Marathon training tracker - June 12 to June 23

I've been incredibly busy the last week or so and haven't really been able to blog. So here's how my training has gone so far:

June 12
I managed to run 12 kilometers in 1 hour 14 minutes. The good news - I met both distance and time targets. The bad news is that this is the first time in a couple of weeks that I slowed down during training. In all my previous training runs, I managed to keep increasing my speed slowly from start to end. In this run, however, I was doing pretty well until at around 10 kilometers when I started feeling winded. I managed to cover several hundred meters more before needing to slow down.

My main goal during the marathon is to run 30 kilometers at an average speed of 9.5kph (or higher). If I can do that, then I can surely finish the marathon in under 5 hours (and possibly even beat my best time of 4 hours and 52 minutes). I now need to learn how to pace myself over longer distances much better and how to manage my energy more efficiently.

June 14
My target was to run 18 kilometers on June 14 (saturday) in 1 hour and 54 minutes. I barely missed my time targets - I covered my target distance in 1:56. The good thing though is that I managed my energy levels and pace much better, which was really my goal. I think that I could have kept running at least a few more kilometers without dropping speed which certainly gives me a lot more confidence with respect to achieving my speed goals for the marathon.

One week off
Last week, I had so much work that I didn't have time to train. I was a bit upset about it, buy my friend Allan told me that there in certain running circles, there is a school of thought that it is sometimes good to take a week off from training. I thus decided to just run again on Saturday.

June 21
Goal: 10 kilometers in 1 hour.
Result: 10 kilometers in 59 minutes 45 seconds

Yahoo!

June 23
Goal: 7 kilometers in 42 minutes
Result: 7 kilometers in 41 minutes

So far, so good. My speed is increasing, and my discipline to run has been pretty decent. My next goal is to run 14 kilometers in 1 hour 24 minutes.