Before this summer’s joint craziness I’m running the Milton Keynes Marathon: Half on May 5th, not to be confused with the Milton Keynes Half Marathon, which was in March (how could anyone be confused by that?). Either way, it’s 13.1 miles in Milton Keynes. If you’re not at all interested in my running exploits, I won’t be at all offended if you move on to our latest bicycling post without reading on! Otherwise…

The story so far

As many of you will know, I ran the London Marathon back in 2002, in 4h57m. It was amazing and I intended to continue running but the year that followed could generously be called “sporadic” then nothing for a decade.

September 2013: Joydens Wood 10k

Due to a pub conversation gone wrong, I accidentally agreed to run this with my colleague Chris. He was intending to do the 5k version to get fit, and I tactfully explained to him that it wasn’t really worth putting your shorts on to run a single 5k from a fitness perspective so if he wanted to get fit he should train to run the 10k. Somehow this meant I’d volunteered to run the 10k with him, so out came the shorts and the poor folk of Hackney, Islington and the Regents Canal began to be subjected to our scary legs pounding past them as we trained. Their suffering has continued to this day.

With plenty of cycling to work, my fitness wasn’t too bad, so I targeted sub-60 minutes, while Chris simply aimed to finish. I finished in 1h00m07s; so close! And Chris did indeed finish. This course really is horrendously hilly and the last 2-3k were very tough.

Not to be deterred and (more importantly) to maintain our ability to eat lots of cake, Chris and I decided to book another race; I didn’t want to fall into the same trap as ten years ago and having another race lined up kept us at it. Therefore, on to the Kingston 10k in December.

December 2013: Kingston 10k

A nice flat course made for a faster race, and a few months more training had begun to have a good effect on my pace, finishing in 52m59s. We’d decided that a half marathon would be our next challenge and the new Milton Keynes Marathon: Half in May 2014 fit the bill perfectly, giving us plenty of time to train.

Milton Keynes Marathon: Half

I decided early on that I would aim to run this half marathon in 1h45m. Having done a full marathon previously, I know I’m capable of completing the distance, so wanted to use the training to improve my cardio fitness and see how fast I can go. My target time was calculated using the very scientific method of reckoning that 2 hours was relatively easy to achieve based on my fitness at the start of training, so it should be faster than that. Which 1h45m is.

Targeting a fast pace has made the training more interesting as we’ve included tempo* and interval** runs (much to Chris’ annoyance, I’m sure) as well as the usual ever-extending long runs. The extra fitness certainly won’t hurt for the cycling this summer either!

I’ll find out next Monday whether I’ve done enough; my tempo and interval run paces would suggest so, and the longer runs at slower pace have gone well, but whether I can pull it all together and run that distance at such a pace is still a huge unknown. Eeeek!

I’m saving my fund-raising efforts for the Ride London so no big charity plug here, but if anyone is feeling super-generous and wants to give me some encouragement for when I’m flagging around mile 10 of this ridiculous endeavour, you can always donate to Friendship Works by texting BAAA88 followed by £2, £5 or £10 to 70070 (UK only) or on the Team Sheep Just Giving page. But I’ll still be coming after you for more donations when we get nearer the Ride London, you’ve been warned!

* Tempo runs: mid-length hard runs, these days I usually do 2k warm up, 10k at tempo pace, then 2k cool down. The tempo pace should be “hard comfortable”, which I’ve interpreted to mean a pace I can just about maintain for 10k but couldn’t carry on further.  Over the weeks this pace has improved markedly.

** Interval runs: in my case, 1k warm up, then 1k fast, 0.5k slow repeated 5 times, then 1k cool down. The fast sections are at a very hard pace, whereby you can just complete the interval.