The Countdown Is Here

There’s not long until the Virgin London Marathon now. Here on the blog I’ve decided to do a daily countdown to one of the most important days of my life.

Marathon training started a very long time ago. Last year in fact! Yep, way back in December, just after Christmas it all started. My training schedule said “cross training” I only had two options of cross training which was either swimming or cycling. I chose swimming. Training helped me combine my two loves for one common goal, which is nice.

Before we go any further I should probably mention that me at the age of 21, decided to go for the ‘intermediate, level 2’ training plan. It’s the ‘2’ that’s interesting there for me. I don’t know if it was a confidence thing or madness but I looked at this plan and said, “yeah, I can do that”. It has me running five times a week and cross training once a week with a nice Friday off to do nothing but sit down. When I made the choice to follow this particular plan I wasn’t quite prepared for what it would do to my body or my social life but I quickly learned. The plan waits for no-one. Just like race day.

Back to Christmas…It was feckin cold. I didn’t want to cycle through that and I didn’t want to drive to swimming! I can’t give up at what literally was the first hurdle though, could I? Nope. I couldn’t. My mum has an elliptical trainer in her house so I got the training in there and still enjoyed some late Christmas festivities, maybe this training stuff might not be so bad?

I dunno. It was a mixed back of feelings at this point in time. I knew that marathon training would change my body so I wanted to take some pictures as reference of how far I’ve came when training is over (which is Saturday Night!). I’m glad to report btw that there’s much improvement!!

Training was coming thick and fast. January saw me log the most miles I’ve ran in a month. Ever. Seeing that on the screen was a bit of a shock. Look. I’m Nathaniel Cole. I swim, I run and I just get on with things for the most part. I take things as they come to me and I tried my best to get on with things but when you see that you’ve ran more than you’ve ever run before (and haven’t died) it’s a pretty special thing. I did that. Me! The human body is a remarkable work of art and it adapts to the demands you put on it quickly so running 5 times a week eventually didn’t hurt so much.

There were a lot of cold runs in January, but we got through it! More up tomorrow, we’re just getting started, don’t worry.

04/16/12