PJH road to Ironman UK: Bisham Half Marathon

Sunday, 21 March 2010

Bisham Half Marathon

Today’s training should have been a 30 minute spin session on the bike followed by a 1hr 15 minute run. However, I delighted to say that I didn’t do that!!. Instead I took part in the Bisham half Marathon with a whole bunch of chums from work. It was fantastic. There were about 8 of us all with varying speeds and goals, the weather was superb, the course was pretty flat as it ran along the banks of the Thames.

My goals for the day had been to: to complete the half in sub 2 hours at a reasonable heart rate, to be able to complete training in the week following the event, to really enjoy myself.

My time was around approx 1:52 which I am pretty pleased with considering the volume of training that I have completed this week. Also I was able to maintain a reasonable heart rate and although it was slightly higher that I would have hoped (149 which should have been 147). The other thing I am pleased about is how I felt after the run. Following my last half marathon my legs and especially my hips were in terrible shape however I feel pretty good. This means that I am very confident to be able to continue to train next week. However, the biggest think about today was the opportunity to train with some great people.

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A maintenance challenge

After completing the Ironman the question of what next. I have a few half marathons for the Autumn and will probably enter a couple of duathlons. However, my main aim will be to keep building on the fitness that I have acheived. I appreciate that this next month will be about recovering. Although my legs are feeling pretty good, I have a pain in my right knee that will need some careful management. Tempting though it is I am not going to imediately enter another Ironman. I will give it a few weeks and give it some serious thought.

Why Ironman?

This is a big question and one that I am unlikely to be able to answer fully until maybe after the event. Maybe somehow it goes back to being useless at sports at school, picked last etc, being called “Porky” by my mates etc, but that can’t be all of it. Perhaps it is being surrounded by high achieving athletes at work who have and are still achieving amazing things, or a better understanding of the psychology of performance and setting and achieving goals. Perhaps it is a place to go to when life becomes difficult and the pain of training numbs that. The lyrics that come back to me time and time again are:
“This is my church, this is where I heal my hurts”
Or maybe it is all of these combined with entering the London Marathon in 1983.
When I was 22 I heard about the event and decide to enter, I had never been a runner, detesting cross country runs at school. However something appealed to me about the run.
Once I had completed it and done a couple of half marathons, I heard about the Ironman in Hawaii. In some ways I felt that my achievement had been eclipsed by the triathlon and somewhere deep inside me I knew that I had to do it. This was buried somewhere in my memory and only came out later in 2009 over 25 years later. In the spring a few friends from work convinced me to compete in the Henley sprint distance triathlon which I did. I then started open water swimming really enjoying the distances. My belief in my ability to swim began to grow and two friends from work who had completed the Ironman quite separately said that they believed that I could do it. It was then that my memory of hearing about Kona was awoken and the question “Can I do it?” came into my head. Since then other distances have emerged but for some reason they seem to be only preparation for the full distance. I if wonder once I have completed the event I August will that feel complete until I have made my way to Kona to do the original. Who knows?

PJH road to Ironman UK

Sunday, 21 March 2010

Bisham Half Marathon

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