According to the plan, you shouldn’t run two days in a row. That makes sense. What I’m a little bit unsure about is whether I should do some other form of exercise on the days I’m not running, like cycling or cross training or swimming, or perhaps weights? Thoughts or suggestions welcome?

Anyway, today was a real test, because I had to do a 4 mile run, and because of the snow and ice and what not, I decided to do it on the threadmill (which I’m trying to avoid because it’s not good for my knees and ankles). I was a bit worried, because I’ve skipped the first two training programmes on the website (total beginner and 5km run) and I dont want to start off too hard and injure myself. Also, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I’d last 4 miles. Thankfully I did, relatively easily, but running off what I would like to be my marathon pace. I’m aiming for a pace of 12km/ph (the threadmills are in kilometers in the gym) which would mean a time of 3.5 hours. I ran the 4 miles today at 10 km/ph (a marathon time of 4 hours 12 mins if run consistently).

So I need to pick the pace up a good bit, but I was still happy to have at least gotten the ball rolling and be back in the gym and back on some sort of a proper schedule. Unfortunately, I could feel my left ankle complaining a little bit having gotten off the threadmill. That’s disappointing having gone to the effort and expense of specifically buying proper training shoes to try and prevent injury. Still, I was on a threadmill instead of grass where I’m supposed to be, and I probably have started training a bit harder than I’m supposed to.

All in all, I did about 1/6th of a marathon in not appalling pace, and there’s 286 days left to train, so I’m actually reasonably happy!