Doing it differently

In April I ran my first marathon. I took the training seriously, running five nights a week, managing to clock up around 50 miles in my most intense week and squeezing in some 27-mile training runs. All in all, it was pretty hard core.

This year – well, next year, really – I’m running the Virgin London Marathon. And, for various reasons (not least a nasty bout of flu and the rather time-consuming acts of moving and becoming a landlord) my training hasn’t started anywhere near as early as last year. Officially, it’s starting on 1 December when I’m based full-time in London.

While last year involved mamoth long runs, and endless tempo runs (there are literally only so many times you can run the same route around Abingdon in the dark without going loco), I’m looking for something leaner and more effective this year. Here’s the planned mix of runs:

• Long repeats. Finsbury Park is just a couple of miles down the road, so a good venue for a bit of (very gently) undulating tempo work. With a traffic-free stretch of 0.9 miles, and a ‘recovery’ stretch of about 0.5 miles, it’s ideal for repeats. Notably this is the kind of training I completely dropped last time around, so it’ll be interesting to see how this affects me.
• Tempo runs. This was the staple of my last marathon training. The generally better lighting in London will mean that I can vary my route a bit more. The generally higher population density will mean that I need to manage variations in pace a bit better.
• Long, slow runs. This year, I might only work my way up to 20 miles. (Although I reserve the right to raise that threshold depending on how I feel about running the last 6.2 miles blind.) Again, the relatively high population density will present its own challenges.

So, until 1 December, I’m enjoying my last few days of freedom. And massively grateful to be finished with the wretched flu that’s going round this year.