Mr. Mojo Risin

Coming back from holiday always brings a case of the blues. This time was no different except I had to get up and run 5 miles, 16 miles, 5 miles, 10 miles, 11 miles and 15 miles in successive days before heading off again to Riga for a long boys' weekend with friends from work.

Coming back from that holiday (I can recommend Riga as a very nice place to spend two or three days) and I was faced with another string of consecutive runs which would cumulate with a 20 miler on Sunday.

It all started to feel like a chore and my running mojo dipped significantly. So much so that what with my disrupted training due to minor niggles and holidays together with this lack of running spark I have decided to pull out of the Chester marathon this year (although I hadn't entered it yet so am not really pulling out if anything, rather not entering).

It's a shame but I like to run because I LIKE to run. It shouldn't feel like an arduous job, it's my hobby that I enjoy.

What to do instead? Well, I've found a maintenance running plan that I will use for four runs a week that will be run at my preferred pace. I'll also start looking for a spring marathon (assuming I fail to get in London again!) when I'll hopefully not have so many disruptions getting in the way. I don't usually go on holiday during the spring (honeymoon notwithstanding) so it should be easier to maintain a proper schedule.

I'll update next time on whether the mojo has returned or if I've slumped into an ever decreasing circle of despair!

Horses for courses

You never know what to expect when planning training runs on holiday. When I was in the US on a road trip I was able to keep my running schedule because the weather and conditions were perfect. Last year in Cyprus I had to drastically reduce my plan due to the extremely hot weather which meant no speed work or long runs over 8 miles.

So far in Italy I have had a mixed bag. In Amalfi I was scheduled to run one 5 miler which I managed although the roads are very much in the undulating category so I was pleased to not have to run any more than that.

In Rome I was due to run some longer runs, 10 miles plus. This is not an easy thing to do. The roads are small, busy, undulating. There are no clear running paths or areas. Also, the weather so far this holiday has been almost Cyprus hot so not conducive to quality training. My plan then has been altered to running what I can when I can just so I can maintain fitness. It's almost like treating the two weeks of holiday as if you are coming back from a short injury. So, with that in mind I was able to run two more 5 milers in Rome.

I'm now in Florence, about to depart for Genoa and I've managed another 5 mile run along the River Arno. It's been the best course to run so far, flat and criss-crossing the river over numerous bridges including the Ponte Vecchio which is lined with old shops from the 15th century.

Because of the amount of walking I've done and stairs I've climbed on this holiday through sightseeing I have managed to slightly pull my left groin muscle which means I really am having to treat this holiday as if I am coming back from a short injury.

My hope now is to run at least once in each new location we visit (4 remaining, Genoa, Lake Como, Venice and Bologna) and to run at least 5 miles in each. Ideally I would like to run for all of the remaining days of the holiday (5) but we'll see how I feel.

Once I get back I can pick up my schedule again although I am away for the weekend after I return for another short break, this time with friends from work so I will have to cram my runs in before I leave. After that it should be normal service resumed until the marathon itself.

Hopefully I'll update again before the end of the holiday.

Pre-holiday cramming

I am five days into eight days of running with no rest days. That's what I need to do to be able to go on holiday without losing any training.

Sunday saw me running down the Grand Union Canal towards Paddington as I said in my last post. It has been very hot here in London over the past few weeks but fortunately on Sunday morning it was overcast for much of the run with a nice breeze. That together with the canal itself made for a very pleasant run indeed, if it's possible for 15 miles to be very pleasant.

I ran an interval session yesterday of 8 miles with 10x100m strides, today was 4 miles recovery and tomorrow is an 11 miles medium long run. It's tiring but I feel like I'm making progress. My legs feel stronger and I am definitely fitter but I'm looking forward to a two day break on the weekend when we go on holiday.

On Friday morning I have to run 16 miles with the last 10 at marathon pace. I'm working on Friday so this means I've got to get up around 4am in order to get the run in before I set off to work. This will be the earliest I've ever got up to go running. Hopefully I won't fall asleep in work!

We are going on holiday to Italy for two weeks, driving around the country from the south to the north. I've been looking for routes to run at each location we stop at although I may have to end up running short laps near each hotel since it can be quite tricky finding decent routes in places that I am unfamiliar with. That said, I'm looking forward to running around the Amalfi coast, Rome, Lake Como and Venice. When we drove around the west coast of the U.S. I ran some of my most memorable runs ever, although I'm not sure anything will be able to match running over the Golden Gate Bridge.

I'll try and update whilst on holiday but that depends on internet access and whether I'm not too lazy!

No news is good news, right?

So, one week and bit into the P+D 12 week schedule and things are all tickety-boo. Shin splints are gone (for now at least) and I've managed to run all the allotted training runs.

I had forgotten that with P+D it requires a fairly long mid-week run. Last week was 9 miles, this morning 11 miles! This meant getting up at 5am and being out of the house by 5:30. But it helps beat the heat of the summer morning as well as give me enough time to cool down afterwards.

Sunday saw me running 13 miles with the last 8 at marathon pace. It was tough but achievable, with the promise of a rest day the next morning to help spur me along. I also found a new park to run around. Northala fields in Greenford. There are three artificial hills created out of the rubble of the old Wembley Stadium. It's quite the tourist spot for this who like to stare at the beauty of a road that is the A40.

My mid-week run pace appears a little slower than I would like but maybe I will make speed improvements as the weeks go by.  On Thursday I will be doing 4 miles of threshold pace which is one of my least favourite types of runs but then I'll have a 15 miler to look forward to on Sunday. One of my favourite 15 mile routes is down the Grand Union Canal towards Paddington and I haven't run it for about a year so it will great to reacquaint myself with it.

If everything holds up over the next few weeks I'll enter the Chester marathon once I get back from holiday. This time I'm determined to beat 3:30!

A new hope

I took a week off running to ease my shin splints and thought that I would have to pull out of the Chester Marathon (not that I've even entered yet). A week can seem like an eternity for a runner and this was no different.

Finally, after a week I went for a 4 mile run at my own pace to see how I felt. It went well. Not much complaining in the legs and I felt good afterwards.

With this in mind I started thinking of looking for a 12 week schedule that would take me up to the date of the marathon. I knew I would have to abandon the Hanson method but was hopeful of finding an alternative. Luckily Pfizinger and Douglas do a 12 week schedule that should do the job nicely.

Last year I followed the P+D up to 55 miles schedule for 18 weeks and managed to PB in Chester. From looking online a lot of people preferred the 12 week schedule because it provides more focus, what with it being closer to the actual race and that (6 weeks closer!).

So, this morning I ran 8 miles with 10x100m strides and that went well. No issues with my legs but I'm not counting my chickens yet. I still need to see how a week of training will go but I'm definitely more hopeful than I was last week.

I've even managed to rearrange runs so that I'm able to run whilst on holiday but not all the time (about 50% of days).

Tomorrow I have a 9 mile run planned so at the moment it's onwards and upwards.

On the edge of the precipice

My shin splints are not getting better. Or at least I don't think they are. So much so that I decided not to do my speed work session this morning. From looking online the suggestion is to stop running for two weeks and then start again gradually. Others seem to think that you should cut back on mileage and not do any speed work at all. From looking at my running data online the last time I had shin splints was two years ago and I stopped running for a whole month!

I'm not quite sure what to do, if I stop running altogether then it means that I won't run Chester this year. I mean, I could but I'm not interested in running it if I can't have the best chance of breaking 3:30. And stopping running and doing no speed work is not the best chance that I can manage. Maybe if it was London or another of the big marathons I would just go ahead regardless of time but the only reason I wanted to run Chester (and Manchester earlier this year that I pulled out of due to my ankle) was to break my PB.

My last hope is getting up tomorrow morning and seeing how I feel. If I can run the speed session tomorrow that I was meant to run this morning then there is hope. But I'm not optimistic about it.

It's a shame also because I ran 12 miles on Sunday and felt amazing. The shin splints hurt for the first few miles as always but once that pain subsided then I settled in to my pace nicely and ran pretty much most of the Ealing half marathon course. It was a shame I had to stop.

If I wake up tomorrow and my shins hurt then my choices are one of two. I rest for a week before trying again. Then I run reduced distance for the next three weeks up until I go to Italy on holiday where I will do a bit of running (maybe three or four times a week) just to keep my fitness up. Once I come back then depending on how I feel I could either train for 10 weeks and aim for a half marathon at the end of October if I can find one to enter or I just run a maintenance schedule of no more than 35 miles per week that will take me into the winter when I can start to prepare for a spring marathon (maybe Manchester again, but more successfully this time by getting to the start line!).

Tomorrow is a big day.

Going the distance

I'm in week 5 of the Hanson 18 week marathon training schedule and it's starting to fit into place.

On the one hand there are no monster long runs to look forward to (or dread). The longest I've run so far is 10 miles and I'm only due to run 12 miles this weekend. On the other hand all the other runs during the week are longer than I have been used to in the past. No single run is less than 6 miles. It all adds a cumulative tiredness into the legs which I believe is the point of the training methodology.

Also, the interval runs which are on Tuesday are run faster than I have previously been required to. Essentially they are somewhere between 5k and 10k pace which doesn't sound too bad but being on the sixth day in a row of running they can feel very tough. Fortunately they are followed by a rest day (hoorah!). This week the intervals were 5x1km which I found very hard going indeed. I think I picked the wrong route because there was a slight incline which added to the toughness. Next week I will be running a pyramid so will need to choose a flatter route to help me maintain pace better.

Apart from the interval sessions I love the training. My foot/ankle is holding up. I do have a slight shin splint on my left leg but am hoping this will ease up as it gets stronger. I'm also looking forward to running some new routes although that gets harder and harder as time goes by. I think I must have run pretty much every road, canal and dirt path within a 5 mile radius.

I am going on holiday to Italy for the first two weeks of August. It's going to be a road trip from the south to the north. It's bound to impact my training somehow but I'll see if I can minimise as much as possible. The last road trip my wife and I went on was to the west coast of America and I still managed to fit in about 80% of my training runs including a 20 mile run in San Francisco!

The weather is much warmer at the moment which is great for morning running. At that time of day it's cool but not cold. Also there are a lot more runners about due to the weather no doubt. It will be interesting to see how many remain when the mornings get darker and the temperature drops below zero! Still, make hay while the sun shines.