Category Archives: 2003

Dear Andy
Running has taken a back seat lately. After Stratford, I took a week off before starting to explore the lanes and footpaths from my new office near Gatwick.

There are some good routes, particularly if you are interested in observing commercial aviation – no, actually some pleasant runs towards Charlwood once you get out of the Gregory’s Girl filmsets of the Crawley housing estates.

Nevertheless, I felt more than a bit sore and a good deal more jaded for a solid six weeks. With Chicago last autumn and Stratford this spring, I had been in almost continuous marathon training for 11 months, so it shouldn’t have surprised me. It was only really when work got hectic for a couple of weeks just recently that it forced me to back right off enough to make it comfortable and enjoyable again now.

Sadly, I never did satisfactorily crack the back-to-back weekend runs from Hal Higdon’s Intermediate I programme. Hal says that if you can run a 20 miler when tired, the race itself will be easy. He’s obviously right, but I just wasn’t up to it, so instead I ran one of my mid-week runs as a tempo run. That worked brilliantly, for getting half marathon PBs at least, and to get me into the form for giving the marathon a good crack.

Along the way, I learned a couple of lessons. Firstly, to minimise racing whilst training, because whilst enormous fun and great for confidence, each time it cost me 2-3 weeks of mental and physical recovery. And to get more rest and have more fun when I run. It is great to be in shape, (some of the time) and I probably run faster than I could have even 20 years ago, but there is so much more going on now and I need to refresh more mentally and physically. That’s me, anyway.
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