Week 3 Done, 9 to go!

Last Updated on Wednesday, 21 July 2010 09:24 Written by The Virtual Runner Sunday, 18 July 2010 05:25

It’s been a pretty good week as far as the training for the Farnham Pilgrims Marathon is concerned.  My week’s training consisted of the following:-

Wednesday

6.5km (4.04 miles) in 41 mins 12 secs for an average pace of 10:12 min/mile (06:20 min/km).

Friday

1.6km in 10 mins 48 secs for an average pace of 10:52 min/mile

4.8km in 25 mins 50 secs for an average pace of 08:40 min/mile (05:23 min/km)

1.6km in 10 mins 38 secs for an average pace of 10:42 min/mile (06:39 min/km)

Sunday

Long run of 16.23km (10.08 miles) at an average pace of 10:48 min/mile (06:41 min/km).

Details of today’s long run are below:-

My long run was made just a little bit more interesting because of the lovely purple toe I’m sporting at the moment. I took my son to a local indoor playgym which comes complete with a ball pool/pit. I was in the ball pool testing it out to make sure it was safe for my son (okay, I was playing in it) when I stubbed my big toe really hard on the floor mats under the balls. I fell into the balls in agony. Unfortunately my son and the other children there thought it was an invite to a pile-on and I was soon covered in children as well as brightly coloured balls.

So my toe started off as purple before the long run and it now a dark purple covering a larger area. Good thing was that it didn’t hurt at all during the whole run which means I’m just gonna keep at it.

Photos from today’s long run:-

This afternoon we went for a meal at a pub my wife always sees when she’s out and about. It claims to have the “best pub garden in Berkshire”. I beg to differ. Food was pretty good though, even with the 1 hour wait to eat. I won’t be in any hurry to head back to that place again.

I keep saying it, but I really must do it: I need to take part in more (some) cross-training on my non-running days! I mean, it’s just ridiculous. I keep telling myself I need to and I always fully intend to but it never ends up happening. So, tomorrow morning I must somehow make myself get off to the gym for some non-running exercise!

Also, I’m not sure if I’ve told you or not, but I’ve been raising money for a local (Berkshire) charity called DebRA. I’ve raised over £500 for them so far I think and I’ll try and push for a bit more.

As for future running plans, I have none in the short term. Most of the running events I would normally take part in are on a Sunday and the distances are like 10k which is too short for me to do because I really need to be doing my long runs on Sundays. I’ve entered the ballot for the 2011 London Marathon and I’ve also applied for a charity place. I’m telling you, if I get in to the London Marathon I’ll be SUPER excited and I’ll be hitting EVERYONE up for sponsor money! Hell yeah!

Well, I’m off to tweet on twitter and see what peeps are up to.

Week 2 Done, 10 to go!

Last Updated on Wednesday, 21 July 2010 09:24 Written by The Virtual Runner Sunday, 11 July 2010 04:08

Well, normally after a long run with my garmin I would be able to put a handy little widget on here that allows you all to see my run details.  However, I forgot to install some sort of plugin that uploaded the data to garmin connect so that widget isn’t available for this run.

However, I’ve done a screenshot as follows:-

The first few miles were extremely painful and my legs locked up tight.  I had to stop and walk a couple of times (only for about 10 secs) to try and relieve the pain.  At least it didn’t make much of a difference on my average pace.  Even at my slowest, my average pace for any split/lap was under the average pace of 12:29 min/mile that the training plan called for.

Overall average pace of 11:00 min/mile was okay I guess.  I mean, I’m happy with it and the run overall (except for first few miles) felt good.

This coming week I’ll need to put more of an emphasis on the cross training on the off/rest days to work on my overall fitness.

Non-running stuff?  This blog is doing very well and the “best running blogs” page is still seeing quite a lot of traffic according to my statistics.  Also, my adding a proper directory has made things so much easier as people can add their own blogs/sites without me having to go and edit some html code.

PS – In case you’re wondering about the laps/splits above, there are 15 because my garmin still shows me km.