Marathon

A quick update on my preparation for the marathon.

I managed to run 11 miles this Saturday, averaging about 6 miles per hour. I ran form Holloway road to Finsbury part then along Parkland walk to Highgate and from there made a full circle around Hampstead heath and back. It took me about 2 hours however I stopped quite often to check the map on my iphone as I didn’t know where I was most of the time.

This is a major challenge for me because I wasn’t able to do any training in February due to flu. At the moment I am probably climbing towards 50% of my top fitness level.

Long distances is not my strongest event, giving 17 years of badminton, where speed and agility is a priority. In fact the longest run I did was about 20 kilometres. That was a 4 years ago at the sports capm with the Russian national badminton team.

Surprisingly, running benefitted my badminton in the way that I feel I am more durable (however drastically reducing my speed on court). I tested it yesterday on a game against Leicestershire (I represent Middlsex) where I won all 4 of my games.

There is a slight pain with my knees and the arch of my right foot if injured but I hope that would not cause problems on the Big Day.

Drinking whilst running is another challenge. This thing is that I lose all energy in the legs after about an hour if I don’t drink anything. So I have to carry a bottle of isotonic drink with me all the time and have a sip every other mile, which is very uncomfortable and breaking my the breath. My iphone is constantly falling out of my pocket and the headphones form the ears… So I bought an armband and hooked earphones to keep them in place.

As to the targets I want to lose at least half a stone. That would enable me to maintain the speed more easily order to hit my target of 4h ours and 30min.