Half-Marathon Training

September 13, 2015 by winsometahn 4 Comments

The Great Scottish Run is on the 4th October, 3 weeks away today, so I am in peak training and it seems to be going well (*touches nearest block of wood* – which happens to be my head). 

After a rubbish summer, we have been granted a few weeks of sunshine and I have got used to running in the dry. So much so that when I was met with the prospect of heavy rain for yesterday’s parkrun I nearly returned to bed. Of course I did not, and of course it did not actually rain during parkrun. 

I have had lots of company for this training cycle: One of my club mates has been joining me for my Tuesday night interval sessions and I have very bravely joined the club’s half-marathon training group for some of the Sunday long runs. I have had mixed feelings about this, but on the 4 or 5 runs I have been on, I’ve had comapany for at least some of each run.

Today’s long run was to be 13 miles and I had planned to join the club for the whole run which was an out and back along the canal. However at parkrun yesterday I was chatting to my club mate Heather and she told me her plan to run from her house, along the canal to the meeting point, then run back with the club. Thus avoiding a commute, and getting the run over and done with earlier in the day. She invited me to join her, so this morning we headed off at 9:30 am in glorious, if slightly chilly, sunshine for a run along the Forth and Clyde canal. 

A year ago Heather was a 30min+ parkrunner. Since the start of this year she has slashed her 5k time to 27 minutes, run a half marathon in 2 hours 3 minutes and runs circles round me in most training runs. Today she kindly ran with me for our journey into town and we got to the club meeting point after 6.7 miles with time for a toilet stop before heading back to the canal for our return journey (and everyone else’s out journey). 

The return journey was considerably lonelier. Everyone sprinted off within metres of the start so I ran 7 miles on my own, cursing my slowness, cursing my club that is not able to accommodate slow runners, mentally composing an email cursing being the rostered jog leader for the half-marathon group next week, but grateful for the company for the first half of the run.

Heather had waited for me at the point where we left the canal, and we ran the last mile back to her house together. In the end I was happy with the run: 13.7 miles in total and I hit the 13.1 mile mark in 2 hours, 20 minutes which is 8 minutes faster than I ran the Great Scottish Run in 2013. 

This week I have an illustrious visitor coming to stay who I will be joining for some parkrun tourism…stay tuned 🙂