How to squeak it in a marathon

Most people are know are hard into about their 4th week. Me, I'm chilling. I'm laid back. In 2010 I had a bad time following a plan I got from a famous maker of shoes (rhymes with greysicks) - by week 10 I was losing the will, and injured to boot. So second time round I thought, I'll squeak it, I'll be a jammy little cow, and I'll do it in ten weeks. This of course leaves no time to be ill, no time to get injured... but the very fact the plan was shorter made me confident that injury was less likely.

So, out came my 2010 calendar. In October 2010 I ran a 3.48 marathon. I'd like to do that in April 2012, so I've basically copied my plan from back then. Someone suggested I share it. It's not in Excel or anything advanced as that. It's on a Chris Packham Photography 2012 calendar if you must know. In biro.

The key bits of it are...

• It's ten weeks long
• For the month leading up to it I have been laying down my base. Three or four sessions a week, plenty of core and stability exercises (thanks for the advice Clive Riley physio), get my head and body into the right place. About 20 miles a week max.
• Long runs start at 8 miles and go up in 2-mile increments (roughly) and I do them mostly on Saturdays, sometimes Sundays.
  
• Alternately 'hard' weeks and 'soft' weeks - only 3 runs in a 'soft' week but 'soft' always augmented by a 30-minute swim. 4 in a 'hard' week.
  
• Peaking at 18 miles 15 days before race day.
• Club sessions once a week to kick me up the arse speed-wise

Anyone reading this who's not a runner, sorry if this is boring/making your eyes pop. It's what we do, runners, we obsess. That's how we achieve what we do, whether it be the Race for Life or the biggest marathon in the world.

And oh, don't even mention Easter weekend to me. Shudder..

A short walk to the beach

Gran Canaria. Christmas time. Outdoor types trying to just chill out and prepare for hard training to come. It was never going to work.

Puerto Mogan - the nicest, most middle-class resort on the island. We tried a day on the loungers but the next day dawned cloudy. I'd read about Playa Venegueras on a blog somewhere, so our hardly-used Kompass map came out. hmmm..about 5k each way. Fine.

The path's a road winding in hairpin turns up the valley side. They have lots of roads like that in GC, but this one has no traffic. Blocked off at either end, as denoted by little red dumb-bell shapes on our map.

You see a fair few folk walking and running up the first stretch from the main road. There's a viewpoint on the clifftop from where you can spy the pretty harbour and yachts, and also the nasty shopping centre development and failed would-be nasty developments further inland. A nice walk of a morning. Carry on though, and it started to feel rather 28 Days Later.

A well-enough maintained road with scenic aspects. No cars, no houses. What got me the most was the ornamental trees and blooming shrubs which had been planted at regular 10-metre intervals, making it a pretty winding avenue through the scrubland and gorges. The trees even have their own irrigation system. We passed a couple of failed fincas, just their foundations and some hosepipe remaining. Surely these trees weren't just here for the walkers and cyclists, who numbered maybe 15 at most.

But who am I to complain? Easy route-finding, shady spots to stop (and pee behind), wildlife flitting and scuttling here and there. After a while we realised that it was probably more than 5k to the beach. It took us a while due to bird and lizard-spotting stops. Just as we started to give up all hope of seeing the beach, we made a winding downhill down a ravine-side, with spectacular mountain views on the horizon...and spied the beach. Mucky brown, rocks, a bombed-out looking building. Buh.

My hopes of an enterprising local selling ice-cold refrescos dashed, we headed along the drainage canal to the beach, via almost a wrong turn into someone's tumbledown garden.

It looked better close up. A calm bay with black sparkling volcanic sand, pebbles, and a rocky cove to shelter in. The wind had got up, and to our minds it was too cold for swimming, so we sat down and ate our picnic then went exploring the rocks, also black, ages-cool lava flowing into the sea.

On the way back we had fun looking at the songbirds and the best funny sign we've seen for ages..