Week 1: Bums up, quick birds, and thanks for the glass!

 Oooooh, exciting, marathon training has begun.

I decided to break from my normal tradition of wall planners, diaries, colour codes, post it notes, colour coded post it notes, and general obsessiveness.  This year I've written my marathon training plan on the back of a beer mat with a superhero pencil.  To be fair, that's an overall plan.  Each week I'm scribbling myself a little weekly guide on the back of a seperate beer mat, using one of a selection of superhero pencils.  If it doesn't fit on the beer mat, it's not on the plan.  I don't have small writing.  Despite this I still failed on one point of my plan this week.  Whoops!  It's early days and I'm sure I'll do better next week.

So, here it is, and you will see from my helpful marking of my objectives that I failed on pace.  I failed to run slowly.  That's not to say I ran particularly fast, but I did far too much mid-pace running.

Monday's 16 miles easy was done on totally fresh legs and I was a happy, happy bunny.  A happy boingy bunny.  On Monday 16 miles at 8ish minute miles felt like the easiest thing in the world.  A gorgeous icy but sunny morning and a wonderful run on one of my favourite routes.  Boing boing.  I ran 16 miles smiling, saying hello to everyone I went past, generally being really fucking irritatingly happy with the world and I felt good.

I like to learn something from every run and I learned two things from this run.  The first is that no matter how easy that boingy slightly up on pace run feels on Monday you'll regret it by Wednesday.  The other thing I learned, when stopping off at the GP 15 miles in for my flu jab, is that there is no way in hell the sleeves on my nice thick thermal base layer are going to roll up enough for a needle to go in the top of my arm.  I reflected on this as a nice young nurse stuck a needle in my arm while I sat there, stinking and sweaty, in my leggings and old greying sports bra.

The rest of the week carried on silly.  With a 50 mile weekly target at this stage I need to be doing most of that easy.  Tuesday's session was the exception and I did it as hard as I could, but after Monday's quicker than planned run and a weights session it was slower than it should have been.  Wednesday's recovery run was accidentally hilly and hard work.

Saturday at parkrun I had a wonderful run.  I spotted a great runner going for a quick time and I took it upon myself to offer some totally unsolicited and almost certainly unneccessary "help".  I love watching people who've worked hard for something get it, and I took huge pleasure in seeing a friend smash her PB.  Another in between run, not all out, but not totally easy.

On Sunday I was meant to be doing a nice chilled out run with a few hills, but I'd been offered a Turkey Trot place and I couldn't say no.  I knew I was in no position to race it, and that if I tried I'd break myself for the next week and be disappointed with the result, so I trotted.  I trotted, and I really enjoyed it.  Although I enjoyed it I was tired anyway and it was still a less than easy run with the hills and wind; another "mid-level effort" run which was not on the plan. 

It's not been the worst week, I'm a bit tired but not very and I have yet to break myself.  I think I would class this week's training as "daft and over-enthusiastic" rather than "bloody hell, what a twat!".  Next week I will absolutely totally stick to the plan and make sure the easy miles are easy.

On an up note, our club now contains a couple of properly quick birds so my moderately lack lustre performance at today's race allowed me to piggy back on their great runs and sneak into the ladies' team prize, a rather nice Keyworth Turkey Trot goblet (or glass to us commoners). 

So as the title says, bums up to the quick girls, from this slowing old bird, and thanks for that glass!