Bristol Half Marathon

The other week I signed up to do the Bristol Half Marathon at the end of September. I've done quite a few half marathons over the years but this will be my first one since transition and so should be interesting. Technically no matter how well I do on the day it will be a personal best.

A little while ago I read on Kasmira's blog about her use of the Run Less Run Faster programme in her training so I bought a cope from Amazon and having worked through the book will be using that as the basis of my training.

The schedule calls for 3 runs a week which are all very specific in what they aim to achieve. It also requires two other non-running workouts a week as cross-training.

My plan is to run on a Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, swim on a Tuesday and Thursday and cycle on a Saturday.

Running and going to the gym have been a bit hit and miss for me since January. I've not been to the gym as regularly as paying for membership would require, which does make it a very expensive membership. In fact when I went today it had been the first time in a month that I'd been to the gym. Far too expensive a membership to not use!

So. In order to make sure that I stick to the training schedule I'm going to post start posting weekly what my training for the week is and then at the end of the week review how I did and post the following weeks schedule. That way I'll have the extra incentive to stick with my training and not let it slide.

This week the schedule is:
Monday: Rest Day
Tuesday: Swim
Wednesday: 2 miles easy, 3 miles (at short tempo pace), 1 mile easy
Thursday: Swim
Friday: 10 – 20 minutes warmup, 12 * 400 metres (with a 90 seconds rest interval between each), 10 minute cool down
Saturday: Bike ride
Sunday:  8 miles (at half marathon pace plus 20 seconds / mile)

Sunday is a long run so resting on a Monday allows me to recover which is an important part of the programme.

The Tuesday swim is where I'm going to work on endurance and simply put in the laps. Thursday will be where I work on technique. I've chosen these days as they are the mornings that the local swim club don't use the pool so there are a couple of extra lanes available for swimming, including a training lane.

I'm aiming to complete Bristol in under 2 hours and so all of the paces that I'll be training at are based on that time. Short tempo pace is 8 minute 36 seconds / mile. Pace for the Friday runs will vary depending on how far each of the repeats is, for 400 metres its 1 minute 55 seconds.

Where I live is fairly hilly so it is going to be interesting trying to complete achieve some of these paces. I might have to try and find some nice flat areas in one of the local parks or out at the local country park.

Well that's this weeks plan, with a bit more information than I'll probably use in future updates.

See you all next week when I review how I've done.