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Hi & Welcome to my blog

After many years training and racing the short distance of just 800m, I am now targeting my first Marathon (only 52 times my normal distance!). I was reasonably competitive over 800m in the past having ran 1-47 whilst at university in Loughborough. Now, 7 years on, I find myself with much less time to train with a full time job, not to mention organising many RunThrough events during the year in the South London area, which can be very stressful. After seeing both my Dad and my Uncle run the London marathon this year, I decided that this would become my new target. First of all, however, I need the qualifying time…. not an easy feat. To qualify for London, I need to run under 75 minutes for the half marathon, which I will target at Gosport on 17th November. This will be phase 1!

Ben's Blog - The quest to London - October RunThrough Running Club London

After a few holidays this summer, training started at the start of September and I have been delighted with my progress so far. Starting out for the first 2/3 weeks running 30/40 miles per week, I quickly upped this to 50 and then 60 miles by October before introducing track interval sessions to my routine.  I haven’t rushed back into racing and I think that the Gosport Half Marathon will be my first race back, so I’m looking forward to seeing how the training has paid off. Running this kind of mileage with a demanding job can sometimes be tough, but with a bit of discipline, a bit of structure and the motivation of not letting my Dad beat me at London, I’m coping well. The real challenge will come when the nights get dark and cold and I need to end my day with a tough 12 miler!

So… after 10 weeks of running successive 60 mile (or very close to) weeks, I’m looking forward to the challenge of achieving that qualifying standard for London and entering phase 2 of training. Join me & my blogs over the coming months to see how I get on and see how I prepare for my first marathon having previously only ever having raced one 10k 8 years ago! I will go into specific details on my training sessions and how I will ensure that my long term plan and 3 phase programme leads to everything falling into place for the big day in April 2014. Wish me luck!

Ben