New Forest Half Marathon

On Sunday I will be running, or attempting to run, my 8th half marathon. Eight!! And that's without mentioning three Great Midlands Fun Runs and one Great South Run.

What began as a completely under-researched idea in a pub beer garden in 1998 has rather surprisingly led to an interesting and bizarre selection of medals on my bedside table.

The theory behind the madness states that "he who enters a half marathon will subsequently train like crazy to prepare his body for running 13.1 miles and be incredibly fit and healthy in the process".

Unfortunately, and rather predictably, this doesn't appear to work in practise.

My training regime for the New Forest Half Marathon this Sunday has been as follows:-

wk/beg.
4th Jun - 1 run - 2.5 miles
11th Jun - 1 run - 4 miles
18th Jun - 1 run - 3.5 miles
25th Jun - 0 runs - 0 miles
2nd Jul - 2 runs - 5 miles
9th Jul - 1 run - 3 miles
16th Jul - 0 runs - 0 miles
23rd Jul - 0 runs - 0 miles
30th Jul - 1 run - 3.5 miles
6th Aug - 2 runs - 6 miles
13th Aug - 1 run - 1.5 miles
20th Aug - 2 runs - 6.5 miles
27th Aug - 1 run - 5.5 miles
3rd Sep - 1 run - 5 miles
... and so far this week, my final week, 1 run - 3 miles.

I've never entertained the idea of being a finely tuned running machine but even I can tell that this kind of training plan is
a) never going to make it very easy to run 13 miles, and
b) not really going to make much progress on the keeping fit and healthy front either.

I have bought some great new running shoes though, from Birmingham Runner, so it's not all bad news.