It has been, I’m sad to say, a fortnight-and-a-half of
unbridled debauchery.
The demon on my left shoulder has been telling me that I
deserve it, after a good race.
The demon isn’t entirely wrong, I suppose. That’s why the
cherub on my right shoulder has been watching silently, with an amused,
tolerant air, as I have tumbled into hedonistic hell...
Mighty rivers of alcoholic beverages have been consumed.
Things have been eaten by the bushel... fried, oily things...smooth, buttery
things, and, so help me God, sweet, syrupy, sugary things. Naps have been taken
instead of trips to the gym. Runs have been cut short, slowed down... even cancelled,
guiltlessly, in the name of recovery and reward.
The weather here in the mountains makes it easy, when you’re
snugly ensconced next to a blazing heater, in a warm, soft quilt while the snow
floats down outside...
This is a slippery slope.
It’s tempting to start down it, and so easy to just keep
going. And there comes a point on this slope when you’re so far down, you just
don’t want to climb back up.
What I need, to arrest my descent, is a race.
My three-year quest to catch up with Ms Nell McAndrew in a
marathon is, in my mind, less of a target
right now, and more of a guiding principle. I think I will find it easier,
psychologically speaking, to return to a regular running routine if I have
something impending.
However, I don’t want to amp up my training volume just yet.
You see, I have been retro/introspecting. I clearly made a boo-boo in the last
training cycle, and as a result nearly burned out a month before my marathon.
It all worked out, sure, but I would be remiss to not learn from it.
What was the boo-boo? An inadequate base for heavy mileage.
To avoid that, I want to take a whole year to build back up to regular 80-90 kilometer
weeks...very, very slowly...before I
get into a 12/14-week training program for Boston 2017 and try to break the 3-hour
mark there.
That’s pretty far in the future, of course, so what can I do
with low mileages right now?
Obviously, a shorter race.
Luckily, there’s one on 15th May. The TCS 10k in Bengaluru. It’s a good event, I’ve heard. AIMS ratified and everything. The
weather, though warm on the whole, is okay-ish in the morning.
And it’ll give me a chance to take a first stab at Nell’s
10k time.
I’ve only ever raced the 10k distance twice before, and my
best 10k time of 39:14 is part of a half-marathon. I need to slash 2 minutes
and 18 seconds off that time to get to her 36:54. The pace needed is about 3:41
per kilometer (that is scary!)
On the face of it, hey, I just ran more than 25 minutes off my previous best marathon
time, so 2 minutes off a 10k should be cake, right?
Wrong. The 10k is a different animal.
The shorter the race, the more the importance of speed
vis-à-vis endurance. I’ve just spent a good six months with speed as a lower
priority while I built up endurance. Now, the shoe needs to be on the
badly-mixed-metaphorical tables which are turned on the other foot... (Let's just pretend I never tried to be funny here, okay?)
I know I’ll have to fight like hell for every second I want
to cut.
Le internets seems to be chock-full of 10k training plans. 8
weeks seems to be the norm, so I need to start on one by mid-March.
That gives me a little more than a month to back my wretched
butt up the slippery slope that I’m on. Enough is enough. I will lace up and go run... today!
...ah, screw it. I’ll start on Monday...
