Long Run - But Why?

Its been a pretty easy week for me this week after last Sundays half marathon. This was more driven by circumstances than anything. I had a rest day on Monday, a long steady swim on Tuesday, a short easy run on Wednesday then I had a conference for work that tied me up for all of Thursday and Friday.

The Thursday night of the conference was an "awards dinner" complete with open bar. I was a little unusual as I was just about the only one who wasn't trying to drink away the year profits, in addition I left pretty early and was snuggled up in my bed shortly after 10pm. I got a little bit of jib from my work mates for calling it quits so early, but I guess thats simply a reflection of where my priorities lie.

Anyway by the time I got back to the conference on Friday morning there were a lot of tired, unhappy people throwing back all manner of pain killers etc. There were also rumors circulating about a mishap that had occurred that night. As it turned out one of the other advisers from my team had gotten well and truly boozed, decided to go swimming, dived into the shallow end of a pool and broken her neck! My decision to a. Not drink, and b. go home early was now not looking so bad with lots of people saying they were definitely going to join me next time. (We got an update during the day, it turns out that she was reasonably "lucky" - which strikes me as being rather subjective - and will now be spending the next week in hospital and a further three months with a halo fitted!).

It was with these thoughts racing around my head that I went out for my long run this morning. Over the last couple of days I've had quite a few people ask me why I run (and interestingly a few people on Friday ask me how they can get started ...). There are a whole bunch of answers to this question, and to be truthful the answers change each year. The reasons why I run now are quite different to the reasons I had when I first started. When you get right down to it I run because I CAN first and foremost. And this is something that I'm really grateful for! I also run because I really enjoy it. I like the way it makes me feel, both during and after (... maybe not so much during ...), and in general life as well.


Me enjoying getting out there


It also gets me out of the rat race and allows me to spend some quality time with myself (and when you have a young family time to yourself is a very precious thing).


The way to the rat race, I happily ran over this today ... and kept on going ...



Todays run was quite hard as I targeted a bunch of fairly descent hills. The course I choose largely followed one I use to use for hill training on my bike. It took me just over 1 hour 40 minutes to cover the 20k's I ran and I was actually fairly happy with this effort. My half marathon season is now over and its time to start to slow the pace down and increase the distance.


Todays run


I've been thinking a bit about my time goals for the upcoming Auckland Marathon (2nd November). I really want to put in a good show which for me means getting home in under four hours. Previously I've had a problem with crumbling in the last 15k's of the marathon and seeing my time goals slip away. However this year my endurance is miles better than it was last year (which is just as well given my "A" race is going to be 100k long), so I'm confident that I will be able to run and maintain 5 minute (or just under) k's. This will see me comfortably get a marathon PB. The trick will be to not run to fast in the first half.

From here on in I will be starting to really ramp up my k's. At the moment I'm doing about 50k's a week, I'll be increasing this to closer to 70k per week by November and then getting up to 100k by the end of December. I don't know if time will allow me to be able to do much more than this.

Roll on summer!!