London Marathon Training: Week 2

Entering the second week of training and I am already starting to feel some small improvements in my running. It may only be week two of training but I have also logged 39 miles of running, which is quite a step up. I feel good for it though and have even manged to balance some non-running life 'stuff' within the week. I am proud of this too - in the past I would sometimes let marathon training dominate my entire life, but as I become more experienced as runner, I am also learning to find that balance.

MONDAY: a return to Body Pump after a few weeks break. This week my coughing has virtually gone (thank goodness!) and whilst some soreness remained in my side at the start of the week, I felt able to return to doing some strength work.

TUESDAY: a return to strength training felt good, however inevitably I also felt the effect of it today. DOMs hit almost instantly - forget any delay! I had 5 tempo miles on the plan, but found it tough to hit my desired half marathon pace for the middle three miles. I did scrape under the 8 min/mile marker at least, and I was no too hard on myself due to the soreness I was feeling in my legs.

WEDNESDAY: 6 easy miles, which felt needed for my legs and I easily kept the pace toward the 8:40 min/mile region.

THURSDAY: with my muscles feeling less sore I attempted a double run day, with my own interval run planned for the morning and a Run Club session in the evening. Despite messing up using my watch on the intervals (it has been that long since I last did any I was out of practice!) I was really pleased with how I ran. I ran 6 miles with 4 x 1 mile reps; I focused on effort rather than pace for the reps and logged some respectable splits of 7.33, 7.15, 7.18 and 7.39 min/mile repeated along a circular loop which did include a slight hill! Later at Run Club I added 5 more miles during an 'out and back' route battling some interesting headwind!

FRIDAY: Rest Day

SATURDAY: this week Saturday became long run day as I had a friends birthday Saturday evening with the promise of homemade cocktails. I wanted to celebrate my friends birthday, I wanted to drink cocktails, I wanted to have some fun and I simply did not want marathon training to stop this. Amongst my own demands I also did not want to miss parkrun! The solution was to incorporate parkrun into my long run - something I have never actually tried before. I ran 4 miles down to Lincoln parkrun, completed parkrun, and then 7 miles home after. It certainly made 14 mils go by very quickly, and was a bit of a new challenge. I tried to keep the 4 mils down to parkrun steady, and the fact it was a very icy day helped me keep my parkrun pace in check a little (I am not very confident running on ice at the best of times!) The post parkrun miles were not as comfortable and I could feel that fact I had some extra pace exertion in my legs. I dug in though, embracing what was turning into a lovely day, and finished with an overall average pace of under 8:20 min/mile. With my long run banked, I was then able to enjoy my evening (which did include a lot of cocktails!) 

SUNDAY: after a lovely Saturday night it felt good to 'only' have 3 miles to run today. I enjoyed these later on, when I felt a bit more myself, keeping it easy paced and shaking the legs out a little. 

As you will see in the photo included, this week I have also been looking after my friend's kitten at my house. Through my cat sitting, I have learnt that if you want some procrastination for getting out the door and running a kitten playing with your shoelaces is certainly a good one!