I'm back

I'm back again, writing posts on a blog that nobody reads.  What on earth do I think I'm doing?

I've just signed up for the Oslo Marathon on 16th September.  I'll no doubt be doing some geekiness between now and then, and I may as well put it here.

For background the only other marathon I've done was in 2013 and it was the most painful experience of my life.  I ran it in spring, rather than autumn, so a lot of my training was on a treadmill.  I lost 4 weeks of training to pneumonia, only recovering 8 weeks before the race.  And I finished with 4:18, which was 18 minutes slower than the time I wanted.

Current status
I've been using the treadmill a fair bit since October.  I've run 450km since then, about 400km of which was on the treadmill.  At the start I was doing sessions of 4km in 30 minutes, and I've built up the pace to 5.3km in 30 minutes.  I've kept the sessions short - anything more than about 30 minutes on the treadmill is too mind-numbing.

My outside runs have been longer, usually 9.5km (my usual route round Semsvann).

My most recent outdoor run was today: a gentle 10.8km in 1:01:31.  My fitness measure was 12.4.  It had a few hills, which didn't bother me too much - that was a surprise, since I've not been using any incline on the treadmill at all.

In October I weighed 81kg, I'm now down to about 73kg.

Oslo marathon
16th September - 27 weeks away.

42.2km (of course) with 300m of total climbing.  2 laps of a course.  There's only one proper climb at 15/36km.  I'm sure I'll enjoy that one the second time around!

My prep is going to focus almost entirely on putting kilometres in my legs:

• Build my weekly distance up from 25km to 50km.
• Build my long run distance up from 10km to 30km.
• Mostly gentle running and the occasional short session at marathon pace.

Something like this: http://www.halhigdon.com/training/51138/Marathon-Novice-2-Training-Program but I'll focus on the spirit of it rather than obsessing over details.

I'm probably running too fast at the moment, increasing distance and maintaining speed risks injury.

The less fat I have to drag around the course the better, so I'm going to try and keep up the weight loss.  Using the BMI scale my healthy range is 58-79kg.  I'd be delighted to be 65kg on race day, but I haven't been that skinny since I was 17, so that's probably unrealistic.

Milestones

I'm running Sentrumsløpet on 29th April. I'd like to do that in under 50 minutes.  I was hoping to hit 70kg for race day, but I'll probably end up slightly heavier than that.

I'll do a little bit of speedwork to prepare for Sentrumsløpet, but try to avoid injuring myself.  After Sentrumsløpet I'll slow down my training runs and concentrate on building distance.

I'm away from home for 3 weeks late-June / early-July, mostly on holiday.  I'll take the running gear!  Total distance will decline for that period, so I'll focus on trying to maintain fitness.  I then have 2 months at home to focus on the marathon, and that's when all the really serious 30km runs will happen.