Marathon training

February 22, 2007 5:34 pm Dave Neary General, home, running

For the past while, I have been running quite a bit, in training for a marathon. I have no idea why – I was never a fan of jogging – but the idea of running a marathon started teasing me last Summer, and I finally decided I was going to do one. At the point where I went searching for candidates, and chose the lucky winner, the Annecy Marathon on the 29th of April, the die were cast and there’s no turning back.

To get into the habit of running, I trained for and ran the Marseille-Cassis on Hallowe’en weekend – I got through the 21 kms in 2 hours and 1 minute (I beat the 2 hour pace-maker by a couple of minutes, she had faded in the heat at the end). The unusual think about the Marseille-Cassis is that you start at an elevation of 0, between kilometers 6 and 10 you climb from 100m to 320m elevation, and then from kilometers 16 to 20, you go back down to 0 again. It’s very tough on the knees and hips, but great fun.

Next weekend, in Brussels, I will be asking myself whether this is worth it – will the madness ever end. I have a 21km run to do according to the Hal Higdon training schedule I’m doing my best not to ignore, and I’m planning on doing it in Brussels early Saturday morning (with thanks to Martin Sevior for the link to the very useful gmaps-pedometer site).

How early? I figure if I want to be at the conference for 10am, I will have to be running by 7. So getting up at 6.30 ought to do the trick.

Which brings me to ask myself: is it marathon or masothon?

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