Week 3... feel the burn!!!

Intro: according to "Marathon Monthly" a solid 13 week training plan can sort you out in a tidy manner for a marathon. This is all well and good until January rolls up and its 13 weeks away from April 13th, GAME DAY! I'm running the London Marathon, and it is NOT going to be easy. The more i look into it, the more I realise this is way beyond, WAY BEYOND anything I have attempted. Its very easy to look at a training schedule and see "week 6-, day 1, 30 mins, light run." and think "yea, i could do a light run for 30 mins, no bother!!" I wonder just how many people could reliably run for 20 mins without a break, nevermind 30 mins. And before anyone pipes up with stories about how they concurred the treadmill for 4 hours the other day, FUDGE OFF!!! Treadmills are the devil's toy to trick you into thinking you're fit... it moves the goddamn ground for you... its like swimming in the sea, if you just bob up and down and let the waves push you 500m across the shore YOU havent't swum half a kilometre, you've just let nature beat you up for a prolonged period! In summary, treadmills = dangerous undercurrent = dead children. For every mile you do on a treadmill, there's a serious boating accident... think about what you did!!

Week 1 and 2: did a bit of running prior to week 1 and 2 so I wouldn't be jumping in the deep end. then, in true jeff style I went and injured my foot. Pretty standard stuff... two weeks off! bad start.

Week 3: Tuesday, ran 3.5 miles home from work in 41.18. Then Wednesday I took a massive 7 minutes off my time to beat the 10minute mile barrier, doing 3.5miles in 34.31. Slowed it down on Thursday, largely due to fatigue and did it in 36.30. so total of 10.5miles in three days. Getting started and have broken the back on my training. Body hates me though. I am sick of hearing stories of people running 6k in 15 minutes etc, nevermind that an international competitive pace for 6k is 20 mins. The winning time for 6k at the Great Edinburgh Run (or something) was 19.56, but it doesn't matter because half of dublin knows someone who knows someone who's sister's boyfriend ran 6k in "oh, i dunno, about 15 mins, maybe 20" and the worst thing about this is it means that the person telling you thinks "if my mates friends friends sisters boyfriend can do it in 20 mins, then I could do it in 25, which means if Jeff can do it in 40mins then I am significantly fitter and faster than Jeff" ... yea... really... that makes sense... when does the Nike sponsorship kick in!!??!?!

The week ahead will include my first 10k run, on Thursday, and a "low impact light training session" commonly known as swimming on wednesday which I'm looking forward to a bit too much. Week 4 will hurt alot by Thursday... :(