Happily Ever After

Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running

Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.

Looking Forward

by Russell Turner - 16:06 on 12 November 2024

Cross-country and fell racing have never appealed to me – too much mud, rain and schoolday PTSD – which means that this year’s racing season is over. The next training block, for the virtual London Marathon in April and Edinburgh Marathon in May, begins (at the current reckoning) on January 5, leaving several fallow weeks in the meantime. What to do?

I could take a long rest and return to my pre-runner sloth, but that risks me losing the exercise habit. Or I could use it to build some sadly lacking strength and conditioning, but that requires willpower that’s equally lacking. Instead, I’m following a six-week Runner’s World plan for a sub-25min 5k in the hope of smashing my current PB of 24:21. It’s not going well.

The plan, which features two speed sessions (intervals and progressions), two easy runs and a long run every week, assumes I’m close to 25mins at the moment and need just a small push to go faster. Sadly, as I peaked in the happy days of lockdown, in 2020-21, I’m finding its targets a little out of reach. Yesterday’s, for instance, called for four 800m intervals at 3:50; mine ranged from 4:15 to 4:20 – on the first day of Week 2. The runs will only get harder.

Despite that, I’ll persevere. A more realistic target is to beat this year’s fastest 5k so far: the Balmoral 5k in 28:16. Under 27:30 would be nice. We’ll see. Monday, December 16 will be the big day.

Next year’s diary is already filling up, the first confirmed race being the X-Border 10k on February 2. I fully expect rotten weather, it being the middle of winter, but I’ve fancied this for a while and been foiled for the past two years by gigs. The route connects Carlisle in England (an industrial estate in the north of the city, to be honest) and Gretna in Scotland, so I’ll be able to class myself as an international runner.

March, which is very quiet gigwise, features the Nairn 10k, Inverness 5k (as I’ve opted out of the HM this year), Alloa HM and Carlisle HM (currently just pencilled in) on consecutive weekends. If I don’t get a decent marathon time after that it won’t be for lack of training.

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