Friday 21 May 2010

20 weeks to Kona

Tomorrow (Saturday) I will be 140days away from Ironman Hawaii.

This is the point when I start thinking about all the important questions like, can I afford a new £4k bike? ;-) Of course the answer will as always be NO!!! At least with this being Kona there will be no new wetsuit or disc wheel thoughts as neither will be allowed.

This is also the time when many people start their training plans proper as most seem to be either 16 or 20 weeks long. For me this is normally the time that I start thinking about shelling out the cash and getting coached for the final 16 week stint. The thought will hammer around in my head for 3 weeks at which point I'll realise that the combination of my stupidly long work hours and my half soaked attitude mean it will be a total waste of money.

Tomorrow is also the day of the Matlock Marathon which I entered in a moment of madness. With my addiction to running podcasts it was too hard to resist when I found out a group of them were meeting up to do the Swift Half Marathon. Of course (as is my way) I decided that the half was too short to justify the 10hrs of travelling that will be involved, so I entered the full. Hence I'm now going to be rocking up to the start line totally unprepared and undertrained, nothing new there then.

The Marathon will be only my 3rd run over 1hr since Grizzly in March. One of them was the CaniX Half Marathon that I did with Rosie a last month and the other was a 15mile run out to Bideford last Sunday where I practiced the run/walk/run routine that I'm hoping will get me through the race.

I can't claim to do the Jeff Galloway plan but I am a big fan of run walking in longer races when it's a better option than my legs giving up the ghost with several miles to go. So far run/walk has got me a Marathon PB in Wolverhampton last year and helped me through my Kona Qualifying race in Florida. This time will be slightly different however as I'll be using it specifically because I know there's nowhere near enough miles in my legs to run all the way round.

My next post will tell you how good Matlock went, or how much I fell apart. It should be an interesting experience either way.

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