21 seconds. 

No, I’ve not become a So Solid Crew* fan overnight. I’ve merely beaten my previous Janathon plank by 21 seconds. It now stands at 158 seconds. 

Although I did pass out in the process, it had been a long day, plank was performed at 10.30pm. 

 
* a reference only the kids will understand

Tonight it was a gentle 3 mile run around the school field. It was very cold and very windy.

To celebrate my achievement the flag was raised. 

 
Laps of fields = 3

Amount of wind = lots

Flags raised = 1

Total mileage = 47.15

The marathon training schedule takes precedence over Janathon now, and the training schedule says a rest day. 

Following 12 days of running, a rest from it sounds great. But it’s Janathon!! Have to do something!

Therefore I did 137 secs of exercise: a plank. Sorted.

A blog without pictures? That’s not right. How about a selfie with the dog…he doesn’t look too impressed… 

 

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