Diary of what followed after I finally succeeded in completing a marathon just in time, before my 50th birthday.

Sunday, 4 February 2007

HERE COMES THE TOUGH BIT

Weight: 78 kilos
Time spent running since 15 November: 33 hours 23 minutes
Distance run since 15 November: 318.8 kilometers
Time left: 10 weeks

Ten weeks. Or eight weeks of serious training, as the last fortnight before the marathon should be spent sparing myself from strain and taking it real easy. The clock's ticking louder now. And I'm not too happy with my progress.

Wednesday was fine: 90 minutes in the park across the road, or 14 kilometers, or one-third of a marathon. But today my legs did not want to move. I should have run 130 minutes. Instead I struggled through 80 minutes in the forest, and some bits of it I even walked.

Mind you, the weather did not help. It was sunny. It was warm, too warm with the wind in my back; it was freezing cold against that same wind.

But I think the main culprit must have been yesterday's football match. My legs and back simply did not recover in time. So maybe I have to switch my long long runs to the Wednesdays and take the afternoons off, and do the shorter long runs on Sundays. That way football would interfere a bit less.

2 comments:

Jason The Running Man said...

Great blog, found you off CRN.

Faithful Soles said...

I hope that your marathon training is progressing as planned. That is a great goal to set for yourself. I have never run a marathon outside of the US, but I've heard Rotterdam is beautiful. If you get a chance, please visit my running web site, Faithful Soles. I have a categorized and searchable Running Blog Database on there and would appreciate it if you would link your blog to it. If you want to read a really great inspirational story about an event I witnessed at the 2000 Boston Marathon that I'm sure will motivate you in your marathon training, please read The Greatest Marathoner. I also have my own blog, but most of my information is on the main web site. Thanks and continued good luck in your training.