Ambitious April

With a spring marathon having passed me by due to a hectic start to the year (new job and a new flat, not recommended to do at the same time!) I now feel like I am in a position to reassess my spring ambitions.

Having recently completed the Tunbridge Wells Half Marathon in February and the Hampton Court Palace Half Marathon at the end of March I am eager to use these as a staging point to mount an assault on my Half Marathon PB. Originally when I had booked these races in late 2014 they were meant to serve as preparation for a sub 4 hour marathon attempt in April or May but niggling calve problems and my previously mentioned hectic start to the year have put pay to that. So now I want to use them as a base for going for a PB.

Neither of the races were completed in overly impressive times mainly due to my new job and our flat move taking up a lot of time and hampering my training and my calves continually playing up since the start of the year.

Tunbridge Wells although the scene of my triumphant 1.39 PB in 2014 was not the scene of such victory this year as I finished in 1.51. It was really a triumphant to get round in a decent time though as I wasn't really fit enough to run it having not done enough preparation. 

Hampton Court Palace a few weeks later was better though as I had managed to put in a bit more training, my aim was to target my second best time of 1.46. I worked hard through a wet and windy race to finish in 1.48 which I was satisfied with as I know on the day I couldn't have worked any harder.

So now for April, I am really tempted by the Hackney vitality run on May 9th as it gives me abide six week period to sharpen up for a PB attempt.

I realise that with an ambitious aim I need to have an ambitious training programme to match.

Although I haven't ended up running a spring marathon my experiences of being involved with the Asics Target 26.2 boot camp and subsequently following the progress of not only the final five but other bootcampers has taught me a lot about the need to be prepared and to plan out your training.

So for April with my Half Marathon PB attempt in mind here is my plan for the month ahead:

3 x Half Marathon distance runs, 1 in the region of at least 1.45

3 x Hour runs aiming to complete 13K in the hour period

4  x treadmill interval sessions

3 x 10K runs, at least one in the region of 45 mins

3 x 5K runs including some park runs, I would like to get back to running sub 23mins

4 x recovery runs, long and slow.

This gives me 20 runs to complete in April and is modelled around the type of training I did prior to my PB, plenty of long distance runs with focus on speed runs of 10K and the 1 hour run trying to hit 13K. I also know weekly interval treadmill sessions will be important to build up my speed.

But this isn't all, I am also committed to doing the April ab crunch challenge with @runtoeatcake which is a challenge to complete ab crunches throughout the month.

I am also planning to start attending local bootcamp training that run insanity training and other boot camp sessions.

So all in all a very ambitious April ahead but one I looking forward to completing and reaping the rewards of some hard training not only in my Half Marathon but in the months ahead. 

Stay tuned to follow my progress!