A gentle week finishing in Bushy Park again

With the potential marathon still at least seven months away, I'm completely fine with putting in a gentle week, providing I still get the long run in. Ok, so I might have had a couple of beers this week too, but the two things I learnt, or decided to remember, from last year's marathon was not to let training completely take over your life and to build your training up gradually.

I ran 14.5k this morning, at a reasonably brisk pace. I felt a very slight niggle in the shin as I set off, but the pain soon dulled and I settled into an 8 minute mile pace for the 9 mile route. It felt fine, good even. But I'd stop short of thinking I could keep that up for any length of time, i.e. a marathon. Half maybe, but no more.

A bit of an update

It's been a little over five months since my last post and, although I've not stopped running entirely, it has been on the back burner while I've been getting to grips with fatherhood.

That all being sorted now, in so much as I'm coming to terms with life without sleep, I'm donning a new pair of trainers and slowly going to notch up the miles to prepare myself for a potential 26.2 mile jog round London next year. Fingers crossed.

I'm not feeling in bad shape this year. I've not been running much but I've kept up with cycling to work and have recently added a dose of swimming into the mix. And, on the odd occasion I've taken myself out for a little test drive, the outlook is not unpromising. In fact, I've clocked a PB for the 10,000m (in olympic speak) twice consecutively and am now down to 44'08".

So this weekend I decided to kick off my pre-training training, if you like, with a warm up 5k on Saturday and an 13.5km run through Bushy Park and along the river on Sunday. It's good to be back!

Another city. Another marathon.

On 26th April, I will be taking part in the 2009 London Marathon and running on behalf of Children with Leukaemia. Please help me raise money for this very worthy cause.

Inspired by everyone taking part in last year's London Marathon and suitably numb to the more painful memories from the previous year's NYC Marathon, I decided it was time to give it another go.

In April 2008, I approached Children with Leukaemia to ask if I could run for them in the 2009 London Marathon. They raise money for a very worthy cause, and one that is close to our hearts. I was fortunate enough to be offered one of their places back in August and have been keeping my running going since, although training in earnest didn't begin until January this year.