It appears that I started writing this most excellent of blog posts two weeks ago, but never finished it. It may not just be a good blog post and not excellent, but here goes.
There are only two weeks until Catherine and I return to England for a brief holiday. Before that though we have the small challenge of Newcastle marathon to attend to.
Training has gone well for both of us, Catherine would probably not agree, but I have seen her make big steps lately. No pun intended. She has recovered from terrible blisters and a niggling IT band to smash training in the last two weeks. I am really confident that she will beat 3:50 in Newcastle. She just needs to start believing in herself as much as I do.
I have been getting back into training after a light week last week and thus far I have smashed it. Yesterday saw me run 5 x 1000m intervals down at Bondi beach, before a trip to the gym with my friend Prue for deadlifts, pullups, bench press and a some core work. This morning I feel good, which means I will be in bits tomorrow! Today I have shelved the gym cycle as I will cycle to my friend Bill's tonight to take him out for his speedwork session. Bill is training for Sydney half marathon, but more about that later. Thursday is my tempo run and yoga, Friday is a cycle, Saturday is the last long run of 8 miles and Sunday I am running with Bill for his 9 mile long run. I am looking forward to next week's tapering a lot!
Getting back to my friend Bill. Catherine helped guide Bill through his training for his first half marathon this year as he is one of our blind Achilles friends. At Orange running festival Bill successfully beat his target of sub-3 hour time by finishing in 2.5 hours. Since then he has decided to continue training and try to improve on his speed for Sydney half marathon in May. This time I am guiding Bill and have added speedwork and tempo runs to his schedule of training.
Over the last two weeks since I began writing this post Bill has been conquering intervals in his speed work sessions with me on Wednesday nights. To give you some insight into the sort of person Bill is he was big on the weight lifting scene in his twenties, where he won numerous state and national competitions. These weren't competitions specifically for blind lifters either. Bill was beating guys that were bigger than him and had sight. He went on to tandem cycling after his lifting career and finished in the top ten in the World Champs in France despite not having a support crew. Now Bill has lost a ton of weight and is running mileage on knees without cartilage. Yes it's not great, but being active is his life and the enjoyment he gets far outweighs the pain he suffers through.
So my mate Bill is a bit of a legend. But when I introduced him to speedwork he was hesitant. (I can't repeat what he actually said ;)) He was unsure that he'd be able to run the speeds I was suggesting. But they weren't unrealistic, I'd used my knowledge to pick paces based on his race times and told him to stop whingeing. After the first interval of 400m we ran he was convinced he wouldn't finish them all. Not because of his knees but because he couldn't run any faster. He thought he had nothing more in his legs to give. I knew otherwise. I knew from my training that the first two intervals can be a bitch. Sometimes it feels like you are on the limit, or you feel sluggish, or you feel heavy, unable to push yourself forwards. But after those it gets easier, your body warms to the intervals and not just in a physical way. You relax. Your mind switches off. You get a clarity and focus that doesn't appear in many other parts of your life. Ok that last one was just me, but the rest is true!
So what happens? Of course Bill runs the first one and then proceeds to get faster all the way to the final 400m where he is running 15 seconds quicker than his first. Week by week I am convincing him that he is a runner, that he can run fast and that he just needs to believe. We have set a new half marathon target of 2:15 for the Sydney half. Check out my running blog to keep up to date on his progress. Runslothrun.blogspot.com
I'll update you on our marathon result on Monday.
Happy training : )
Tom
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