Sisyphus AC

Fundraising under way!

Today marks the start of my proper fundraising activities for the Virgin London Marathon 2017: Spinach pie served at work in time for breakfast! Because who can resist a proposition as “I run you eat”? Many thanks to lovely Demi and birthday girl Roula for the recipe and execution, and remember that online donations are…

Exciting News!

Having resolved in April to concentrate on 10k and, at a stretch, half-marathons for the foreseeable future, I have allowed my rubber arm to be twisted and accepted a charity place in the 2017 Virgin London Marathon!!! How great is that? I will be running in support of the London Transport Museum, and particular their…

Alone in the dark

I started training regularly again last week, following another home-made programme, with a regular Parkrun thrown in every Saturday. It had been a while since I last went out on regular mid-week runs, and the change in the season was really evident! Autumn has been and gone, and winter is making no secret of its…

Return to Parkrun

Running has become a bit of a luxury for me in the past couple of months, preoccupied as we have been with moving house, emptying boxes and making it generally habitable, while it’s just the three of us living in it… Needless to say this scuppered all my plans for Leicester Half (I did run…

September

I’ve been meaning to write a post for a while now, perhaps to give an update on how my training has gone in the past month or so. But the only words I can think of to describe it are Greek. And they aren’t even mine: Είν’ η προσπάθειές μας, των συφοριασμένων· είν’ η προσπάθειές…

Gite La Fleurieu

Demi and I were recently given an opportunity to spend a running holiday at the lovely Gite La Fleurieu, in the Lot Valley in SW France, on the occasion of a Channel 4 programme which is due to be filmed there. I have never been on a running / cycling holiday before, but ever since…

Back in the Park

Every third week, my programme prescribes a reduced training volume (say by 15% or so), to allow the body to recover and prepare for another gradual increase the following week. In such rest weeks I have decided to swap the harder Long Runs (LR with Fast Finish, or LR with speedwork) for easier, steady runs…

Joy Cann 5, 2016

It was the Joy Cann 5 (miles) last week, and I have to admit I felt a bit nervous as it approached. It would be my first race under half marathon distance since May 2014 (so very different pace to what I’m used to recently), and a first indicator on how my new training approach…

Καλοκαίρι

(Summertime – for some reason this post’s title only felt right in Greek!) We came back to England from our holidays to find summer ripened; the fields have lost their bright green colour and turned yellow and the roads are still empty. I did very little running while I was away: The Penny Marathon, of course,…

New approach to training (Pt 2): A review of “80 20 Running”

In my previous post on this subject I explained that my quest for an enjoyable and effective training approach led me to read “80 / 20 Running” by Matt Fitzgerald; that its main proposition (namely that best improvements in running performance are brought about by a training regime that is made up of 80% low…