On the marathon training schedule, Tuesdays are about speed work. So it was a trip to the gym for some treadmill action.

• 1 mile warm-up
• 4 x 800m fast with 40om slow in between
• 1 mile slow cool-down

I wasn’t really expecting such a long session for a speed work session: a total of 7.6km (4.75 miles) in 50mins. 

 

Janathon total = 44.14 miles

Today marks the official start of my 16 week training marathon schedule, concluding with the Milton Keynes Marathon on 2nd May. 

I’m going to attempt to rigidly stick to the schedule so that I can bring home a sub 4 hour marathon. Therefore, the rest of Janathon will be from the schedule with some nice easy stuff on official ‘rest’ days. 

The schedule asked for this… 

 
And that is exactly what I did:

• 3.74 miles
• 37min 25secs
• 9.59 min/mile 

The run was completed at the end of the school day running round the school fields: 4 big laps. 

 

That’s when I spotted the crime. 

Now, my school is not an inner-city school, it doesn’t have some of the issues other schools have. There is no knife crime, no guns, very little violence at all. But tonight I spotted the most heinous of crimes.

Grass theft. 

 
I’ve got no idea either.

Total Janathon mileage = 39.4

Sunday: the home of the long run. However, with my 16 week marathon training schedule starting tomorrow, I’d decided that Sunday’s are going to be all about the mileage soon, so a very gentle half hour jog at the woods with the dog was the plan. It was muddy..

Things didn’t go to plan.

1. Loaded the dog into the car and set off for the woods. After getting halfway there I had to turn round and get my earphones that I had forgotten.
2. There was something up with the dog today – he normally does what he is told – this morning he didn’t. Within the first half mile he had terrorised various families by jumping up at them and making their children scream with horror.
3. On seeing a couple of people riding horses in the distance, the dog doesn’t like horses, and knowing what he was like this morning, I headed off the path and onto the trails to save me the hassle. The particular trail I had chosen was probably the muddiest trail I could have chosen, and uphill.
4. The earphones, not my normal earphones (see a previous post for more information), kept falling out my ears.
5. I’m normally pretty good at avoiding branches and brambles, apparently this morning was different, got whipped in the face on more than one occasion.
6. Bloody stupid earphones kept falling out, despite hat pull down over ears.
7. I was also tracking today’s run on the phone using the Nike+ running app; had some issues with it. A few times as I was running along the woman would suddenly say, “pausing workout”, so that explains the gaps in the run.
8. The dog kept stopping and inexplicably staring at me. He is properly going crazy.
9. Effing earphones kept falling out.
10. When I got back to the car it had exploded and set fire to the woods, killing several adults and small children, spewing poisonous fumes into the air leaving the woods devoid of all life*.

In other news…the earphone problem has been solved.

* this didn’t actually happen, although, giving the morning I had, it wouldn’t have surprised me one bit if it did.

Total Janathon mileage = 35.6

 

When I looked at the weather last night it looked like this morning it was going to be a very wet Parkrun. So when I woke up this morning and looked at the window it was a pleasant surprise: no rain and a pretty bright morning.

Fast forward one hour standing on the start line at Peterborough Parkrun: pissing it down.

Big turnout this morning, 550 plus runners, meant a pretty slow start. I didn’t get towards the front at the start so my PB was not going to be threatened today. 

Talking of PBs, Helen smashed it, new PB!! Go here and find out more.

Here we are looking particularly happy considering how wet we actually are…

  
Total Janathon = 32.05 miles

A quick couple of miles tonight. Rushed home for a chippy which in fact became pub dinner with Guinness.

Short run. Short blog. Cushty.

Janathon total = 28.83 miles

Avid readers of this blog will be aware that yesterday I was very nearly decapitated, resulting in broken earphones.

Today’s run, at the woods, meant that I had to wear some different earphones. Luckily, there were spare ones in the house*. But they were not my usual earphones. They were some very cool, funky looking earphones by Jabra. 

Cool and funky maybe, but not my lovely old earphones. They were very annoying. 

Firstly, they felt like they were about to fall out all the time, they have this weird rubber bit that goes in your ear and stops them falling out. They never actually fell out, but felt like they would. Very annoying. 

Secondly, because they are new the cable is still slightly coiled and not particularly flexible, so it was flapping about all over the place. Very annoying.

I did ultimately find a way to manage; I pulled my hat down low and wedged the cable down my shirt. No one likes change.

As for the run, I enjoyed it. I managed to get out of school as the bell went (I had a free last period of the day and was very organised) – in fact, I had to barge past a few kids, knocked a couple over and sent a few more in to a ditch as I legged it to the car park.

Therefore I was at the woods to start the run by 4.30pm. I did two large laps and one small lap. This was the view on the first… 

 
And the same view on the second lap… 

 
As you can see, it gets pretty dark pretty quickly at this time of year. Overall it was a 5.62 mile run, and more importantly the seventh run in seven days. Cushty.

Total Janathon mileage = 26.66

* They were not actually spare, they were Helen’s, and I actually bought them for her as a Christmas present.