6 miles - fuckin' A!

Week 9 Hard by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to map and stats

A grotty old morning today, really misty/foggy. But I actually quite like weather like that for running, it's really rather refreshing. I have cut a load of corners this week and not done any of the shorter, technical-type runs that should hapen during the week. These are interval runs, hill runs, effing Fartleks (more about which here: http://www.theargus.co.uk/blogs/blogs/brighton_marathon/4662969.The_devil_is_real__And__p_s___he_s_Swedish_/) and things. They are all designed to build up both your speed and your endurance, so that the long run at the weekend - which increases by a mile each week - is manageable.

Not having done them, and only on Friday having run no-stop for 30 minutes for the first time in 18 months, today's run might have proved somewhat difficult. But, no! It was actually completely comfortable and I would go so far as to say that I actually enjoyed it. This is very good news indeed. It's the first run in this training plan that has been long enough for me to run along the beach in Hove and I had forgotten what a great place to run that is. Nice and flat, full of other runners to smile and wave at, or just nod if you're a bit knackered. The clocks having changed last night, it was also fairly early when I got there and lots of dog walkers were out with their little four legged friends. This is sometimes a problem, especially when they've let them extend their leads as far as they will go and you have to go all skippy jumpy to get past, but there was none of tht this morning. It was all deeply pleasant.

The middle 2 miles were the ones actually done on the seafront for the most part, and the sea breeze and torrential rain affected my pace a bit, but I managed to finish with a flourish - the last mile was the second fastest of the session, despite being largely uphill (slightly). Feeling very pleased with myself.

ON an unrelated note, can we please BAN HALLOWEEN? It's not a proper holiday and I returned home to notice that one of the rear tyres on my car (we pumped them all up yesterday) was completely, rim-to-the-floor flat. I suspect trick-or-treat foul play and even if it wasn't, I don't like having to spend the evening praying the doorbell doesn't ring like I did yesterday. Also, my porr cat was a nervous wreck all night with unnecessary firework stress. Humbugging over.

Updated Training Plan

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Total Distance - very nearly 2 full marathons completed already!!!!!

Total Time

30 minutes non stop!

Week 8 Hard by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to map and stats

It's been a while since I last ran - almost a week - but it's been a packed week with other priorities. I've had a job interview, got the promotion I was after, visited the dentist for the first time since University and left with all my teeth intact - for now, a second opinion is required before they extract anything. My mouth is till a ruin, buggered by smoking, but I have a reprieve for now. And tomorrow I will be enjoying my 40th birthday present - a blast round a track in a Lambo, which I'm really looking forward to after my original booking was changed by a Lee Colegate from Peterborough who has now been identified as a fraudster and told to bugger off.

So this was the first session where I've been required for any real length of time, only half an hour but that's a major step up from anything I've done for about 18 months, without a rest or walking break. And it wasn't too bad at all! I think the few days off allowed some recovery time for my poor old legs, which they really appreciated. Pace-wise slightly off where I'd like to be, but I have plenty of time to pick this up. I'm still deep within the green, 'optional' part of my training plan. I'm not doing any of the short build up sessions this week, but will attempt the long run on Sunday - 5 to 6 miles.

Has been a super week for me so far, with more fun to come!

Updated Training Plan

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Flattered but deceived by my tech

Week 8 Session 2 by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to map and stats

Was very excited by the results that flashed up on my pedometer at the end of this session.  They suggested a vast improvement pace-wise, which did not seem completely out of the question based on how the run felt.  Having uploaded the data to the web and looked at the map for this run, though, it's clear there was a little blip at the beginning of the session and the watch has credited me with about 150 metres that I did not do.  Never mind, makes up for that session earlier where it stole over a mile off me!

Anyway, have since done shopping, done gardening and made Christmas puddings.  From scratch!  Which are now cooking.

Tomorrow's run is to be my first attempt at running for half an hour with no breaks or walking recovery bits.  Seems perfectly doable to me!!!  Then more shopping and more gardening.  THEN preparation for an interview on Monday afternoon for a job I'm already actually doing, which for some reason has got me ultra, uber nervous.

I'm totally done for the day and about to kick back with some vodka and trash TV.  The sun is out, but it's damned parky out there so I feel no guilt in vegetating indoors.

Updated Training Plan

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It's bloody cold out

Week 8 Session 1 by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to map and stats

What I want to do for these weekday sessions is get up at 6, run, cool down and stretch, have a leisurely coffee and a shower and pootle in to work in a relaxed fashion.  Yeah, right.  I cannot get our of bed at 6.  Not when it's pitch black out.  I may need one of those alarm clocks that simulates a sunrise or something.  That might help.  But left to my own devices?  Never gonna happen.

I did manage to drag my sorry carcass out of bed at 6.30, though.  I did the same session that was last week's 'hard' run: 15 minutes' running, 1 minute's recovery, twice over.  I didn't manage to cover quite as much distance as last time, at least in part I imagine due to the air shredding my lungs with every inhalation.  This weather is going from one extreme to the other, in no time at all!  I will need new gloves and a fright hat to keep my ears warm before too long.

Nevertheless, I have proved to myself that I am in fact capable of getting a run in, in the morning.  Even if afterwards I had no time for a coffee, rushed through the shower thing and fretted about where the bus was.  With Starbucks Gingerbread Latte season fast approaching, however, I am actually quite willing to forego my cup of Tesco Gold Roast at home before I set off!

Now taking body measurement readings twice a day - once when I get up and once at 8.30 pm - as there are some really wild-looking fluctuations in the charts when I'm just taking them when I manage to remember.  I'm hoping some consistency will deliver some consistency.  AND some evidence of progress, of which there currently is none.

Numbers and stuff:

Updated Training Plan

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Another super day

Week 7 'Hard' by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to map and stats

Glorious weather continues!!! And so does decent running performance. I'm tracking average pace over the whole of each session - as these sessions currently include some walking time, I anticipate being around 9 minutes per mile when I begin doing all-running ones. The first one of these is due next Sunday!

The aim of these first 8 weeks is to get you to a point where you are able to run continuously for 30 minutes. When I first started this seemed, as it always does, a ridiculous proposition. In the early sessions, I was looking at my watch constantly to check whether it was time for a walk yet - and the running bits were only 2 minutes each! But it's a very clever training programme that clearly works, because I am feeling very good. Each weekend's long/hard run, you see, becomes the first during-the-week run of the following week. As you gradually build up the running sections and reduce the walking bits, you end up fit as a fiddle and your confidence grows without your even noticing.

Anyway, it's going well and I'm actually enjoying it, so onwards and upwards I say.

On a beautiful day like today, I feel I should spend as much time as possible outside. Only, I have to make a Christmas pudding at some point and think that should be today so I have time to 'feed' it loads of booze before we eat it. A nice dilemma to have and I'm in no rush to choose which to do. I'm cutting myself some slack, which is something I have decided I need to do more.

Stats as follows:

Updated Training Plan

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There's lovely. Seriously

Week 7 Session 2 by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to map and stats

What an entirely gorgeous day!  Bright sunshine, clear blue skies and just enough of a nip in the air to prevent this morning's session becoming a sweat-soaked ming-fest.  This is a repeat of the session I did on Wednesday evening and it seems the advice about training in the morning being a better option could well be true.  I covered 0.2 miles more in the same time and my pace was over 30 seconds better per mile as a consequence.  This is much more like it!!!

I actually thoroughly enjoyed the run today.  Every time I go through this process (this will be my 4th marathon) I get days like this, where it's just a joy to be out there doing it.

The body monitor, by the way, has reached new levels of rudeness.  I am no longer being told I am obese.  Instead, I am now apparently 'overfat'.  That is not even a word!  I could therefore justifiably ignore it completely.  But at the moment I'm fuming in a low-grade way that I spent a lot of money on a gadget that actually invents words to insult me with.  To be honest though, mostly LMFAO.

It also seems to be quite erratic in its measurements.  I am using the supplied carpet feet, but may take this evening's readings on a hard floor and see what happens.  Various reviews on the internet have suggested this does deliver more consistent and accurate readings.

A day of winterising the garden ahead, but it should be no hard trial in this weather.  It really is quite fabulous. Geek links below for those who are following them:

Updated Training Plan

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Drizzly miserableness, but glad I did it

Week 7 Session 1 by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to map and stats

Feeling a bit 2-steps-forward-1-step-back about everything at the moment. Not least the running - pace is getting worse instead of better! The weather is definitely getting 'typical' for the time of year now after a rather exciting and unexpected week a couple of weeks back. During which, I have to admit, I barely even moved. We're definitely approaching that season where it's dark when I get up and dark again by the time I get home, which is always a bit of a test motivation-wise.

To try to boost this motivation thing, I spent a slightly stupid amount of money on a body health monitor thingy that talks to my Garmin pedometer and also sends data to a bit of software on the PC. This will be fun, I thought. I'll really be able to track the benefits I'm getting from all this ridiculous moving about. I took my first readings yesterday and they were duly uploaded to my Garmin Connect site. I'm sorry to say I find it all a bit rude for now. It takes measurements like body fat percentage which I can take or leave - although the 7.4% body fat of my early 20's is definitely a dim and distant thing and not likely to make a comeback - but also 'calculates' a 'metabolic age' and tells you whether you're in the healthy, overweight or obese range. I am absolutely not sharing this page!!! I will report improvements if, indeed, there are any.

2 more sessions needed this week, 1 the same as today's and a more challenging one. Both are likely to be at the weekend, as getting up for work is my current version of early-to-rise and I need to spend my evenings putting together an application for a promotion.

Meantime, here's the usual geekfest:

Updated Training Plan

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Back on track

Week 6 'Hard' by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to map and stats

I had a fairly abstemious evening, for me for a Saturday, attending 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' at our local theatre. Directed by and unexpectedly starring my super-talented sister. I thoroughly enjoyed it and even managed, I think, to work out what the hell was going on by the end. My theatrical tastes are distinctly low-brow and so much of the dialogue had nothing to do with driving the story that I was deeply perplexed for a lot of it. Bugger only knows how they learned the longer speeches, of which there were many, with absolutely no plot-link to contextualise or otherwise assist. They did, though, and the performances were all great.

So a sober if a late night. I slept in this morning and having taken 20 minutes just to find a parking space when I left the shopping till later yesterday, I went shopping first and then did today's run. I do prefer to run first thing, if only because there are fewer people around to witness it. In particular running through the park on a Sunday exposes me to multiple football matches and their associated crowds, with massive potential embarrassment fo all concerned.

As I always do, I survived the run and the shame. And the stats are showing that I've nearly covered a marathon distance so far during training - 25.8 miles, in about 4 hours 20 in total. The general trend is also for my pace to improve. And I can have the volume on the music lower than I used to, as my breathing is distinctly less wheezy than before.

Half way through the play last night I felt I might have had what Allen Carr refers to as the 'revelation moment'. I have been feeling like a smoker not currently smoking - a mild but constant feeling akin to panic, and really craving cigarettes. I now ALMOST BUT NOT QUITE feel like a non-smoker, sure I will never smoke again. I really hope this lasts after I return to work tomorrow!

Updated Training Plan

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More fighting with technology

Week 6 Easy by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to map and stats

I've not been at all well this week and am still on horse-sized antibiotics, but was feeling restless and jumpy this morning, usually a sign that I'm over the worst of an illness, so I went out for a run. I am getting to grips with the capabilities of my Garmin device and the rather fun Garmin Connect website, including creating the workouts online and sending them to the GPS pedometer. I haven't quite got it right yet, though - as evidenced by my jogging for 9 minutes this morning waiting for the damned thing to tell me I'd completed the first rep only to find I'd managed somehow to insert a 'free run' first step to the programme which shouldn't have been there.

So in fact I did about 35 minutes this morning, but am only counting the 27 that were actually planned. I managed to get this sorted out on the move by editing the workout. I spend as much time on the tech as I do on the running! :-)

I'm not 100% fit and healthy, but I definitely could tell the difference from not smoking on this session. Hopefully, this will get better and better as time passes!

I needed to order another pair of trainers this week, having noticed a part of the sole had fallen off. When ordering, I realised that the trainers I am using this year are actually designed for women. Potentially embarrassing, but they are very comfortable and a better fit than the men's ones I used last time, so I don't really care. They're also a very pretty colour. So there.

I also got confirmation this week that Diabetes UK have confirmed places for the Brighton Marathon next year and I have booked one! So I have reworked the plan with an April 15 target date. I have also set up a JustGiving page - I need to raise £300 so please help if you can! Click on the widget at the top right of the blog to make your donation!

Updated Training Plan

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Lee Colgate is fundraising for Diabetes UK

Lee Colgate is fundraising for Diabetes UK

JustGiving page created. Confirmed place for 2012 Brighton Marathon via Diabetes UK, bless their hearts. Still too poorly to actually train at the moment (have been off work all week with swollen glands and soreness of face) so spending bed-time doing admin! This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. :-)

Am going to be promoting the JustGiving page endlessly today, so apologies to all my Facebook and twitter contacts in advance for SPAM.

Hangover beats The Cure

Week 5 Session 2 by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to map and stats

Updated Training Plan

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Fuelled by an excess of vodka I did the run before anything else this morning. Probably this means it wasn't as hot as it was when I went out yesterday. But offset this against the hangover and the extra 0.2 miles I achieved today, compared to yesterday, on exactly the same course possibly backs up the whole 'if you have to listen to music while you run, make sure it's the right music' thing.

To get properly back on track v the plan I would need to run again tomorrow and I'm sorry, but 3 days in a row is my limit for now so I will be fiddling with dates for a while yet. Also made an enquiry to Diabetes UK about their guaranteed places for the Brighton Marathon next year having not got into London. That will change the target date and mean I need to fully reschedule if it comes off, so I'm not going through that process today.

Need to get back out in the scorchio now and mow the lawn and do some weeding. Will reward myself with a cold glass of something yummy when I'm done.

Feeling hot, hot, hot

Week 5 Session 1 by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to map and stats

Updated Training Plan

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Walk 1 minute, run 4 minutes times 6 - 30 minutes in total. The first session of this length and it nearly killed me. Absolutely scorchio out there, too.

Downloaded 'Mixed Up' by The Cure this morning. I used to have it and have no idea where it's gone. I used it as my training music today. I remember it being really quite dancey and, compared to the original versions, the tracks are definitely groovier. However, they are still fundamentally by The Cure and, in BPM terms, therefore categorisable as 'coma'. Not hugely compatible with impressive pace. But then, neither is being old, fat and lazy so I can't blame them entirely for my laughable performance! I have to do an identical session tomorrow and will revert to club classics and see if that makes a difference.

Distance, time and calories are all starting to build up quite satisfactorily already and I'm loving all the bells and whistles on the Garmin Connect site. In particular the 'player' that retraces your route and shows your speed and up/downhillness at every stage of the run. Not in real time, obviously, that would be ridiculous!

First technology fail

Week 4 final session by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details - link to INACCURATE map, stats

Updated plan

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Did this session yesterday morning before work. There is a bit of Portslade Old Village, near the church and the village green, that seems to be satellite-averse. My old pedometer always used to ask me if I was indoors (answer, obviously, 'I wish' - this is not an option and I might be prepared to pay for a firmware upgrade that had a sense of humour built in - any developers out there want to partner up?) when I got there and so did this new one. I didn't notice at the time, so although this was an out-and-back run as opposed to a circuit, and I finished where I started, it recorded only about 0.3 miles on the way out and 0.9 on the way back. I have manually edited the overall total, but can't seem to edit the 'splits'. Heigh ho.

Jog 10 minutes, mince/recover 2 minutes, jog 10 minutes. The 10 minute thing did not feel particularly realistic when I set off, but it actually wasn't too bad at all. My pace wasn't particularly impressive, but at least I managed.

Got the bad news that I have not got a London Marathon place for next year. This has removed some of the sense of urgency I had. Despite the lack of frequency of my sessions recently, I did have a sense of urgency! I simply can't afford to pledge the minimum amounts charities are asking for, for their guaranteed places. When I did my first one, I was the only person at work doing it and had a monopoly on the fundraising thing. Now, though, everyone's at it and I ain't winning any popularity contests. So I am investigating Brighton instead to see if minimum requirements there are less frightening. Fingers crossed.

Will get out for Week 5 session 1 today and again tomorrow. Getting up early in the morning was actually not that difficult, so I hope to be back on schedule very soon v the plan.