It said on my training plan…Long Run, but in all honesty anything over 5k is kinda long for me right now.
I haven’t been out for a self-induced long training run since about November last year and that was just shy of 10k.
So today I decided I would try for something around the 12 km mark.
I set off at about 11am, the sun shining and with a rough idea of where I was going starting with a familiar half loop of Victoria park…how many runners were out? Thousands it seemed, although my pictures managed to make it look desolate. Maybe it’s the January effect, or Jantastic last day of the week fear, or maybe just the start of marathon training proper.
I knew I was running slow but that was ok, yesterday’s parkrun PB had taken its toll on my legs so it was literally about going the distance.
After a quick pit stop for water in the cafe, I headed out onto the regents canal. By now the weather had changed, the sun had gone and the temperature had dropped. So my plan to run to the lime house basin was shelved and I ran to the commercial road and then swapped canal and headed back towards Bromley by Bow.
By the time I hit Stratford I knew I’d had enough, I was out for just short of two hours and that was plenty for the day.
I was out running for an hour and 48 minutes and logged a distance of 13.29 kilometres. This may not seem like much considering I will have to run just short of 4 times this much in April. But the point is I am following my training plan.
Today is the 12th January and I have run just under 40km, I have run a 5k PB and I have been running 4 times a week. This is so much more than the training I was doing at this point in 2012, in fact I was somewhere in Thailand drinking beer and getting little sleep in January in 2012, my training didn’t start until the 2nd week in February.
So I am confident about being in good condition come April and beating my marathon time.
On a further note, I think this Janathon/jantastic/january thingy agrees with me.
Aside from my tiredness, and my writers block (when it comes to writing interesting blog posts) I actually feel great.