My Forum

Brown eyed handsome man

It's Royal Mail's fault.  They charge extra for free stuff now, so most magazines have stopped including them for subscribers.  My wife used to get loads of Women's mags- which I'm told have loads of freebies.  She stopped all of her subscriptions when she found out.

 I hate Royal Mail.  I work for them.  Every several weeks they change something else which makes it worse for the customers and us employees.  Within 5 years, customers will only get mail 2 times a week, it will cost loads more and you'll have to collect packets from the sorting office.

And there is no Father Christmas or Easter Bunny.

Sorry.  Got carried away there

I'm sure this is a statement of the bleedin' obvious, but, they're not your friends if they would grass you so readily.  Perhaps it would be a good idea to use your new year's resolution to find a better environment to work. 

Do you hang out with these people outside of work?  That would be terrible for you as a person.  Don't do this to yourself.  Life is too short.

I wonder if you're going very fast on these runs?  Something tells me that you probably are.  If so, slowing down a bit would make going longer seem less daunting and more 'doable'.  As a guide, you would want to be going slow enough on your longer runs, that you could still talk- at least a sentence at a time.

I would advise changing your routes, etc, as much as possible.  Where I live, there is little variety of running routes (London, near Heathrow), but I mix it up as much as possible.  If you could take in a bit of off road- that would be great.  Run one night a week with a club, or with a friend/ partner.  Maybe just run 3 times a week, doing a different sport instead of the 4th run.  Whatever you do, mix it up.  Otherwise you will eventually run out of enthusiasm for running.

I don't think it's enough to be honest.  2 runs is a minimum, but 3 is considerably better.  It's the mileage that's the problem.  I'm doing London (Yay) too and am up to 12 miles on my long run.  I certainly wouldn't want to be on much less by now.  You do need at least one long run around the 20 mile mark, a few weeks before race day and the problem there is building distance up in time.  Whilst I tend to increase quickly, common wisdom says to up your distance by no more than 10% per week.  At the moment, that's only 1/2 a mile a week increase for you.

I think Johnny C may be onto something with a run/ walk strategy.  It might be a way of building up your long run quicker, but obviously such a strategy comes with an increased risk of injury.

Whatever you decide, good luck mate.