Wednesday 24 December 2008

Happy Christmas to all.

Just a quick post to wish anybody who happens across this embryonic blog all the best for the holidays. I am planning a nice quiet one as the family are in Seattle and am even contemplating a run tomorrow (weather permitting) - we will see though....

Have a good one folks!

Thursday 18 December 2008

Swedish training for a Danish race

With the cold and the wind in Aberdeen and the ludicrously short days that we have at the moment (only 3 days to the shortest day of the year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice) I have been finding it a bit hard to get training properly. Luckily when I got home I discovered that my banana army charity t-shirt had arrived so I managed to get into the gear and head out for a quick session.

For something else to do I have been experimenting with Fartlek training (http://www.momentumsports.co.uk/TtFartlek.asp) in order to try to keep myself going and keep the interest there while I am thumping round the same old streets. I find that its an enjoyable way of keeping the training different and giving myself a challenge other than just keeping going - It also, I believe, lets me get a harder run in a shorter time.

7.425 km tonight in 40 minutes so overall a decent evenings effort, off tomorrow so another chance to get out in the country for a longish run before the work Xmas do - need to get that done as I suspect that Saturday may well be a hungover washout training wise.

p.s. This report is rubbish ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7789302.stm) my head was bloomin freezing tonight!

Tuesday 16 December 2008

My poor feet!

Got back from baku on monday - luckily I had been able to get access to a treadmill on the rig so was able to keep running while I was away - in a fit of overenthusiasm I ran 25k in 2 days on it (10k one day and 15 the day after) all that this achieved was one whopping huge blister on my right foot - need to get a trip to the running shop to see if they can reccomend something to try to stop that happening again!

The longer runs are not hurting as much now and I feel more than happy with hour long training runs at the moment - I am ahead of the schedules that I have been looking at, most of them are 16 week plans so I am starting in plenty of time, lets hope that I don't lose focus over the festives! Got a day off today so will get a run in daylight for a change!!

There is also a webpage set up for the charity fundraising - check it out at http://www.justgiving.com/duncanmckay

Signing up

Next step was to sign up for the big day - its a simple enough process on the website and there is a runners list so you can track that you are included http://www.copenhagenmarathon.com/ - I have also signed up to the Chris Hoy half marathon in Edinburgh as a training run http://www.edinburgh-half.co.uk/ so it looks like its too late to pull out now! Work have approved my holidays for CPH so its all go - time to get on with the training!!

I have also signed up to run for Leukaemia Research http://www.lrf.org.uk/ so thats one more good reason to keep up the training - hopefully I will be able to raise a good amount of funds for this very very good cause - means a lot to me!

So - How did this all start

The question is - why would a fat, unfit middle aged man all of a sudden decide to run a marathon in 8 months time - and the answer is in the question!




It all started with standing on the scales one day and seeing that I was a disturbing 94.0 kilo (I am 1.79 mtrs tall so that works out as borderline obese). I had always been reasonably fit but the last few years had conspired to see me becoming increasingly sedentary and lazy - something had to be done!


The reason for training!!

I had run a marathon before (London 2001) but had done no training and always felt that I did not do myself justice (5hr 40) so had talked for ages about doing another one and when a mate in CPh said he was thinking about signing up I thought I might as well take the plunge too.... first thing to do was to lose some weight!




Cash in hand I headed out to buy a bike and a pair of running shoes and with a certain amount of enthusiasm I got started, the weight quickly dropped from 94 to 89 kilo and things were going well then - a plateu! To get over this I engaged my geek side and set up a spreadsheet setting targets for each week, this seemed to work really well as a motivational tool for me and I managed to keep below the line all the way...


The next step was to try to work out a training schedule....