This year’s fitness goal!

Last year around this time I was training hard for the Stockholm Marathon which was to be my first and so far only marathon. That was my fitness goal for last year and I was pretty chuffed to achieve it especially having only trained for 10 weeks and still got in under 4 hours.

So the summer is just around the corner and I have hit on my plan for this year, but first lets turn back the clock to the summer of 2004…

It was a simpler time, when this was all fields and people would leave their doors unlocked (generally after a drunken night out and losing their keys).

I had just moved to Sweden about 3 weeks earlier and Neil and I ran the Stockholm half marathon where I set a personal best for that distance. I came in 672nd place in a time of 1.38.14.

My goal for this year is not only to beat that 25 year old’s time, but to in fact run a half marathon in under 1h30 mins!

I think this is quite a challenge. An example of that is in the 2004 race, a time of 1:29:59 would have put me in 274th place. Out of the 2960 that finished the race, that would put one in the top 10%.

Ok, so the goal is set. What now?

Unfortunately over the winter I put on a few pounds… In fact I went from my marathon weight of about 74Kg to 82Kg. I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong with that 82Kg as a weight, but the fact is that it exists purely because of the amount of scrappy food and mainly chocolates etc. I have been eating for the last 8 months.

Time to pull the plug on that, and since last Tuesday I have been sugar free along with making some other small dietary changes. I think that I could easily lose a roughly 6-8 Kg of fat quite quickly (maybe the next 8 weeks). I’ve actually been eating more food and better quality food this last week, so it feels good. I’ve also built in a “treat” day on a Saturday where I just eat whatever comes within 10 feet of me, so I’m not missing out and can put a serious dent in all the left over Easter eggs.

Have to say that the first 3 days without sugar left me nearly exhausted though, but now I feel pretty good.

The most important point in my plan though will be simple maths. To do a half marathon in 1h29 mins (89 mins) means that you have to run at a pace of 4mins13s for every Km. For the 8Km run I did a few weeks ago, my average pace was 05:33 min/km.

Time for some short distance speed work!