Thursday, 11th March – 45 days to go

Listen to Marathon Talk and Tony’s Trials is another classic. Not quite up there with Help! and Naked Running, but not far off. Frightening though. He’s aiming for 3:00 and I’m aiming for 3:15 to 3:30, yet he ran 85 miles last week, 10 sessions that week and 539 miles in the last seven weeks. I ran 32.8 miles last week in five sessions and have run fewer than 200 miles in seven weeks. I know I’m trying to run my first marathon on a light workload, but perhaps I’ve overdone it.

The evening session with Mick is at Horsfall Stadium in Bradford. This is the home of Bradford Park Avenue. It’s a newish home for them not the old league ground which also doubled up as a cricket ground for Yorkshire (when they recognised their obligation to play around the county instead of just in Leeds).

This is my first track session and I’m a little anxious as the legs are still heavy from the twenty mile run yesterday. After a few circuits of the track and a warm up we start the running. 400 metres at a fast 5k pace, repeated six times with a jog round the track in between. Managed between 82 and 90 seconds for each 400k so not bad even though the rest periods were somewhat generous. I’d like another track session when I’m not feeling so heavy legged just to see how fast I can go over various distances. We have another Thursday evening track session in a fortnight, but suspect I’ll be even more knackered for that.

Horsfall Stadium is a Bradford Council property and you can get on at virtually anytime for £2.75 a session including changing and showering facilities. Think I’ll make it a regular session over the summer.