Tuesday, May 31, 2005

The First Workout

I've got three young children, so running after work would definitely not go down well with my wife
(just imagine:
Me: Bye honey, I am off running for an hour or two, while you feed them, bath them, read them stories, and put them to bed on your own
Her: Ok, have fun
- not likely!)

As a result, I get up at 6:15 in the morning (as it turns out I had to get up anyway because the baby (18 months) was crying and wanted his bottle). I am out of the house at 6:35, the wife looking at me incredulously (she’s used to me doing weird things by now, but voluntarily getting up at this time of night is new).

I cover 7 miles with 10x100meters sprints in-between. Well, to be honest, the sprints were probably shorter than that, but they certainly got the heart rate up, and made the run a lot tougher.

I took just under an hour. It was rather tough, and my right knee hurts. I need new runners, the old ones are worn out ( I covered two marathons including all the training in them)

Pretext

I want to be a marathon runner. Well, actually, I am a marathon runner, because I have completed two of those monsters already, but not in an entirely satisfying way.

My first marathon was in October 2004 in Dublin (Ireland). I didn’t do much training, running just once a week and my longest run was just 15.5 miles, a whopping 11 miles shorter than the marathon. No wonder then that during the event I got absolutely knackered, suffered from cramps from 18.5 miles on, and struggled to finish it. My time was 4:06:42.

On my second attempt (2 May 2005 in Belfast) I was determined to beat to 4 hours mark, so I ran twice a week, and the longest run was about 19 miles. Being better prepared (though not exactly well trained), I was confident I would reach my goal. However, disaster struck 5 days before the event, when I was laid low by a stomach bug, could not eat anything for about 36 hours, and still had a splitting headache three days before the start. I felt better the next day, and, foolishly, decided to go ahead. Bad decision. I got cramps from half way on, and suffered for the rest of it. The time was a very slow 4:36:42 hours, though the distance covered was closer to 27 miles, thanks to some IRA fellas and their bomb (it didn’t explode, thank God), which caused a diversion and an extra 1180 meters to cover.

Putting those efforts behind me, I have decided to run the Three-countries-marathon in October 2005, and hope to finally get past that pathetic 4 hours time. Third time lucky.