Three and a Half Hours Done, Another Hour (???) To Go....

I know I run the risk of becoming a bit of a running bore, but bear with me for another three weeks until the Marathon obsession phase ends. In the meantime I'm going to keep writing about it. It's hard not to, as I seem to be spending more and more hours every week getting ready for the 21st October.

This week I made a couple of personal breakthroughs... firstly on Wednesday by running 5km faster than I've ever done before during a morning training session in the Westerpark and then today in the Amsterdamse Bos by running the furthest(and longest) that I have ever managed before. It's so rewarding to realise that all the hard work is showing itself, especially as my new i-pod chip has a great little gimmick that means that either Paula Radcliffe or Lans Armstrong congratulate you direct into your ears when you do so! I realised today that the movement sensor is callibrated all wrong, so the graphs below aren't 100% accurate, but at least it gives me some idea of what I've been doing:





I was completely wiped out after the run today. It was pretty cold and poured with rain, so by the time we got to the end point I had pools of water in my shoes, was covered in mud and was fantasising about large slices of cake and warm baths. Luckily Elise 'guardian angel of runners' Samperez collected us and walked our little limping group to her place for hot showers and big servings of homemade lasagne. Never before has lasagne been so appreciated (or disappeared so quickly). The picture below (thanks to Jakob and his high-tech Sat Nav toy) shows the funny tangled-up route that we ran. I'm glad that the good people at Phanos were navigating and not me!