Back in training

The last week or so has been all about pre-preparation for the Berlin Marathon. I've selected the training plan I'm going to follow - from Hal Higdon's Marathon book (which I am loving, by the way. Lots of self-aware, overanalytical American nonsense in there, but for the most part an excellent book about running marathons, with lots of practical advice too). My training proper starts on Monday 23 May, so in the meantime it's just about testing how much fitness I lost when I was not running with my foot injury.

I've had a few short runs and they've all gone well. The only real problem is the hayfever, and no amount of training is ever going to prevent that!

Today I entered a 10k race, as a test of fitness. I wanted to compare this morning's time with past runs in this event, to see how much fitness I had lost in the last month.

On the whole, not bad overall. I had a bit of stressful journey there, as I got stuck behind a series of slow moving vehicles, whose drivers insisted on driving way below the speed limit. Only the last of the four was a learner driver - the rest of them have no excuse whatsoever. Luckily I had allowed lots of time to get to the race start, but I was feeling frustrated and bad tempered before the race.

The first couple of miles were a struggle - for the first km I was last! The sight of a group of pensioners ahead of me was enough incentive to kick on and start pushing myself a bit and I did manage to get in front of several runners by the 3km mark. And I was pacing nicely - really even times. My mile times were consistent with my mile times in the NY Half marathon in March and although for a 10k I would normally be a bit faster, I was pretty happy with that consistent pacing overall.

As the race went on, several other runners were starting to slow (pacing is everything, people!) and I managed to really move away from last place. By the 6km mark I was fairly convinced I was going to finish, and finish ok. I felt no issue in the right foot, despite chunks of the race being on uneven grassy surface, and the longer the race went on, the stronger I felt. Shame it wasn't a half!

I also finished strongly, with the last mile the fastest, and I am definitely taking that as a positive. I was probably about 2 minutes slower than when I did that race two years ago, but consistent with my 10k time in New York in March, so the verdict is: not too much of the fitness has been lost.

The new marathon training plan is 5 times a week. One more outing per week than my NYC 2009 training plan. The mileage looks good, however - testing but feasible. So I'm going to go for it. Essentially this means even less social life than ever before, but I'm hoping that my current redundancy-induced freelance working lifestyle means that I will be able to be more flexible and fit in more runs. Here's hoping.

This week I'm going to try and run 5 times a week as a test before I start marathon training proper. Will I be able to manage 5 times a week for the next 19 weeks? Is that really all it is until Berlin? I won't know until I try, but I'd be lying if I didn't feel a little bit daunted by the prospect of that frequency.

Still, I'm determined to give it a go, test myself and hopefully knock those minutes off my time on September 25. Time to dust off the Jaffa Cakes and hit the streets in earnest.

LON