Recovered

Well, it's a little over two weeks since my disasterous efforts in Hobart. But time does really heal all wounds! I've enjoyed a couple of weeks of nice and easy running. Three nice and easy 6-7km runs in the week immediately after the marathon, a gentle 20km run the Sunday after, and then four nice and easy 6-7km runs this last week.

And now that I am nice and refreshed it's back to some more challenging training.

My training plan for the rest of the year will involve a modification of some of the very famous Arthur Lydiard's training methods. I've downloaded a lot of useful information from the coolrunning website in Australia, including a training plan put together by John Hadd. I plan to give this a go and see where it takes me.

So my plan between now and the Canberra Marathon in April is to stay in a base training phase running about 120kms a week along these sort of lines:

Monday - easy 14km
Tuesday - medium easy 15km
Wednesday - easy 20 - 25km
Thursday - rest
Friday - Easy 14km
Saturday - Easy 14km
Sunday - Easy 30-35km

I'll let you know how it goes.

And if you are interested, check out this blog from my good friend Alan Fitzgerald - the founder of the Gunn Runners in Melbourne who is going to run his first marathon in Sydney in September - go Alan.

Tasmania - 6 January - A Personal Worst!

Whew ... well that's the first one down, and I don't suppose I could have had a worse run first up.

Actually, when I say "run", I am being very liberal in my usage as I had to walk most of the way from about the 33km mark. But I guess the good point is that a personal worst time is still better than a Did Not Finish.

So what went wrong?

I knew that I would be a little underdone as my longest run in training had only been about 28km, and I had slacked off with only a couple of 20km runs as the long runs through December.

The Hobart course is also quite hilly - certainly when compared with Canberra, Gold Coast, Melbourne and Rottnest that I have run previously.

But mainly, it was hotter and more humid than I could really deal with for the full distance. I have felt the onset of dehydration previously, and when I was getting really light-headed from about the 26km mark, I knew that I would have to really slow things up.

So once again I have been reminded to respect the distance, and not take so many shortcuts in my training.

Thanks to all the other runners on Sunday 6 December, particularly to the guy who walked the whole distance - I had about 5km on you at one stage, so it was humbling to have you literally zoom past me with a few kms to go. And congratulations also to the young chap who was completing his first marathon. You also showed me up well.

Thanks particularly to Simon, Paul and Bec from the Gunn Runners in Melbourne. Simon and Paul ran the half, and Bec stormed home to be the third woman home - top effort. But their real achievement was to wait hours and hours for me to come stumbling over the line in a time around 4.45. Thanks for waiting guys.

So it's back to some more serious training for the rest of this month, and for February and March before Marathon Numero Due in April.