12 Half Marathon Plan - Start W/C 25th June 2012

After being inspired my older brothers exploits in his Ironman triumph in the gorgeous island of Lanzarotte, myself, my friends Marc and Martin decided to take up our own challenge and enter the great north run on Sunday 16th September. My brother Tony at the start of his swim, and the other photo shows myself with my other brother John, also a triathlete.

When I returned home from Spain, I searched out and found a running plan as suggested my Lucozade sport. They seem to know a bit about sport and nutrition for athletes so I chose plan that would help my achieve a 2hours or more completion time for the GNR.

My exercise prior to this for the last couple of years has been largely five-a-side football and throwing a few weight around in the gym on a regular basis. So I did consider myself to be relatively fit. In January of this year I underwent an hernia operation which had been causing my grief since I became aware of it back in 2006. I seemed to do OK with it for a while but in the last two years the pain grew steadily worse. I also couldn't do any form our intense exercise need to shift my ever expanding waist line which I was getting stick about from friends and work colleagues.

At the same time as my running plan was taking shape, my work with hosting and organising visiting Olympians using my College as a training venue was also in full swing, so I will be posting photos and comments regrading his amazing time.

1. The first 6 weeks run times

My starting weight was 16st 2Ilbs and whilst I knew this was gonna be my worst enemy for running at any decent pace, I would also burn some serious calories, hopefully mostly fat cells. I have also never done any form of endurance running ever before, so this was all a new adventure for me.

I had already started a few runs prior to the training plan and felt OK. I did however suffer from really bad lactic acid in my legs so I decided to buy some new trainers. At the sports shop I tried on about 4/5 different pairs and the shop assistant filmed my running style to help with my choice in shoes. I choose the Nike Pegasus 28 as seen below:

Week 1

All times are recorded in kilometres just for ease of use,

1. Mon 25th 5.76k @ 40mins 8.6 km/h..did this on the treadmill, no problems although a slow pace.
2. Wed 27th 3.08k @ 22mins 8.4 km/h

My guide dogs for the blind running pack arrives.....

Week 2

Mon 2nd July 5.27k @ 34.33 9.2 km/h. I tweaked my left ankle which would go on to give me some problems in the weeks ahead. Also just felt generally crap and off par.

Wed 4th July 7.01k @ 50.00 8.4 km/h. Due to my ankle playing up, I used the treadmill and ran the longest yet.

Sun 8th July 4.74k @ 28.28 10.0 km/h. Back on the road and did a quicker run.

The Tanzanian Olympians arrive...