Training is hard.

So, Sally got right on the case, as soon as I took her on, she emailed me my spreadsheet. It call came flooding back. The schedule; the spreadsheet; the terror.

Week one started out quite well... Monday said "can swim 30 mins or just chill". Now that was an instruction I had no problem at all in following. I went for the latter. This training thing is a lark, I thought! Tuesday, similarly, left me wondering what I'd been apprehensive about - after all, I was well on the way to a marathon here! "Easy plod, 30 minutes". Well, if there is one thing I'm good at, it's an easy plod.

Wednesday, excellently, was pilates. Over the course of the first week, I enjoyed telling people my news. Jon just kept coming over and saying "17 miles?" and then walking off again. Other people were incredulous about the whole idea of a marathon in less than 2 months. But I had faith. I had a training program, and Sally. Pilates wasn't mentioned, to be honest, I just wanted to go. I thought I'd get my training in after work, but before 7:30. Surely that was going to be fine, right?

OK, remember we had a tacit agreement, Sal and I, that I was going to get round the Marathon course, but not in a specific time? Read this. Go on, just read it. "You won't actually have a specific race pace [correct] but I'd like you to run 9 min miles when I say pace anyway, so, 9 min miles all the way. 90 minutes pace".  What?? Bear in mind that I haven't run 9 minute miles since I ran the Peterborough half marathon. 90 minutes, now my maths isn't that good, but that's 10 miles. I definitely only ran half the race at that pace, because I did a negative split (and that was my fast half). Also, I finished work at 5:30, and had to be somewhere at 7:30. With getting changed and stuff, that didn't leave a lot of 90 minutes left. I ended up running 8.8 miles, around the Millennium bridge, but try as I might, i couldn't keep up 9 minute miles. I did it for one mile, at about mile 5. I thought I might do a negative split, and maintain that pace all the way home, but this is the bad bit about the mental fight - it gives up way too easily. I was pushing hard to keep that pace, glancing at my garmin, and pushing extra. When the mile jumped, so i started a new lap, I should have been at the fastest, as I hadn't started at 9 minute miles, and it was averaging my pace over the lap. So I felt it should have gone a bit lower. I looked at the garmin, while I was pushing to keep the same pace, and it read 9:35 minute miles. I was so disheartened, I thought, fuck it, and ran back as best as I could. Then I was late as well.

When I got home, I found a note on the shared spreadsheet under Tuesday. It said "Emma, did you do this?" If there isn't a shiver down your spine, you just don't understand anything. I hadn't updated Sally's spreadsheet. I quickly filled in what I had done, and how it had felt.

Thursday said "Cross training - swim, cycle, anything you want except running". I went swimming, and updated my spreadsheet thusly: "I did 46 lengths. I swam sets of 5, and did 4 front crawl and 1 breast stroke for each set, except sometimes I deteriorated and swam breast stroke. And sometimes it was hard to know what I was swimming, it was more like drowning with style." I was rewarded with a note that said "I love your updates".

Friday was going to be hard. I knew that from the start of the week. The instructions were for track 40 minutes, and said this

"Warm up with 2 easy laps then:

4 x 1600 at the fastest you can run a 1600 and maintain an even pace. It will be uncomfortable sustainable but not a sprint - obvs!

Please reduce it to three if you feel worn out!

1 lap cool down easy

Stretch"

I opted to do this around the rowing lake, I figured that 1600m is a mile, and I could just keep an eye on it from the garmin, keep going for that distance. I wanted to do it in 8 minute miles, but managed about 8:20, which I was happy with. I did reduce it to three, partly because I had to get back to the office to some work. It was grueling, but not as hard as I expected. But even though I had spent all week knowing that Friday was going to be hard, it wasn't the training that was hard, after all.

The hard part was finding out, later that night, that Rich Unwin had died.