Approaching 30…

No, not me, my mileage. I’m still 21*.

Marathon training starts on 16 January, one week away. My aim over Christmas was to get up to 30 miles a week by now. Or was it 35? Either way, I ran 30 miles last week. Actually I ran 29.7, but given the margin for error on the mapmyrun app, this was definitely over 30.

Probably. During Sunday’s run the disembodied Voice of the App announced that I had run “distance: 3.0 mile” twice, so I’m taking her pronoucements with a pinch of salt. Mysteriously, by mile 8 we were back on course.

I ran twice this weekend: a 5.5 mile trot on Saturday and a supposedly slower paced 9 miles on Sunday. In actual fact I ran them both at the same pace, though Sunday’s felt much easier. There was no logic to this, and certainly no plan behind it. I should have been more tired on Sunday and it felt like I was running much more slowly.

When the training starts I must be stricter with my pace. Faster sessions will have to get harder and easy runs will need to be just that. The long Sunday runs should be 1 minute per mile slower than my planned marathon pace so I will be spending a lot more time on my feet. I may need some new podcast recommendations.

*A lie.