Day 50 Update

When I started the 100 day challenge I really only had one focus and that was to improve my marathon time down to something that I am proud of and that I put together a race that I feel I have gotten the best out of myself. Getting to halfway has been an interesting milestone because on the one hand it’s like a reset with a mini sprint of 50 days to the finish but its also been good to reflect back on the past 50 days to see what progress I have made and look at what I could do differently.

Setting a new PB at Parkrun

One of the things I have learnt is the importance of having a timeframe or a deadline because it immediately forces all of your action into a finite period of time, for me that meant that I had to put all of the training somewhere into that period which on the surface seems pretty easy. In reality I wish that I had broken it down into shorter chunks and then set key activities or sessions within those, for example I would have liked my long run to have been more than 30km in the first 50 days.

Similarly to breaking it down into sections I've found that it's really important to plan your week and by that I don't mean your sessions but everything around that. For example I can't do a track session on a day when I catch the train to the office because I will run out of time, and I can’t do post work training on a Wednesday when the kids have sport. Then there are things like doing a late shift for work meaning a late wake up the next day (missed morning session). Something I have started to do better to counter this has been meal prep, which sounds simple enough but it means that I have packaged food ready to go and also it’s generally healthier than something that’s prepared last minute, I’ve also done this with kids school lunches.

Mixing it up on easy days

One of the things that has gone well has been specificity in my sessions. I’ve never really done structured run training but focussing sessions on speed vs endurance vs tempo has meant that I’ve gotten stronger and faster and that has translated into being able to run for longer. This was supported with my 5km parkrun time that I did to celebrate my 50 days where I dropped down to bang on 19 minutes which was about 50 seconds faster than previously and probably a credit to the intensity runs I have been doing.

The last thing that has been good over the first 60 days has been sharing it with other people. Quite a few people in my inner circle are in tune with my marathon goal and journey and so they frequently ask me how it’s going. What this has also highlighted to me is to have positive people around you that support you and your goals, some days you need a lift and it’s good to have those people on board.

So that’s the first 50 days, things are looking good so far to improve on what I’ve previously achieved and I feel like I’ve grown as a person along the way.

Michael