Training with the Marathon Man

We have been away this weekend to visit friends who live near Guildford in Surrey.

We have known Tim and Tracy for nearly 15 years, and we meet up at least a couple of times a year. It would be more but it’s the best part of a four hour drive! We have also been on holiday with them a couple of times.

In the last couple of years, Tim has got into running. Seriously got into it. To the point where he did the London Marathon last year. And he is doing it again this year. He managed to get his place through the ballot so doesn’t need to run it for a charity, but is still going to do it for Diabetes UK. Good man!! I will post more about this in the weeks closer to the race, with a link to where you can sponsor him (if you’d be so generous!!)

Whilst we were down in Surrey, I made sure I took my running and cycling gear, as I have the Clumber Park Sprint Duathlon next week and can’t go into that with no training this weekend. Especially considering I have done so little in the last few weeks because of the weather and then doing my back in.

So, yesterday, I got Tim to pace me over 5K (the longer of the two run distances next week). My best to date is over 25 minutes, and yesterday we knocked well over a minute off that, nearly getting it under 24 minutes. Well pleased!

Then this morning, Tim was going out for his main weekly ‘big’ run, in preparation for the marathon in April. So we came up with the idea that I would ride the same route and see how many loops I could do in the time they took to do one.

It didn’t quite work out like that, as they ended up running a slighlty different route to me. However, I did get to ride some nice quiet roads that were new to me, and have another 30 miles in my legs!