March Update: Goal one, done

A quarter of the year is now gone - and we're on track for it to be a good one.

Training

Until this last week, Training Peaks is a sea of green.

I opened the month with a down mileage week to recover my weeks a bit from February, and then had three monster weeks, including two 100+ km weeks (for the first time since 2020). With the biggest volumes since 2020, and consistently putting up faster times in training on the track, it's no joke to suggest that I'm in the best running shape of my life as we hit April.

A little stomach ailment accidentally turned the last week of March into a down week. With a smaller April training volume in store (holiday!), we're probably maintaining rather than building from here to May's Hackney Half.

Key numbers:

  • 35 km - my longest run of the month, and the longest run since the New York Marathon
  • 107 km - my biggest week of the month. I last ran 100 km in a week in October 2020
  • 2:43 - my fastest ever 800m in training

Racing

Even more exciting than the training in March was the Sri Chinmoy Mad March 10k.

As a reminder, my goal this year is to set new Personal Bests for the 5k, 10k, Half, and Full Marathon. Of these, the 10k is the hardest: relatively speaking, it's the fastest of the four, and I set it in 2020 when I was in the best (running) shape of my life. The marathons and half marathons I'd been scheduled to run in 2020 were all cancelled, so I never raced any other distance at that level of fitness.

Back in January, I opened the year with a 10k, and barely broke 40 minutes - a good 1:20 slower than my PB of 38:38. Less than two months later, I was curious as to how my fitness had improved.

I knew it was better, but surely it couldn't be 1:21 better.

That said, when I reached the mid-point of the race, the clock read 19:20 - on track for being only four minutes slower. And I hadn't started at the front, so I was effectively running at my PB.

Sure enough, I crossed the finish line in 38:32 - taking six seconds off my old personal best, and ticking off the first of four items on this year's list of goals.

I'm also left with a whole lot of confidence: this was the hard one. My 5k and half marathon bests are sure to be beaten, as I know I've got the fitness to beat them on any given day. The only real question is the marathon: given the prep and recovery time involved, there's only one in the calendar; completing this year's goals will almost certainly depend on me showing up to the start line healthy, with decent weather, on one specific day in October.

But that will be a story for another time. For now, we enjoy a wonderfully fit spring.

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