March 2009 Archives

I am back! But not quite.

I started training for the Milton Keynes Half Marathon on July 26 a week ago. And have learnt - for the second time - how important decent trainers are.

My current pair have been through four months of training, several races and a half-marathon, so I don't know why I expected them to continue serving me well. The cushioning in them has completely gone and now I am suffering pretty severe shin splints and need to rest up for a week or two. In the meantime I have ordered an identical pair of new trainers from Ebay.

It's not a big deal because I have a lot of time, but still frustrating that I can't just get on with it. I need to look back and previous blog posts and try to avoid some of the injury issues I had from the last training session, especially if I'm going to cope with the Birmingham half marathon in October!

Since returning from Iraq I have stepped up the aim of building up my speed and have decided not to focus on my long distance endurance.

I ran a PB at the very flat Fradley 10k two weeks ago, in a time of 49.34, but now I'm hungry to get below the 45 minute mark.

I think I'm going to try some fast 5km runs and build in some fartlek training.

Hannah and I are planning to do the Milton Keynes Half Marathon in July and the Birmingham Mail Half Marathon in October.
Both should be a lot of fun but I'm certainly not looking forward to making the transition to the longer distance later in the season.

My next race is the Birmingham Mail 5km Fun Run on May 3. You can find out more info here.
It was a lot of fun last year and I'd recommend it to anybody, no matter what running level.

In the meantime, can anybody recommend a 10km race to keep me going?