Call that a training plan?

"Err... call that a walk?!"

Email in from Brighton Half Marathon this morning letting us know that it's four months to go and the official count down has begun - some of us have been counting down for months!  Included with this was a sixteen week training schedule to see us reach our goal on the 22 February next year... a quick glance at it before I went out with the dogs this afternoon and I am less than impressed! According to it, week one comprises of two fifteen minute runs and a long slow run of two miles or thirty minutes... this is not what I call a training plan.

Walking round the fields with the dogs this afternoon, our route altered by the appearance of a group of horses that like to chase Sid, I was about to set off round a field again when I took one look at Sid dragging himself along and decided to call it a day and go home. When we got to the last stile however Dougal clearly had different ideas and point blankly refused to come, his walk clearly not over for the day! In the end I had to strike a happy medium and go round a small field to appease Dougal and not exhaust Sid, but my mind started to wonder to an analogy between the dogs and the training plans, one is clearly slower paced than the other! There is also the fact that ours is over twelve weeks and their's sixteen so really I ought to look at the equivalent of where we are at the end of week four with the end of week eight if I want to compare the two. Even doing this it still makes the tortoise plan look like hard core!

I started to think that perhaps I've been over billing the achievement in running a half marathon. Clearly if in week one all you have to be able to do is run for fifteen minutes we'll be laughing! We're way ahead of that! Slowly however the realisation began to dawn on me, that there is every possibility that this particular training schedule has been sent to me specifically based on my estimated finish time. I have no idea what I wrote, but clearly I didn't set my sights particularly high! I can picture it now, lining up in my muster station with - or heaven forbid behind - all the fancy dress runners, feeling out of place because I'm the one not dressed up - perhaps I should contact WaterAid and request one of their tap or comedy toilet costumes after all! HMG and sisterofMG750 you better both have the same colour bibs as me this time!

What the email didn't say, and perhaps it should was "Well Done for signing up, here is your training plan, and PS you do realise you'll be quicker walking!"

M - 564
Brighton Half - 122
Glasgow Half - 346
Distance covered                 3.3 miles (nice to have your company again Mr L, been too long!)
Total Distance covered      303.5 miles