1st Post: 3 Weeks Till Birmingham

I started this blog a couple of years back to document how I went from a couch potato to running a marathon in 6 months.

After 26.2 miles of jogging and walking

Eden Project Marathon 2011. 5:12:24

That was a long time ago. I did the marathon, although running is stretching it a bit far. I finished the Eden Project Marathon in 5 hours 12 minutes. I walked a good few miles of the 2nd half of the race because my body was just not up to going that far. My training allowed me to complete it, but very slowly.


Since then I've ran a few half-marathons in varying times with my fastest being 1 hour 52 minutes at the Great Birmingham Run 2012, and my slowest being 2 hours 15 minutes at the Birmingham and Black Country Half-Marathon 2013 where I limped to the finish with knee pain.

My next challenge that I came up with a few months ago is to get really fast. I want to see just how fast I can get. I started at just over 15 stone and worked out I needed to lose about 3 stone to get to a decent running weight. I thought that a 1 hour 30 half-marathon was a huge but realistic target for me. 22 minutes faster than my PB, but with a lot of weight loss and heavy training I might be able to do it.

Now it's 3 weeks until my targeted event, the Great Birmingham Run on 20th October 2013 and I'm almost there. I've run Stratford's Big 10k (just under half the distance of a half-marathon) in 0:43:28 which equates to 6:59 per mile. To get a 1:30 half-marathon I need to run at 6:50 per mile so 9 seconds off each mile over twice the distance.

Stratford's Big 10k. 43:28

Since then I've been doing 5k park runs, the most recent of which I did in 0:20:25 which is 6:32 per mile, almost 20 seconds quicker than I need to be, but less than a quarter of the half-marathon distance. In the next 2 weeks before tapering I hope to lose a couple more pounds on top of the 3 stone I've already lost and get a bit more distance on the legs. The longest recent run was 10 and a half miles a week ago where I ran 7:46 per mile.

So I should be almost good to go.

Apart from suddenly suffering from side stitch and my left knee isn't getting any better.

The side stitch seems to be from not breathing correctly during my runs. I've never had it before and I think it's because I'm going faster but keeping my diaphragm too still. I'm breathing hard very high up on my chest because I've forgotten to belly breathe.

The left knee is troubling. It all seemed to start when I started cycling again. Since then it starts hurting after about 5-6 miles during every run and it's worse on bigger hills. My gait is utterly terrible anyway, I'm not sure if I supinate, overpronate, if I'm neutral etc. because I'm pigeon-toed. It doesn't seem to be quite the curse it could be but I'm never sure if I should use energy forcing my feet straight, or just let them fall in their natural position. Since starting running I've done the former, now I'm getting faster I'm doing the latter and I'm wondering which way I should go with it.

Anyway, I'll keep this blog updated with how I get on in the next 3 weeks. Hoping I can resolve these couple of issues in time so I don't get 6 miles through the run and have to slow right down so I can make it to the end.