Race calendar update: new training schedule!

For over a month now I've been swithering about training for the Liverpool Marathon. After running Edinburgh I don't want to lose my newfound abilities for distance running! But my main concern was that it might interfere with my college course - or rather, my college course might interfere with my training. I didn't want to be pushing myself hard in the gym at college and finding nothing left for training.

Well as it happens, it turns out that an HND in Fitness Health & Exercise should not be expected to be remotely physically arduous (so we were told today by the course leader). But that's not really what swayed me against running Liverpool. It's only five weeks away now, and in two weeks time I'm competing at Shimmy in the City, a bellydance festival in London. This has involved months of training by my troupe, the Peacock Project. What's the point in putting in months of work to turn up at the competition tired from running, and thinking about having to get my 20 mile run in that weekend too? I've decided, with a heavy heart, that I won't be running another marathon this year.

Instead I'm aiming for a PB at the Hawick Half Marathon on 28th October.

The Glasgow Half was so tough, tougher that the full marathon. Perhaps the difference was following a real training programme for Edinburgh. So I'm going to follow a programme for Hawick. This has given me the same excitment and motivation that I expected to get from deciding to run another marathon, so I'm feeling pretty good.

Training day 1 was Thursday, starting with a 40-minute tempo run. Three jelly babies before I started and I felt set up! Now, I've never bothered about speed before, apart from the occasional set of intervals, so this was a departure. Thumbing through a copy of Runner World I found in the loo, I read this:

"On good form: Your trailing leg should bend swiftly. A long lazy trailing leg tilts the upper body forward."

The phrase "long lazy trailing leg" kept running in my head as I warmed up. "Lazy"! So pejorative, so motivating. I know that I don't bend my trailing leg swiftly, I've seen pictures of myself running. So for this run I worked my hamstrings like a beeatch and lifted my heels. It was effective - running "comfortably hard" in that style for me turned out to be about 8.5min/mile, which was faster than I thought it'd be.

I ran 5.39 miles in 45min18s, average pace was 8.24/mile.

Tomorrow's 8 miles, shorter than my usual Saturday run, but with renewed motivation I'm really looking forward to it.