Week One: Early doubts

After a little under two weeks off, I decided to go for a run last Thursday. Just a 6k to get back into it and see how I felt. By the end of it, I could feel a soreness on the "outside" of my right knee.

I asked a guy at work who's pretty serious about his cycling what he thought, and he suggested illiotibial band syndrome. After reading the typical symptoms, it seems like that's exactly what I had.

I was really concerned by this, given it's so early in the training and the rest periods from here on are short. I decided not to play squash to give it more rest, and did as much stretching of it as possible. I also iced the area a couple of days.

So week one was a mixed bag - my target was 30k's, of which I only did 17.

So not the ideal start, but still 15 weeks to go, no need to panic just yet.

New wheels

There's really not a lot of equipment required to run a Marathon, but a good pair of runners is an absolute must. And so to start afresh, I've bought not one, but two pairs. One pair will carry me the distance in September :)

I've read that you should replace your runners after about 450km of running. I'll be doing more than that in training, so I thought it was worth buying two from the outset, and rotating them. Should allow me to get a little more life out of them.

Getting motivated

I think the most daunting part of a Marathon for me was imagining ever being fit enough to go the distance. It just seems like a Mount Everest of effort - running non-stop for four hours.

A generally fit person is certainly able to finish the City to Surf. Now that i've finished one, I think even the Half Marathon is very doable.

A Marathon, on the other hand, just seems entirely more serious to me. It's not for the casual athlete. I think it's something you really have to want to do, otherwise, why on earth would you subject yourself to such an ordeal?

And therein lies my key motivation - I know that it's going to be hard. I know my motivation will surge and wain over the months, and I know that no matter how well I prepare, it's going to take some willpower to finish. It's going to be a tremendous challenge, and hopefully I will learn something about myself along the way.

Half Marathon

Once i'd committed to the half marathon, I started doing some research on training plans. I found some good stuff on how far, how often, all that sort of stuff. In preparation for the Half Marathon, I was doing three runs a week:

- One run of about 6km at the highest intensity I could manage. Aiming to do it in around 25mins.

- One run of about 9km at a steady pace, with bursts of speed every kilometre. I was aiming to do these in around 40-45mins.

- A long run on Sunday, which started at 12km and progressed up to 20km three weeks before the race.

I couldn't really squeeze in a lot more, because I was still playing competition squash and didn't want to play poor matches because of tired legs.

By and large, the training went well. I developed a few niggles (hip flexors in particular, which i'll mention later on), but nothing major. I'd been keeping track of each run on mapmyrun.com, and in preparation for the race, I completed just under 300km of training.

On 15 May, I did the Sydney Half Marathon (my first) in a time on 97:04. My rough goal was 105mins, so I was chuffed. I'd given it my all and was certainly tired at the end, but fundamentally, I was feeling good and could feel that the training had paid off.

I'd already entertained the thought of training for the Marathon, but I wanted to complete the half before I committed fully - to reflect a little and make sure I was willing to put in the training to do it properly. Given how positive I felt about the Half Marathon, I decided there was never a better time to have a crack at the real deal.

With a little over four months until the Sydney Running Festival, I will have plenty of time to prepare properly, and give it a real shot in September. From now until the event, I'm going to use this blog as a bit of a diary of all things running related - i'll keep track of my mileage and training techniques, my diet/nutrition and probably write a bit about recovery and general health as well.

Here's my tired runners after about 18 months of faithful service. I don't think the next pair will last this long...

Why running?

I've always been an active person. I've been playing some kind of organised sport since I was six years old, but up until a couple of years ago, I would never have considered myself a runner. In fact, before 2008 I don't think i'd ever run more than about 4k's.

I think my initial logic behind taking up running was that if I ran a bit more often, it would make me a better squash player - train hard, play easy as they say. As it turns out, I got quite motivated by the improvement that I saw in my fitness. I started training more often and in August 2008, I ran my first City to Surf. I finished the 14km course in 67 mins, which I thought was quite respectable for a first try. But still, the bug hadn't bitten. Once the event was over, I went back to running once a week, once a fortnight maybe.

Since then, it's been rather on and off - some months i'll be running three times a week, then the motivation fades, and I'll go back to once a week. The main reason being, I think, because there is no real end goal - I'm not building up to an event.

When I got back from New Zealand at the start of 2011, i'd put on about 3-4 kilos in a month and was feeling pretty unfit. I decided that it was time to get back into running and after a couple of weeks, I again found that motivation as my fitness started to improve.

To keep on a roll, I decided to set myself another goal. The city to surf was still 7 months away, which was too long to keep me motivated. I saw that there was a half marathon to be run in May. That sounded perfect - the best part of four months to prepare, and in the end, the longest run i'd have ever been on.