My Intro...and Berlin Marathon

If running was easy everyone would do it.

Waking up at the crack of dawn (note that my wife's name is not Dawn) and stepping outdoors in the middle of winter to go on a 10km run is not for sissy’s.

I’m not saying I’m brave, I’m just saying I may be a bit fucked in the head.

In the late afternoon of Monday the 8^th of May 2013 I received a phone call advising me that I had just won the Discovery Vitality competition to run the 40^th Berlin Marathon. Being the geographical genius I am I knew where Berlin was!

Winning races is almost impossible – winning competitions it seems is not!

For those that don’t know a marathon is 42.2km long – well even if you did know, it’s still 42.2km long.

I've run two marathons before in remarkable times of 5h25 and 4h59 respectively – I say they’re remarkable times because one can actually remark on them by saying something like “Why’d it take you so long?”.

I started a 17 week marathon training programme on Monday, 3 June in order to prepare for the Berlin Marathon.

I am currently in week 8 of my training and so far it’s going well.

Trying to fit the training into a busy weekly schedule is not easy, but then again running a marathon is not easy either (see aforementioned distance).

My weekly training is comprised of strength training/cross-training in the gym, a moderate paced run, a hilly run, a speed session, a 5km time-trial and a long run. With 1 rest day (normally on a Friday).

As some of you may know I am a project manager by profession, so being anal about planning and keeping records is part of what I do and who I am.

So here are my records thus far regarding mileage.

	PLANNED	ACTUAL	COMMENT
Week 1	42.00	42.64
Week 2	46.00	0.00	Damn Flu
Week 3	44.00	10.29	Still the damn flu
Week 4	38.00	64.60
Week 5	49.00	50.35
Week 6	54.00	49.94
Week 7	62.00	63.45

My daily detailed running activities are logged on Runkeeper.

I am happy to announce that I am now officially registered on the Berlin Marathon participant list.

With less than 10 weeks to go to Marathon Day I am trying to suppress my excitement and focus on what needs to be done!

Keep a lookout for my next exciting update.

Happy Running folks.

A few links that may be of interest:

parkrun

ShoOops