Week 1 - Christmas and the BEAST

Christmas is over and training for the Brighton marathon has BEGUN. I've got my training plan from the Runner's World website and according to this if I do as it says I should be able to achieve a sub 4:00 hour marathon. I'm mostly writing this to make sure that blogging me keeps a check on running me so I don't slack off. So here goes.....

Boxing Day was day one, week one of sixteen weeks of marathon training. 3 miles around the Heath felt like a slog but that's probably because I hadn't run for a couple of weeks because of skiing and Christmas drinking and eating getting in the way. The first run of the week was definitely the hardest but thankfully the warm weather and running in the daylight made the rest of the week pretty easy. I was naughty and skipped one run but it was on NYE so I'm going to let myself off.

Week 1 - Total miles 23.46
 26/12/11 3.45 miles 30:41 Heath
27/12/11 3.25 miles 28:08 Penns Place
28/12/11 3.60 miles 32:18 Penns Place
30/12/11 4.48 miles 39:18 Diss -Heywood
01/12/11 8.68 miles 1.26:00 Thetford Forest

I did my long run on the way back home from Norfolk at Thetford Forest on New Year's Day. I broke all the rules given to me from this really miserable man at the forest centre by running on the 'slippery and narrow trails with very fast cylists' by doing the BLACK ROUTE - see extreme skull and cross bone warning sign below. Let's just say that although it was very muddy and I did fall over whilst tackling THE BEAST it was one of the easiest mountain bike trails ever with literally no hills, but I guess there aren't many hills in Norfolk so there you go.

Back to work tomorrow, so back to running around the industrial estate after dark. I do have a flashing pink light that I got for Christmas to try out though and I bet they'll be lots of New Year's Resolution Runners on the streets to keep me company.