Robert Song's Running

I'm over 50 and been running off and on since 1968. I have run everything from 800m to 10k on the track, to half marathons (PB 1:21 Brisbane 1993) and marathons (PB 2:53 Gold Coast 1985).

Monday, April 12, 2010

Base Building

After the recent Half and 10k races, it was obvious that I needed to get back to building a base and get some endurance.

So the focus is now on just putting as many Ks in the bank and hopefully be in a good enough shape down the track to run a marathon this winter or autumn.  At this moment, I am think anything under four hours would be a significant achievement for me. But that is a long way off, considering how I pull up after just 25k on my long training runs now.

So I put in a 64.5k week and followed it up with 73ks last week. It has been very tiring and every morning I wonder how I am going to be able to drag the tired legs around for a run that evening. But it has been that way since I started the come back in December and I am hoping at some point it is going to get easier. The last four months of training have been the hardest pyhsically and mentally in my whole running career. The incredible humidity last week didn't help either. My long run yesterday morning was run in fog for the whole 2 and a half hours. That has got to be 100% humidity and I was a bucket of sweat by the time I finished.

The numbness and swelling in my legs has certainly improved a lot over the last month. At this rate I would say in a couple of months time it will almost be gone.