Training diary update – September 2020

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A post shared by Charles Smith (@justfingrun) on Sep 23, 2020 at 10:24am PDT

Training log – View here

How did the month go?

Life is about balance and after a tiring year with training and business stuff in the shadow of Mr Covid-19 I decided to give myself a slightly reduced load in September.

I found it useful for a few reasons:

• I enjoy the long distance and trail running but don’t want it to become a thing that becomes too boring so a reduction gives a rest.
• Periodisation is crucial for performance.

But oh wait – No that’s not quite what happened!!!

What I ended up doing was taking on some 2020 bucket list items, the two I picked were:

1. Run 5Km Barefoot (injury free!).
2. Do a sub 4hr Marathon.

1. 5Km Barefoot

Done at the end of August actually but who’s counting, bit of mixed terrain so it wasn’t too harsh on the legs. Just felt great to have, in about 6 months gone from a heel smasher to being able to forefoot run barefoot 5km and not smash my legs to pieces. Never been so happy with a 5Km!

2. Sub 4hr Marathon

Done on the 19th September – obviously not in a proper event seeing as most things have been cancelled.

Decided to pick a Saturday, pack my water bottles, a few Gels then do an out and back on the Worcester – Birmingham Canal path. The path I ran on is about 1/3rd Paved/Gravel and 2/3rds dense packed dirt with the occasion bit of grass or routes. I chose this as it is nice and easy to do an out and back, just run for 21.1Km then turn around – simple! Not hilly (only took in about 170m / 557ft of climbing in the whole run – which is similar to the London Marathon), no road crossings and easy to keep my distance from people as well.

I have never actually run a specific marathon, they have been as part of something else like an Ironman or an Ultra so this was nice to see actually what could I do if I just focussed and tried on the classic distance.

Well I won’t lie I was very very happy with getting a 03:36hr marathon time – appreciate there are many faster that this but for me it smashed my sub 4hr expectation and given me a real boost that actually with some work I might be able to actually run not just far but also possibly fast (ish).

Now go on, just f’ing run!