Thursday 4 September 2008

Cometh the hour...

…cometh the man. My first ever competitive race is the Great Scottish Run half marathon this Sunday on the 7th September. Lots of people will be participating –perhaps you are too? If so then good luck. It should be an excellent chance to learn some racing protocol and practise refuelling on-the-run. My preparation for the race is a little schizophrenic. In essence the race itself will be a training run for my marathon ambitions so there will be no tapering beforehand and it will be training as usual on Monday. Tapering in running terms means scaling back normal training miles before a race to ensure peak energy and performance. I am torn about this though because part of me wants to give the half-marathon my best shot since bragging rights in the office may depend upon it. Logically I see it like this: if anyone in the office beats me then obviously it was a training run and I instruct them to subtract 13 minutes from my time to get my ‘real’ competitive time; if I beat them it’s still a training run and they can imagine what it would be like to be an elite uberathlete like your humble blogger. A win-win scenario! This mornings run was 5.5 miles at a easy-normal effort and a 41:05 pace.

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