August 17th 2009
This post has been a long time coming as things have been getting a little crazy the last couple of weeks. We decided to sell our house, which can be pretty stressful and when we sold it we didn't have a place to move into plus the fact that through all of this I'm trying to train for a Marathon.....its no wonder I have Grey hair :)

The last couple of weeks of training have been going pretty smoothly with the mileage starting to creep up to appropriate levels. I decided that rather than have a set amount of mileage to do every day I would go by time.

So far this month it has worked out well - next month may be a little different though as there is a lot of Cross Country running in town with both the Saucony/Athletics Alberta Race Series and the Frank McNamara Wednesday Fall Race Series. I'm hoping to use both of the leagues as part of my build up to Dublin in October.

Here is an example of My training plans for August / September / October

Monday = 30 minutes + Yoga am
Tuesday = 60 minutes am (inc 6x3mins building to a max of 10x3mins with 2mins AR*) + 40 minutes pm easy
Wednesday = Yoga am + 90 - 100 minute run home (with some Tempo paced running)
Thursday = 60 minutes am + 40 minutes pm easy
Friday = 60 minutes am + 40 minutes pm easy
Saturday = 90 minutes (inc 6x6minutes building to a max of 10x6minutes with 4mins AR*)am + Yoga pm
Sunday = 120 minutes building to 160 minutes am + Yoga pm

In September /Early October - I'll be running the XC races rather doing two days of intervals and will be doing my mid week long run on a Thursday instead (at an easy pace). Since I'm also doing a Half Marathon in Mid September I'll be doing that instead of a long run.

*AR = Active Recovery

Notes - There is a lot of Yoga on the schedule, as this is a good way to stretch and you need to balance the running with a lot of recovery. Most of the time this will be me and a video tape or DVD, but I will try to get in at least one class a week depending on how things are going.

Races in August - Intact Edmonton 1/2 Marathon

Yesterday I ran the Half Marathon and set a new PB for that distance. I finished in a time of 1:17:48 (gun time) I felt pretty good throughout the race, the Newtons performed as I've come to expect them to which is amazingly. I wish I could tell you about the Kenyan guys that won, but the closest I got to them was standing behind them at the start line. I think I might have seen them once on the course over near 149th street, but those guys run so fast I might have been imagining it.

I saw Jonathon at the start also and then maybe one more time in the race, but hes a couple of minutes faster than me. What I as happy aobut more than anything was the fact that I ran three minutes faster than I did at the Red Deer 1/2 Marathon. A second thing that made me feel good about the race was the fact that I didn't cut back on any mileage ,so there was no tapering for yesterdays effort, it was a replacement to a long run.

Whats next?
I'm entered into the Rotary Half out in Stoney Plain on September 13th, I think I'll be running most of the Wednesday night XC races, plus at least one of the Saucony/AA series. depending on how all of this goes I'll also try and do the Devon Turkey Trot 10K before heading to Ireland.

Happy running
Niall