London 2012. One man's bid for marathon glory. by toddingtontrotter

So we're into 2012 and there's less than 16 weeks to go till The London Marathon.

I know that as I'm following a 16 week plan and I've already crossed 3 training days off it. I feel like a kid with an advent calender when I look to see what I have to do next, and equally excited to cross it off once it's done. 

But....

this is week ONE.

A week with nothing that I haven't already done.

Week three involves 30 minutes of hill runs and a 1 hour 30 minute run the following day.

Those will both be firsts for me.

Week 8.... 14 mile long run

Week 9.... 16 mile long run

Week 10... 18 mile long run

Yet still I am looking forward to it all.

Today Liz Yelling required me to run for 40 minutes at easy pace. Don't tell her but I ran for 50 minutes. Again, I set of at what I thought was really slow but turned out to be 9.15. I slowed even more. I raced up a hill for 35 seconds and it nearly killed me. I needed a walk after that. In mile five I made an effort to up the pace a little bit and found that I was traveling at 8.30 pace for a few minutes. I couldn't keep it up for a whole mile but it made me think that perhaps it is possible for me to develop a steady pace, if I keep my easy pace slow.

I can't help thinking though, that if I just slow down and call my easy pace 10 minutes per mile, I've already got a steady pace of 9.15!

My next run is 40 minutes at steady pace and I'm not precisely sure what that means. It can't do my stamina any harm to try and run a little faster I guess, maybe after the first couple of miles.

Ah, we'll see how it goes. 

More importantly, I need to up my blogging pace.

Look at the time!

I'm off to bed to read Runners World.