A life time on the hips and bleeding nips!

Just over a month into my training for the Berlin marathon and finally my body is starting to get up to speed again, I’m sure I am not alone in saying that when you start up exercising again after a few months off it almost feels like going back to the start again. At the end of those first runs you really question why you are doing this again as 2 miles feels like 10, this is especially bad knowing that only a few months prior you were running a half marathon. It must be said there is not many things demoralising than knowing you were not that long ago capable of running under 10 mins per mile for thirteen miles, to now struggling to finish 2 miles at around 11 mins per mile pace well at least now instead of struggling to finish a 2 mile run I am at least struggling to finish 6 mile runs.

In the last month I have slowly been upping not only my distance but also my pace I have gone from around 11 min/mile for a short run to around 9 mins per mile, this is around the pace I need to run for my sub 4 hour goal, my best pace for a run over 10 miles came at the great eastern run back in 2014 when I hit around 8:47 per mile, my one and only sub 2 hour half marathon so far, so I know that when fit I can do this. To help with this I will start in June on some of my shorter runs to do some interval training, this means I will essentially run as fast as possible for short bursts interspersed with short recovery periods where I will run slower. This should hopefully help not only with my weight loss but also help me improve my speed, and risk of heart attack.

In terms of building up my distance I have set a target over the next 4 weeks of getting that 6 mile distance up to 10 miles or at least as close as I can to that. to help me here I am hoping to run at least one organised race each month with the first being the Ramsey Abbey 10k at the end of June, as much as I would love to do more working most weekends makes running organised events a struggle since most are on Sunday mornings. Having an organised run in the near future really does help motivate you to get out there and train when there is nothing on the horizon it is easy to fall into bad habits.

One of my biggest fear at the moment is that we have a long hot summer. Fat boys running in the heat is neither a pretty sight nor is it fun, the heat saps so much out of me and I sweat like Niagara Falls as most of us larger boys do. Heavy sweating is like running in heavy rain and massively increases the chance of my favourite running ailment that of the dreaded chaffing, yes there are not many things as disturbing to man than to get home and appear like he has been lactating blood, especially if you are stupid enough to be wearing a white top, yes I know this is why god really created Vaseline but even that has its limits. Chaffing is not the only fear of running in the heat ensuring that I have access to or that there is somewhere on my route that I can buy fluids from is something I really need to keep at the back of my mind as Hydration becomes increasingly more important, especially the risk of over hydration when I start running longer runs but I will address this in a later post.