and studying. I’m not quite where I want to be but am pleased that I am continuing to make progress. Sunday Runday (12/02/23) On Sunday 12th February, I joined in with Sunday Runday. This was the second of three training runs for ABP Southampton Half Marathon. The training run was due to be 12.5km, so I needed to run 11.5km before meeting everyone else. I started my run from the Common and averaged 7:04/km for the first 11.7km. My initial solo lap went past Chafen Lane and I consi ..read more

It’s been a while since I’ve had enough time to write a blog post as I’ve been busy with work, studying and training. However, I have been making progress in all areas, including running parkrun in under 30 minutes. Long run and Southampton parkrun 28/01/23 My long run was a bit shorter this week – I only needed to do 16.5km, so I decided to run 11.5km before parkrun as that’s the easiest time to fit this run in. Ending a long run with parkrun is nice as it really motivates me for the final 3.1 miles. I left home at about 7:30am and decided to follow much of the same route as last Saturday wit ..read more

I’ve been really busy at work in the last couple of weeks delivering a webinar and a face-to-face class, alongside all of my usual activities. However, despite this, I managed to complete my longest run in nearly 5 years. I’m also persevering with the rest of my training. Monday night run with LRR Monday night was an interval session on the Common, led by Malcolm. He’d planned a ‘Kenyan hills’ session. This is a type of workout that involves running up and down hills in order to improve running speed and endurance. We did a short warm-up before the session started. The aim of a Kenyan hills s ..read more