My name is Philip and I’m a runaholic (Hi Philip I hear you say). Or at least I once was. Today I decided to see if I could recapture that running bug and entered a marathon in October. Not a 10k or half marathon but a full marathon. It was kind of a spur of the moment decision. Do I have the weekend off? Check. Is there any reasonably priced accommodation nearby available? Check. And just like that I pulled the trigger and had entered the 2022 Loch Ness marathon on October 2nd. It’s apparently quite a scenic course that does a loop around near Loch Ness (shock horror) .
I weighed myself this morning. Just under 15 stone. Jesus. Two years of coronavirus has been an ideal excuse to gain weight. Once upon time I weighed three stone less and recorded a marathon personal best of 3hrs 58 mins in the sweltering heat of North East China in May 2017. But back to today. It's a really nice day in Aberdeen for once (oh yeah that's where I live). The ideal time to start marathon training. It must be about 16 degrees out, perfect running weather. So I'm going to take it easy and just do some laps of the King's playing pitches in the University of Aberdeen. It's nice and peaceful but the ground is quite dry and burn out from the lack of rainfall in the last two weeks. Not exactly cross country conditions. And like that it's over. First training run in the bag. 3 miles in 31:33 mins. That’s roughly 10:29 min/miles. I won’t be troubling the Kenyans at that pace. But it’s a baseline to work from. It wasn't excruciating, but it was about as painful as I thought it would be. Being this unfit is both discouraging and motivating at the same time.
My thoughts are already drawn to my next run. But tomorrow is a rest day. Listen to your body and all that. When I do get out the distance will likely be the same. One must crawl, walk, then run, and today certainly was a crawl. However my motivation is strong and I can call time on a (relatively) successful first day's training for a marathon.