13mph

I’ve now spent two days away from the gym due to seeing the doctor and going to choose a photo album, and it already feels like I have let this whole thing slip a little bit. So tonight I am going to work quite hard to make amends.

As I can’t work this dodgy shoulder for a couple of months, I will blitz the other machines. My back, core muscles and legs won’t know what hit them. After working my way around the gym I am planning on ending up at the treadmill.

I now have a man in Oz (G’day btw) who has been pointed in the direction of this blog. He made a comment about the secret to marathons is to just put in the km’s.

Well this got me thinking about what I would need to achieve on the treadmill to be in with a chance with the Great North. I can sustain 6.4 mph for 20 minutes with ease. 6.4mph just breaks my gait and 20 minutes is just enough to break a sweat. Well if I was to complete a half marathon I would need to keep that pace up for a little over two hours… That’s doable. Maybe not as of today but a couple of months of progress at this rate (injury in all) and I think I could manage that.

But then I got wondering what it would take to come in with a race winning time. Tsegay Kebede seems to be the man who won the 2008 race managed a time a few seconds longer than 59 minutes. The course is 13.1miles. He sustained a pace of 13mph for an hour!

When I got up to 13mph on the treadmill, I nearly flew off the back because my legs where whirling around faster than I could keep up.

I’ll save the maths for the DW race for another quiet blog day but quickly working them out in my head, the speeds we would need to sustain seem a little more palatable.