Yes, you read that title correctly... I have a race planned in just over 5 weeks time, and I'm no way near prepared for it!
My Half-Marathon race is scheduled for the 5th October. Considering I originally entered the event way back in November last year (see post), I've had a whole 11 months to prepare. I had grand ambitions and an exciting target time in mind, and plenty of time to put together a training plan to enable me to achieve my goal.
Unfortunately, the running odds were NOT in my favour, and since I had paid for my entry, I've been dealing with an annoying injury niggle which has plagued most of my training since. I've had physio on it, I've taken plenty of time off to rest, I've doubled down on my strength exercises AND finally got round to a regular stretching program, and now I'm finally stringing together some regular training.
And not a moment too soon, as the race is rapidly approaching!
My race/time goals have been thrown out of the window. The aim now is to be healthy and able enough to stand on the start line, and treat it as a slow steady training run. It should still be an enjoyable day out amongst like minded people, and I'm sure the spectators will help motivate to get to the finish.
So in order to get myself as ready as I can be, and without injuring myself further, my training is now slow easy efforts, and plenty of time on feet.
Below is a breakdown of how my training has looked for the past week
As you can see, I'm trying to spend as much time walking as I do running. I still get to run regularly (eg 5 days a week), but get to balance that out with regular walking. This means I run regularly to improve my fitness, but that the walking is a lower impact activity which helps to keep me active and also help recover from the workouts for the previous day.
I'm also fitting in strength and stretching sessions. These are only 15-20 minutes in duration, but again the idea is little and often
Below is an example from Thursday:
walking to work in the morning - its actually a really pleasant wander in as it is so quiet at that time in the morning. 4 miles in the fresh morning air also helps to wake me up!
running home from work in the afternoon...
...and then as soon as I home, I run through an assortment of stretches and exercises
I've been during this routine for the past 2 weeks and so far (touch wood) everything is going in the right direction.
All my runs for the past 2 weeks have been the 6km route home from work, so today (Saturday morning) I added in a longer run of 9.5km, as I need to start extending the distance
I checkd my training log on strava, the last time I run further than this was 2 months ago!!
The whole year has felt like 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. So frustrating. Setback after setback after setback. I'm in no mood to have yet another one, so for the 5 weeks until my race, I'm going to contrate on just regularly moving and keeping active... I don't want to take any unnecessary risks with it being so close.
This means that tomorrow will be a rest day. And then next week will be more slow plodding running and plenty of easy walking.... I often talk about consistency being key, but right now I think patience is even more important!
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This is the way! Enjoyment and health first, racing is only for when you had a succesfull and healthy trainingscamp.
One thing I really hope that you will experience is that you realize that despite the setbacks you are still doing this! While it might not be a personal record you can do this and “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory” (Les Brown)
You can do it!
Yes, damn right! I can choose to complain, or I can choose to enjoy the experience and be thankful that I am able do this!
Thanks for the pep talk! 💪
It's very frustrating when you can't train as you want to. I expect you have the fitness to do a half. Someone asked if I wanted to do a full marathon in November, but I need much longer to prepare for that. I'm fairly happy with my running at the moment. I want to improve at parkrun and do some longer runs too.
!BEER
It is, but I keep trying anyway!
yep, I've run the Half distance in training often enough to know I can complete it in October, just trying to keep as injury free as possible and not have anything flare up.
A marathon would need much more time to prepare for. Do you have any other races booked instead? I know having something booked helps to keep me motivated in training
!BEER
I have not entered anything. I could do the local 10k again, but I have done it so many times. parkrun is really my focus and I am happy to run alone otherwise. I may do some events with work if they organise them. I am not bothered about getting medals and shirts. Maybe when I feel I am making more progress I will do another longer race.
!BEER
I suppose the parkrun does counts as a local 'race', and you get to do that most weekends :-)
It works as my incentive.
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