Training Week 9 Recap

Hi guys,

This week's recap comes a little bit earlier. Tomorrow being a Sunday, I'm not going to have any time, nor will I do any running. I'll be packing my bags and returning to the UK. My time in Spain has come to an end, so it's time for me to move along and run elsewhere. Here's a recap of week 9.

Tuesday

Type: Intervals.

Time and Distance: 60 mins, 12.25 km.

Detail: 20 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 4 x 1600m at 14.0 km/h pace, followed by 1 min at 8.0 pace. 1x 1600m at 14.3 km/h pace, followed by 5 mins at 10.5 km/h pace.

Wednesday

Type: Easy with hills.

Time and Distance: 43 mins 43 secs, 7.4 km.

Detail: First half at 22:49. Second half at 20:54.

Thursday

Type: Tempo.

Time and Distance: 60 mins, 12.05 km.

Detail: 20 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 20 mins at 13.5 km/h pace. 10 mins at 14.0 km/h pace. 10 mins at 10.5 km/h pace.

Saturday

Type: Easy.

Time and Distance: 120 mins, 22.62 km.

Detail: 20 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 40 mins at 11.0 km/h pace. 30 mins at 11.5 km/h pace. 20 mins at 12.0 km/h pace. 10 mins of pickups at the end from 14 km/h to 18 km/h.

Total Weekly Distance: 54.32 km.

Comments: A much better week overall. The Tuesday interval session was a pretty hard effort for me, it's been a while since I've done mile repeats at that pace. The tempo session was pretty manageable, I'd be keen to increase the time and pace spent running the tempo session. The Saturday run was pretty comfortable. I'm keen to increase the distance on that run next week. A better weekly mileage so far.

Improvements: I'm hoping that I can maintain the weekly mileage for next week, as I start life again in the UK. All of my faster runs are done on a treadmill, so I'm going to have to find a treadmill to do tempo runs and intervals, or I may have to do my faster running on the road. Hopefully the snow would have stopped by then.

In other news, one of the events that I'm training for is the Reading Half Marathon on Sunday 21st March. With Berlin being the race to peak for I'm also quite keen to do well in Reading too, to see how the training is going. The atmosphere at Reading is electric, and it's also the second biggest half marathon in the UK. My PB over the half marathon is 1:36:40 (also set at Reading), and I'd love to break 1:30:00 this time. Most of my faster running is focused around training to run at this required pace, so hopefully I can pull it off on race day.

Another idea that I had is to include pictures on my blog entries. After reviewing some of my entries, I thought they could be much improved if I managed to include pictures with them. One of the blogs that I follow includes a lot of pictures, which makes for very easy and interesting reading. Hopefully there'll be a few pictures from me coming your way.

Best,

Aaron

On Sacrifices and Girlfriends

Hi all,

In training to break 3 hours I have to draw on others for inspiration. It helps greatly if I can draw on the wisdom and achievements of others to meet my goals.

I normally read a lot of inspirational quotes via email, blogs and Twitter feeds. One of the quotes I enjoy reading is rather long, but it is one that I can easily relate to. The quote comes from Deena Kastor, American long distance runner and Olympic bronze medallist in Athens 2004, so she knows what she's talking about!

We make choices. I hate to say 'sacrifices.' When I speak to younger groups, to colleges and other younger athletes, I say 'we don't make sacrifices. If we truly love this sport and we have these goals and dreams in the sport, the classroom, or in life, they're not sacrifices. They're choices that we make to fulfill these goals and dreams.' Sacrifices makes it sound like 'oh, poor me, I have to do this in order to get to this,' and I don't really like that word. It was just really the choice to take care of myself and live a proper lifestyle. In doing that, I feel like a healthier person, I feel focused in everything, not just in my running. In following this one dream, I feel like I became an even more well-rounded person.

When I first took up marathon running, I was forced to cut back a lot of my other activities. I suppose I referred to them as "sacrifices". After finishing Berlin last year in a good time, I contemplated stopping marathon running to concentrate on other activities that marathon running prevented me from doing. For example, I'm currently doing my O.E. so that means that I should be travelling as much as possible while I'm living in Europe. Travelling while juggling marathon training is very hard work, maybe even more of a hassle than I could afford. Then there are other activities that I wanted to spend my free nights on (and I can list quite a large number of them); with marathon training I hardly have any free nights available to me to do other activities.

Then I came across Deena's quote on her Wikipedia entry, and it got me thinking about why I do marathon running and what running means to me. I quickly realised that out of all the activities that I have chosen to do, marathon running was the most rewarding and the most exhilarating. And I love to run, it's as simple as that.

I choose to run because I really love the sport. I want to better myself in running, and in life. In doing so I'm taking care of myself, living a healthier lifestyle, and becoming more focused in everything else aside from my running. Finally I have a sporting goal - to break three hours in a marathon. I made a conscious decision, not a sacrifice, in order to meet this goal.

So, thank you Deena for that piece of inspiration.

Another inspirational quote that I found, though probably not for the right reasons, comes from Japanese long-distance runner, Toshihiko Seko.

The marathon is my only girlfriend. I give her everything I have.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight! I'm not sure if that's a good thing, but it does show his dedication to the sport. And if I want to break three hours come the 26th September, I need to display the type of dedication that Seko-san is talking about. But calling the marathon your girlfriend, well I don't know if I can go that far.

Already inspired,

Aaron

Training Week 8 Recap

Well, what a bad week it's been. I've just returned from the UK and it's been a rather forgettable trip. On top of that I did absolutely no running there despite bringing my gear along. At least I managed to catch Avatar 3D at the movies. Anyway this is a blog on my running, not about the many problems over the past week. The recap begins and it's not pretty reading.

Monday

Type: Easy with hills.

Time and Distance: 36 mins 8 secs, 7.4 km.

Detail: First half at 18:41. Second half at 17:27.

Tuesday

Type: Intervals.

Time and Distance: 45 mins, 8.25 km.

Detail: 20 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 2 x 1000m at 16.0 km/h pace, followed by 2 mins at 8.0 pace and 4 mins at 8.0 pace. After that, blew up completely.

Wednesday

Type: Recovery with hills.

Time and Distance: 44 mins 5 secs, 7.4 km.

Detail: First half at 23:04. Second half at 21:01.

Total Weekly Distance: 23.05 km.

Comments: A very poor week overall. The interval session on Tuesday felt extremely difficult, which was probably a consequence of my previous easy runs being too hard (see Monday's effort). Wednesday's recovery run on the same easy run route made running more enjoyable. Unfortunately I did not manage to run any more after that.

Improvements: More mileage. Enough said.

What else can I say. I'm very frustrated with the week just gone and my running efforts. I'm hoping that future weeks won't be as bad, because a weekly effort of 23 km is extremely poor. I could manage that in one day.

Not wanting to sound presumptuous, but with 4 days of no running I'm feeling very strong and eager to hit the roads again. I'm hoping that come tomorrow I can put myself back on track.

Onwards and upwards,

Aaron

Bad Day

Hi guys,

I'm travelling back to the UK tomorrow for a few days on urgent business. The good news is that, after creatively rearranging my hand luggage, I can probably bring along my running gear (along with my laptop and other items) and I may be able to fit a few runs over there. Hopefully the roads in the UK won't have any black ice with all the snow and icy cold weather they have been experiencing recently.

On the subject of running, I've had a bad day of running today. Sometimes in my eagerness of wanting to train hard and making every mile count, I can also lose sight of the importance of rest, recovery and taking things just a little bit easier. Unfortunately bad days are part and parcel of training, and they will happen. As a runner, you have to manage these as best you can, accept it, and learn to come up with a response to these bad days.

Before the run I was feeling rather flat for some reason. Perhaps I've been running harder than normal recently, or the stress of my urgent trip to the UK, or the lunch I had that afternoon (yes I'm guilty, I ate out today because I wasn't able to prepare lunch the night before) - I can't really say. When I'm feeling flat, I can still scrape a good run so that I feel like I've worked hard enough. Unfortunately, today was an interval session and to get through an interval session properly you must not be feeling flat beforehand.

The plan was to run 4 x 1000m intervals at 16.0 km/h pace. If all went well, then I'd throw in another one for good measure. After the mandatory warm up, I managed 2 x 1000m intervals at 16.0 km/h pace, with a 2 minute and 4 minute rest after each interval at 8.0 km/h pace. As I went for a third interval, I just had to stop after 300-400m. I felt as if I had no energy to carry on at that pace. To ensure the training wasn't a complete waste, I managed 5 x 200m intervals at 16.0 km/h pace, with a 30 second rest. That was also very difficult for me; it was also a struggle getting through that set of intervals. I left the gym feeling rather disappointed with myself.

The flip side is that bad days are a good indicator that something is not right with your training. Either the session was too hard, or I wasn't in good form for that level of training. I've just reviewed the training runs from last week, and noted that the majority of my runs have been quite fast - less than 5 mins/km, especially my easy runs. At this stage of training, my easy runs are probably on the fast side. The easy runs should get to that pace later on as training builds up.

So what would my response be to this bad day? There are two areas I will need to address. I'm thinking that I may need to cut back on the pace slightly for the longer intervals (shorter intervals are probably manageable for me at that pace). I may also have to put the brake on my easy runs as well so that they are around the 5 - 5.3 mins/km pace effort. Additionally I might devote a week of easy running (no intervals, no tempo runs) to get into a rhythm.

Having a bad day is not the end of the world. At least I'm not injured, yet! To close, here's a music video which shares my sentiment, also titled Bad Day. A great song, it's enough to put a smile on anyone's face. Enjoy!

Take care,

Aaron

Training Week 7 Recap

Hi guys,

I've just come back from a weekend in Granada, and it's straight to this week's recap. Unfortunately I did no running over there, but managed to keep on my feet the whole time walking around the town and the Alhambra, a historic complex of palaces and gardens dating back to the 14th century. Here's another recap on my training for week 7.

Monday

Type: Easy with hills.

Time and Distance: 36 mins 28 secs, 7.4 km.

Detail: First half at 19:12. Second half at 17:16.

Tuesday

Type: Intervals.

Time and Distance: 60 mins, 10.9 km.

Detail: 20 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 4 x 200m at 16.0 km/h pace, followed by 1 min at 8.0 pace. 2 x 400m at 16.0 pace, followed by 2 mins at 8.0 pace. 1 x 800m at 16.0 pace, followed by 4 mins at 8.0 pace. 1 x 1000m at 16.0 pace, followed by 5 mins at 8.0 pace.

Wednesday

Type: Easy with hills.

Time and Distance: 36 mins 49 secs, 7.4 km.

Detail: First half at 19:20. Second half at 17:29.

Thursday

Type: Tempo.

Time and Distance: 60 mins, 12.1 km.

Detail: 20 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 20 mins at 13.7 km/h pace. 10 mins at 14.2 km/h pace. 10 mins at 10.5 km/h pace.

Total Weekly Distance: 37.8 km.

Comments: The Thursday tempo run was a pretty hard effort, but I'm quite happy with the run. The Tuesday interval session felt manageable. It's likely that I'll keep the pace as it is, but decrease the amount of rest time between intervals and/or increase the length of each interval. While I did more intense running this week, I'm not too happy with the total mileage I've managed to scrap together this week, due to the fact that I didn't do any weekend run. It's not looking to improve in the next week, as I have an urgent trip to the UK in the middle of the week which I need to prepare for. Unfortunately I'll have to manage this as best as I can.

Improvements: Since the weekly mileage next week looks like it's going to be quite low again, I'm going to have to increase the intensity of my training runs this week, and/or run a bit longer on days where I can run. For the tempo run, I'm looking to increase the time spent on running the tempo session. Currently it's at 30 mins, so I'll probably increase it to 40 mins at current pace. For the interval run, I'll be focusing on running longer intervals, i.e. concentrate on running 1000m intervals at 16.0 km/h pace. With time a rare commodity this coming week, I'll probably won't do any easy running.

In terms of total weekly mileage, 37 km is way too low. With the limited amount of time available to me this coming week, I'm going to have to plan it quite well to make sure that I get the very most out of this week's training.

Best,

Aaron

Food And Fuelling

Hi all,

It's no secret - I eat a lot. Ask my mum or my family, friends, acquaintances, house mates, colleagues, even strangers, and they'll attest to the same thing. In the past, I always thought that no matter what I eat and how much I eat, and still not gain weight or get fat as a result, I must be blessed with a very fast metabolism. So I've been happy consuming food at quite scary amounts. And being a runner does contribute to this, considering the high demand for the number of calories.

But it struck me that while I eat a lot of food, a substantial amount of this is bad food that could be avoided. One day I'd have a healthy meal, only to undo the good work by eating fast food the next day. Some rice, vegetables and grilled salmon on one day, then KFC and chips the next. I enjoy eating and splurging out, but as a runner now picking up the effort, I'm now starting to reign in on my eating urges, and looking for new and better things to consume.

Earlier I blogged that in training you should make every mile count. Kate Percy, an author, writer, food enthusiast, and marathon runner that I follow on Twitter, said that you should make every mouthful count, i.e. make sure each mouthful is nutritious. In my own words, a runner's body is like a high performance sports car, which needs high quality fuel constantly. Give it bad quality fuel, and you'd expect the car to perform poorly. I recently bought Kate's book on Amazon, Go Faster Food, to check out the 100+ recipes designed to help endurance, performance and recovery. I also want to start eating a broader range of healthy foods, and also have the experience to cook these meals on my own in my kitchen. Incidentally, Kate is writing a new book, Go Faster Food for Kids, so for all those parents wanting to groom their children into marathon running at a young age, buy Kate's book when it comes out!

So what have I changed with regards to my eating? For a start, I've been cooking all my meals from scratch. It saves money and I know exactly what's in them. This includes lunches and dinners, where I try to prepare lunch the night before and cook dinners in bulk which will last me 2-3 days.

For lunches, instead of eating pasties, curries and burgers like I usually did back in the UK, I've started making my own sandwiches and, if I've got time, Mexican burritos filled with tomato, lettuce, cheese and meat. Gone are the days where I would hop to the nearest outlet and buy whatever looks good in the shop. Occasionally I'd go out for Friday lunches with the colleagues, but as Friday is paella day I know that paella is very nutritious with plenty of fresh seafood, so I always look forward to Friday lunches.

For dinners, I've been cooking larger meals in bulk, which will last me 2-3 days. The leftovers can be easily warmed up for tomorrow's dinner or lunch. Sometimes I'd prepare a huge dish of pasta, or roast a big chicken in the oven. If it's not pasta, then it's going to be served with either rice or potatoes.

I've also started to buy food that I normally don't eat. One such example is couscous, which is just as beneficial as rice, if not more, and adds just a little more variety to my meals. Kate's book has many recipes for meals made with couscous. Another example is tomatoes. I've always had a love-hate relationship with tomatoes for some reason, but now I've made a conscious effort to include tomatoes in most of my meals. Let's see what other kinds of foods I'll discover along the way to include with my meals.

I've recently made a conscious effort to eat fish at least twice a week. The problem with fish is that you can't store it for very long; it must be consumed on the day or the day after it was purchased. So far I'm only buying salmon; by far my favourite fish, but hopefully I'll extend this to shellfish and other types of seafood.

Recently, I've been stocking the cupboard full of different types of pasta. Spaghetti, fusilli, tagliatelle, penne, etc. Aside from cooking spaghetti bolognaise, I enjoy baking pasta in the oven. It's quick, easy to do, wholesome and full of nutritional value. You can basically add what you like, which will make the dish a lot more enjoyable.

Consequently, I have not been to a fast food restaurant since I started training to break three hours. And I've hardly had the need to eat out. Long may this last! In the much publicised boxing match between David Tua and Shane Cameron last October, Tua claimed to have not eaten Burger King for the 8 months he spent training for his fight against Shane Cameron. When he knocked out Cameron in the second round, one of the reporters in the press conference asked Tua what he was going to do next. His response was "I'm going to Burger King!" If Tua could abstain from fast food during his training and win in spectacular fashion, I guess I could do that as well!

I've only scratched the surface of Kate's book, and no doubt there will be many meals for high performance that I'll enjoy cooking and eating. Making meals, instead of buying fast food, convenience food, or takeaways, does take more time out of the day, and it can be hard work. However it's very rewarding to cook your own meals, it's healthy, it saves money in the long run, and you'll never know who might just come around to your place for dinner.

Happy eating,

Aaron

Training Week 6 Recap

Hi guys,

This post is a recap of the training I did for this week. At the end of every week I will try to recap on the training, to show what I've done and what I can improve on for the next week.

By the way, excuse the fact that the title says Week 6. At the end of last year, I did 4 weeks of irregular training before I started this blog, and one week was skipped entirely due to holidays. I don't think I'll record those weeks here. Now that I've more or less settled into my routine, I'll be starting the count at Week 6 if you don't mind.

Tuesday

Type: Intervals.

Time and Distance: 50 mins, 9 km.

Detail: 20 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 4 x 200m at 16.0 km/h pace, followed by 200m at 8.0 pace. 2 x 400m at 16.0 pace, followed by 400m at 8.0 pace. 1 x 800m at 16.0 pace, followed by 800m at 8.0 pace.

Wednesday

Type: Easy with hills.

Time and Distance: 37 mins, 7.4 km.

Detail: First half at 19:20. Second half at 17:40.

Thursday

Type: Tempo.

Time and Distance: 55 mins, 11 km.

Detail: 20 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 20 mins at 13.5 km/h pace. 10 mins at 14.0 km/h pace. 5 mins at 8.5 km/h pace.

Saturday

Type: Easy.

Time and Distance: 90 mins, 16.75 km.

Detail: 20 mins at 10.5 km/h pace. 20 mins at 11.0 km/h pace. 20 mins at 11.5 km/h pace. 20 mins at 12.0 km/h pace. 10 mins at 10.5 km/h pace.

Total Weekly Distance: 44.15 km.

Comments: Pretty happy with the Saturday easy run. I felt that I could have gone faster and/or further. The Thursday tempo run was pretty much what I started on when I trained for Berlin last year, so to get through that session unscathed was quite pleasing, as I've not done any hard running since last September. I'd be keen to increase the effort on that. The Tuesday interval session was probably a little tough to start with. I'll probably keep the effort as it is for now.

Improvements: For the easy run, increase the time spent from 90 mins, and increase the pace a little bit. For the tempo run, increase the pace, but keep the time spent on the tempo portion the same. For the interval run, keep the effort as it is, but if I could I'd try to include an interval of maybe 1000m or more at that pace effort. Finally, increase the weekly distance to around 50 km.

I'm pretty happy with this effort. It's the first week of structured training I've managed to do, as the previous weeks were a little haphazard, with work closing for the year, Christmas and holidays. Now that I've gotten into a groove, I'd be keen to improve on this effort for the next week.

Hope this helps (both you and me),

Aaron

Making Every Mile Count

Hi all,

Since my last post, I've added a countdown timer to this blog showing the number of days left to Berlin 2010. It's a great method to see at-a-glance how many days I have left to the event that I'm targeting for sub 3-hours.

At the time of writing, 259 days does sound like a lot of time. However if you factor in the days for the mandatory taper period, rest days, easy days, missed days of training for whatever reason, and days when you are sick, tired, don't feel like running, or even injured (hopefully not!), then these things can eat a huge chunk of time out of those available 259 days in my training bank.

Hence, each training session should have its purpose, whether it's to build aerobic endurance, increase lactate threshold or develop leg strength and faster stride turnover. When approaching a training session keep in mind two things:

• Keep the purpose of the training session in the forefront of your mind.
• Make every mile count.

A training diary recording the specifics of the session helps a lot! I record things like the type of training, the average pace, the length of time I spent training, distance covered and any other notes related to the training session. The idea is that in a future training session for that type of training, you should be able to move up to another gear, e.g. increase the pace, increase the distance or shorten the recovery.

So when you (and myself as well) are training for a particular goal, for every training session make every mile count. It's the sure-fire way to get closer to your goal.

Best,

Aaron

The Road To Breaking 3 Hours

Hi all,

I haven't really gone into any detail yet about what events I'll do this year in order to break 3 hours. So I'll cut to the chase now and list them out here in this entry.

But firstly, a little background (yeah I can hear the groaning now). One of my other goals for this year, peripheral to running, is to travel more widely around Europe. However, travelling can be disruptive to marathon training, especially if a trip is scheduled during a high-intensity period. It happens, and it's unavoidable. Just this week, my company planned a belated Christmas party weekend in Granada, Spain, on the 15th January. So I guess I'll be taking my running gear over with me. From a training perspective, these things have to be managed as best they can.

After some convincing I believe that to get the best of both worlds, why not run a marathon in a city that you want to travel to? So at the end of 2009, I got a year calendar and plotted all the marathon events for 2010. Most of the marathons are clumped in the March-May months and the September-November months, with a small handful of events in summer and winter. Lots of big marathons tended to be on the same day! But in the end, I picked five events, which I've called my final five. They are:

• Rotterdam: 11th April
• Copenhagen: 23rd May
• Helsinki: 14th August
• Berlin: 26th September
• Athens: 31st October

As indicated in bold, Berlin is the event that I am targeting to break 3 hours. You may be wondering whether Athens would be a better choice to target a sub 3-hour marathon as it's the last race in my calendar. Having only run Berlin before and it's reputation as the fastest course in the world, I'd be more comfortable with choosing Berlin. The course profile for Athens indicates some big hills. If I don't break 3 hours in Berlin, at least there's Athens as a backup, but I'm hoping it won't come to that.

The other 4 marathons are going to be for fun/training purposes. I chose Rotterdam as it's one of the top 10 marathons in the world according to Runners World Magazine. I've always wanted to visit Finland and Denmark. And now I have a chance to travel around these Scandinavian countries and run a marathon in each. Finally I chose Greece as it's the home of the marathon. Athens 2010 will mark 2500 years since the Greek hero Pheidippides ran from the Battle of Marathon to Athens to announce the Greeks' victory over the Persians. So far I've registered for all marathons except Helsinki and Athens. I'm a bit concerned about Athens though; I am absolutely certain that this round-number anniversary will lead to a rush of registration entries, and a quick cut-off date.

To be at their very best, elite marathoners limit themselves to only 1-2 races a year. For the last two years Haile Gebrselassie has concentrated on Dubai and Berlin, and he'll make another world record attempt at Berlin this year. With 5 races on my plate, I'll only peak for Berlin, whilst using the other 4 events for fun/training/an excuse to visit a city. Instead of saying I travelled around Athens, I could say that I ran the Athens Marathon and travelled around Athens. Of course I could just travel to Athens without needing to run the marathon, and that's fine. There will be cities that I would like to visit without needing to run a marathon in that city.

By running a marathon and treating it as a training run, I think the benefits are several. You do the most important run in your marathon training - the long slow run. And 42 km is more than enough mileage required for a typical long slow run. You also get to run around a new city and take in the sights. And you can soak up the marathon experience in a foreign country. I think doing a long run in a marathon setting in another country is more preferable to doing long runs on your own in training in our own neighbourhood. But you might have a different opinion on what makes a long run enjoyable.

But surely, you could still travel and do a couple of shorter, faster runs during your holiday. Yes, that's true. However, which would you rather do? A marathon event with thousands of other runners and screaming crowds, or just a couple of shorter faster runs by yourself. Marathon legend, Emil Zatopek, said it best: "If you want to win something, run the 100 metres. If you want to experience something, run the marathon."

One thing I'm concerned about is that by singling out Berlin as the race to break 3 hours, I only have one shot to do this. I guess the one shot approach is what makes it more exciting - the thrill of success on the first go, or the sudden crash of failure at having missed out. There is always next year though. But I hope it doesn't happen, after all I have under 9 months to plan and get ready for Berlin.

I'm quite excited about how my running in 2010 will pan out. I've never taken on anything like this before when it comes to running multiple marathons. But I guess if I put my mind to it, and keep my eyes on the original goal of breaking 3 hours, and believe, then who knows what I can achieve.

Wish me luck,

Aaron

P.S. You can follow me on Twitter, where I'll report on my training as well as the more mundane things in my life. I will include the #breaking3hours hashtag to any tweets related to my goal.

Introductions

I've been running since 2005. I have to credit my company, Orion Health, for getting me running in the first place. My company has a lot of enthusiastic sports people of varying abilities, including a world class adventure racer, an ironman, runners, cyclists, triathletes and participants from other codes, so it was no surprise that this sporting culture rubbed off on me.

I've always liked participating in sports, and considered myself to be reasonably active, but never really had any constant outlet to put my focus on. So I basically sailed through high school and my early twenties not really committing myself to any sport.

It was only when I started with Orion Health that I did my first running event, the annual Round the Bays event in Auckland. Not knowing a thing about running, I laced up a pair of walking shoes(!) and started training for it. At the end of it all I managed to finish in a reasonable time.

In 2006, I decided to run the Auckland Marathon. From running 8.4 km in the Round the Bays to attempting 42.195 km, I didn't really know what I was getting myself into; I just knew it would involve some pretty long runs in training. With a new pair of running shoes, I managed to survive the training and managed to finish my first marathon. It was a lot tougher than I expected, but I finished with a time of 4:17:04. Finishing a marathon for the first time is something I cannot describe in words.

I finally caught the marathon bug and in 2007 I managed to do two marathons. I'm not sure about you but there's always something about the second time not being as good as the first. My second marathon, Rotorua, was a lot tougher and I managed to get home in 5:00:20. In my third marathon, the Auckland Marathon, I resolved to break the 4-hour mark. With 12 weeks of training and armed with a little more experience, I managed to finish in 3:51:29.

2008 was a very quiet year in terms of running as I tried to organise my O.E. (overseas experience - the kiwi term to go abroad, work in a different environment and see more of the world). Organising my O.E. was like preparing for a marathon, only not as fun ;-)

Having made it to the UK in late 2008, I wanted to get back into my running. Being in Europe, I was lucky to have some of the big marathons of the world at my doorstep, e.g. London, Paris, Berlin. In 2009, I chose Berlin as it's the fastest course in the world, and world record holder, Haile Gebrselassie, was going to make another world record attempt. I also had a goal to run sub 3:30:00, but as my training progressed I had harboured dreams to qualify for Boston 2010.

Berlin was such a great marathon event, with an elite field, a great atmosphere, and a fast flat course. Running through the Brandenburg Gate, 400 metres from the finish, was such a thrill, probably even bigger than finishing the marathon itself. The hard work I put in in 2009 paid off greatly, and I finished in 3:22:45.

Now it's a new year, a new decade, with new dreams and goals. A new year is simply a demarcation on the calendar, but I have always found it a good time to assess and reflect upon my own goals. My motivation level may not make it all the way through the year, but I know this is the time I have set to commence achieving specific goals.

So my marathon goal for 2010 is to break 3 hours. 3 hours is like the Holy Grail for amateur runners, and a qualification time for prestigious events like Boston. Having reviewed my past training programmes, and my performances in previous marathons I admit that it is a significant and ambitious undertaking to cut 22 minutes and 45 seconds off my personal best. But you never really know unless you try.

I just read a tweet by Josh Cox, an elite marathon runner. The first step is the best step, it’s where intent meets action. Don't talk about it, be about it. I've just talked about it in my introductions. From now on I'll be blogging about my training and progress. I'm very excited to blog about any developments that will come along as I progress in my journey.

Best,

Aaron

Prologue

Hi,

Let me start off by saying how excited I am to start this blog. This blog will document my journey to break the 3-hour barrier in the marathon. It's a goal I have set for myself in 2010, and I have targeted a specific marathon this year which I hope to run 3 hours in. The 3-hour barrier is the ultimate aim for most marathoners, the holy grail for amateur marathon runners like myself, and a qualification time for the most prestigious marathons in the world.

Aside from recording my journey, I'm starting this blog to put myself out there, to make my intentions known, to make myself accountable and to keep myself motivated throughout the year. A year is a very very long time for a runner so it's important that I don't lose momentum, peak at the wrong time, or burn myself out before the big event.

I'm usually quite good on the goal setting, however this time-based goal is a step above the rest. Having not come close to this time before, it's a grand challenge with huge potential for catastrophe. Whether it's a great success or a big failure it will be a learning process and a voyage of self-discovery. The most important thing is that I'm going to try.

However, I will need help along the way. It's a big challenge and it would be more difficult if I had to do everything on my own. As well as trying to achieve my sporting dreams, I also need to earn a living and try to fit in time for other interests and necessities. Sometimes reality often unfolds quite differently from our clean efficient plans. When planning for a marathon, we can't forsee days when we are sick, tired or even injured. Life intervenes in other ways too, such as work pressures, family and friends.

You may be asking, "how can I help if you are the one doing the actual training and the running?" Well, a little bit goes a long way. Whether you have a great idea for training, offering to accompany me on my long runs, suggesting a great food recipe, or even imparting some words of wisdom or encouragement, or something else... no matter how big or small, it will only help to make the journey smoother. And it will be much appreciated.

It's not going to be easy, but with your help it will be easier.

To close, I'm excited about this challenge for 2010. Incidentally, 2010 in the Chinese horoscope is the year of the Tiger. I'm not a follower of horoscopes, but I think that the challenge that I've set for myself will require me to adopt the spirit and the characteristics of the Tiger - to be courageous, bold and self-assured in whatever I embark on and encounter along the way.

The challenge starts now, and I am looking forward to it. If you like to see how things unfold over time, feel free to follow or subscribe to the blog feed. And if you'd like to help out in some way, it would be greatly appreciated. As always I appreciate you reading these entries and the comments that you may offer.

Yours in running,

Aaron