I'd been wondering about strategies for taking on food during the race itself (and during long training runs). This article from the New York Road Runners Club seems pretty comprehensive. Now is the time to start experimenting - I have 19 long training runs left.

---

Last night once again I ran the furthest I've ever run, ever – this time 10 miles, the first time in double figures. It was my hardest run for a very long time – I could really feel soreness setting in towards the end, and today my legs are pretty stiff. I need to avoid going too far too soon – I increased my mileage by nearly 50% this week, which is almost certainly too much.

Also I noticed that towards the end of the run, I was craving food rather than drink (having got through a pint of water during the run). Looks like I’m getting to the stage where my endurance is being put to the test.

---

Hal Higdon says that “a well-balanced diet for runners is to obtain 55 percent of calories from carbohydrates, 30 percent from fats and 15 percent from proteins”. Sounds just like a bacon roll. Good job I had a couple after this morning’s run/ride/run.

---

The pre-dawn madness continued this morning. The alarm went off at 5.15 and I was pounding the streets outside work by five past six. Sprinting before breakfast – what is the world coming to?

I’ve also clocked up my first 100 miles of training – which in 15 weeks isn’t particularly impressive, but serves as a good base for the serious stuff to come. In the next 142 days I’m hoping to cover another 400 or so.

---

Tried a pre-work run today, schedule as follows:

05.50 – alarm, straight into running gear
06.00 – in car
06.40 – arrive work
06.45 – 3.5 mile run
07.15 – stretch, shower and change
07.25 – breakfast at desk

At 05.50, I contemplated forgetting the whole thing, but by 06.45 I was quite keen, and enjoyed the run. It helped that it was a pleasant, mild morning. The buzz lasted all day.

The two problems are:

(1) This routine included a half-hour lie-in; normally I would have to start at 05.20.

(2) I’m thinking about changing to the highly-regarded Hal Higdon programme, which has longer midweek runs – that Week 15 Wednesday 10-miler would require me to get up at ten past four…

---

This afternoon I went for my first long weekend run around Maidenhead. A pleasant three-lap circuit in cool, damp air, taking in both open fields and suburbia. The run was completed with a minimum of fuss, the only downer being that I miscalculated the lap distance as 3.1 miles when it was only really 2.5.

My watch showed around 22 minutes for the first lap, and I immediately thought that I’d got the distance wrong. However, maybe delirium began to set in after a few more miles, as I began to believe that I really was running that fast – despite, as I later worked out, the pace being faster than I’ve ever run. When I finally checked the map, I wasn’t really disappointed that I hadn’t improved a minute per mile overnight - just that I hadn’t run as far as I intended.

---

This morning saw my inaugural, occasional run/ride/run journey in to work, including my first run in my new home town of Maidenhead. I was out the door at 5.40 am – I could have had another quarter of an hour in bed, as it turned out – for twoish miles in the coldest morning of the year so far, to the station. Then a quick jaunt on a nice, warm train to Ealing Broadway, and another three and a half miles or so up to Sudbury Hill and the office. Strangely, Ealing at 7.00 seemed colder than Maidenhead at 6.00. Must remember gloves next week. Oh, and a towel would make the shower at work a little more pleasant, as well.

The second run was quite hard in places, mainly because it’s largely uphill, and also because until yesterday I’d had a ten-day layoff. I was also running with a rucksack, which wasn’t half as bad as I expected (the forgotten towel must have helped) although it must have slowed me down a bit. No spectacular sunrise unfortunately – the sun just oozed up somewhere between Slough and Ealing. Best bit was probably crossing a misty River Brent in the middle of the golf course. Either that or the bacon rolls at my desk at ten to eight.

---

Yesterday I went for the first of many planned lunchtime runs, taking in some of North Greenford’s most delightful scenery: Paradise Fields, the Grand Union Canal, Horsenden Hill, and Westway Cross shopping centre. This was undertaken with potential new lunchtime training partner Mo, which made for a nice change and someone to talk to. I haven’t told him about my plans for hill sprints yet.

The only trouble with the lunchtime runs is that I have to get up at 5am in order to allow myself a full hour’s lunchbreak.

---

A real journalist shows us how training logs should be written, in a fortnightly column in the Guardian. He's a new runner attempting the FLM05 while looking in detail at the science of training. Should be worth a look at the updates.

---

Running Boom confirmed.

---

A big, fat zero on the training log this week. I really haven’t had any spare time or energy, due to moving house, which I think is a valid excuse at this stage of the programme. The stories of how stressful moving is are evidently true – which is OK, provided you don’t have lots of other stuff going on, such as training for a marathon. So something had to give – and it was the training. Normal service should be resumed this week, and I’ll try and fit in one or two extra short runs to keep things ticking over.

---

I mentioned Lloyd Scott and his trans-Australia penny-farthing ride a little while ago. He's writing a daily diary of his endeavours. (Or, the full site.)

---

There's an interesting table in the rec.running FAQ entitled "Calories burned by running". A quick analysis of the table reveals that it's pretty much based on a single rule:

Running at 70% of maximum heart rate, calories burned per mile = 0.73 * body weight in lbs.

70% is a fairly easy pace and so should be around what I'm doing for my long runs. So at about 200lbs, my current 8.75 mile run burns about 1280 calories. That's around an extra half a day's food I have to eat on Sundays in order to avoid losing weight. Wahey!

Then again, my BMI comes out at 23.6, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to shed a couple more pounds.

---

Five hours sleep, big Sunday lunch, very tired, after dark, light rain, 8.75 miles, good pace, drank loads of water, felt great.

I feel these posts might be becoming a little formulaic.

But there’s not that much else to say: I’m mostly managing to fit the runs in, I’m not getting injured, and I’m enjoying it. Until the real serious stuff starts after Christmas, or one of my legs falls off or something, I’m, a bit stuck for things to tell you.

I don’t have the time, the powers of recall, or the literary skills to put together anything like Andy’s account of his 2002 marathon training. And I’m not going to turn this into a proper blog and start telling you what I had for breakfast. (Actually, I might mention nutrition in future. OK, I won’t start telling you what I watched on TV. Hang on, I already have. But the point is: I’ll try and stick to the main topic.)

So please keep reading, give me your money, and tell your friends. It’ll be worth it in the long run.

---

My body is giving me a bit of feedback today, some of it in new forms. My knees are a bit sore when I go downstairs - nothing particularly new. What I haven't had before is the twinge in the backs of my thighs when I walk - which suggests that the sprinting last night was reaching a few muscles that hadn't been reached before.

Nothing to worry about, but I definitely won't push the sprinting any harder (as if my lungs would let me) for a while yet.

---

Another really enjoyable fartlek session tonight. I really went for it in the first couple of fast sections, which was a little uncomfortable on an empty stomach - although probably would have been on a full stomach as well. Still, as usual, it felt great when I stopped. The stopwatch showed 20 sec outside my recent PB, which isn't important, but it's nice to know that it was as fast as it felt. But the best thing at the moment about these fartlek sessions is that the time passes so quickly - the variety keeps the mind occupied, and I was halfway round before I knew it. And without wishing to alienate any gym-using readers - why would anyone go to the gym when you can have such a great, literally-on-the-doorstep, fresh-air workout for free?

OK, there's lots of reasons, I know. But - well.

---

Here are some really mad people. Lloyd Scott is cycling 100 marathons on a penny farthing in 40°C heat. Ben Fogle ran a marathon a day for a week in 45°C heat. I caught a bit of the Fogle programme yesterday – at least I know my blisters won’t be as bad as his, and at the worst I’ll only have to endure pain for half a day or so.

Then again, Lorraine Kelly did FLM04 and runs "an hour or two three times a week and at the weekend… 10 miles" – considerably more than I’m currently prattling on about. I’m not belittling the bonny lass, but it just goes to show that with a bit of determination, running a marathon is something that anyone can do.

---