Old Dog Running

Last week had St David's Day - lots of Welsh emotion. Yesterday I put the Welsh National Anthem onto my blog. Listen to the singing.

France beat Wales at Rugby. I'll get over that in the end because it's still a good season because Wales beat England and there is still a chance of ending the season as champions.

Running went well. I ran 6 miles and that's the farthest I've run in a long time. The 6 miles took 60 minutes but I was very pleased with doing the distance. Then later in the week I ran intervals at 9.0mph. Only 220 yards each interval but I did 4 to get me to 880 yards. So I'm pleased. After getting my knees lubricated the over-riding priority was to not let me knees get that bad again.

In July 2008 I started running again with 1/4 mile run. To start with, each week I added on just a 1/4 mile a week to the longest run for the week. It took patience.

At the start of 2009 I set myself some running targets.
The big one is to run a 10K race on the road in under 60 minutes.

Supporting objectives to get to a sub-one hour 10K:

• 6 miles in under 57 minutes
• 3.1 miles (5K) in 26 minutes
• 1 mile under 7 minutes

10 K this year, maybe half-marathon next year and who knows a marathon the year after.

This year, and last, the running plan is mine. However for longer distances I like the approach of Furman University to try to achieve more with less training. They emphasize the dangers of over-training.

I like their plan to run a marathon with just 3 days a week of running training.

Look at Furman's complete running plans.