Sunday 30 November 2014

November - Month 1 on the road to Stratford Upon Avon

A really great first month in my cunning plan to master the Marathon distance and rediscover some running form. After a couple of fallow years where my running has been going backwards and I have suffered my first proper injury I wanted to apply myself properly. November is the first of six months to take me up to the Shakespeare Marathon at the end of April. The bare bones of my plan are as follows:

1) Run 5 times a week.
2) Run between 30-45 miles a week.
3) Run at least one parkrun a month to monitor progress
4) One quality session, two easy runs, one parkrun or steady run, one long run each week.
5) Good time management, run commutes or early morning runs to be most time efficient.

Prior to this month, in the 6 years I have been running the most miles I had managed in a month was 119 miles. This month I managed to achieve 136 miles in my 20 runs an average of 6.8 miles a run. The runs I did were as follows:

4 races ( 1 x 10k and 3 x parkruns)
4 runs in excess of 10 miles (15 miles longest)
4 commutes 7.5 miles a go
6 easy/steady runs of 5-6 miles
1 Tempo Run
1 Progressive Run

Also did 22 rides on my bike, almost exclusively commutes totalling 170miles.

The pace isn't good at the minute with the fastest parkrun being 21:22 and the 10k at the start of the month being 47:27 but a base is there to be built on. The holiday month of December will be tough and January is mad at work but I've got into some good habits in November and so am confident I can keep the momentum going. 1 down 5 to go.