If the aching's anything to go by

So along with a few others, I've done myself a training plan for the Royal Parks Half in Oct. I found one on a website, then destroyed it and rebuilt it taking into account things such as Hard as Snails, Surrey Badger and Rat Race as well as moving house and going for a long weekend in Devon. You can see why I couldn't follow it to the letter.

It gives me 2 full rest days a week and one 3 mile easy run day so in essence, 4 days of hard work a week which I think I can do. It's only a 9 week plan so I don't actually have to start yet but I thought I'd give one of these 'interval' sessions a go and therefore copied the plan of what will be my first day of training come 11th Aug. The entire thing only involves 2.2 miles of running and a mile of walking. How that's going to help run 13.1 miles in under 1:50:00 come October, I have no idea.

I know that there's some logic to it but I have to see it doing some good first I think. Now, if doing some good means more aching in the calves than I've had since starting to run last year, then it's definitely doing some good!! Following my schedule I ran at a pace of just under 8 min/miles which was OK. The pain arrived after the 4 x 200m sprints at the end.

I'm going to do a few more of these sessions leading up to my training start date in the hope that I'll still be able to use stairs come August 11th! Wish me luck.

By the way, for the coolest thing I've seen today, check out the link above for Hard as Snails. It's a 3D fly through of the route. Oh dear. They could have made it a bit flatter!!!