So, the Run Melbourne countdown is on, at the time of writing this there is a little over 8 weeks to go. For dramatic effect, I will place this big clock countdown timer here and you can watch it tick away:
So, how is it going? Well at this point of the game I should be in the full swing of training, things are going ok, on the positive side there are no signs of injury and my body is holding up quite well, but on the downside I don’t think I am hitting the volume I would ideally like to be at with only 8 weeks to go. Its funny, as a runner you seem to go through cycles of fitness. If you have a good training block and enter an event you build up and get to a point where the 21.1k is manageable, but that only lasts as long as you are training for that distance. When you drop back to 5k runs your body adapts back to that distance and 21.1k seems like such long way again.
So, as you may or may not know, running is as much a mental game as it is a fitness game, don’t get me wrong, you need to be fit to run a decent time at 21.1k (especially at my age) but you have to be more mentally tough to get through it, that’s why I like that this year I am doing it for beyondblue, and while I have good mental health (well I think I do, others may disagree) I feel there is a different level of mental challenge to get this type of run done. There are demons involved, every step you take you are waiting for that old calf tightness to come back, or that hamstring to feel sore, or that knee pain to start again, and worse still, if you feel a little something in any of the old injury sites, you instantly get nervous and think its back… The mental game is as much if not more than that of the fitness game. But as I run, I think about all the people beyondblue are helping and what great work they do in the community, this helps me push through on a bad training day.
So where to next, with 8 weeks to go, I need to get my act together, I need to be getting up to 16k long runs in the next few weeks, I need to be getting my monthly volume up toward the 200k per month, but most importantly I need to do this without getting injured. A lot of this comes down to time, you need time to run, cross-train in the gym, recover with foam rolling, take time for good nutrition and most importantly sleep. People cant believe it when I say I sleep between 8 and 10 hours per night, my 7-day average right now is 8 hours and 54 minutes, so its true :). All of this and then you have to also commit time to the fundraising, which is the most important part of all of this, my fundraising page can be found here https://runmelbourne2018.everydayhero.com/au/ebs so please feel free to hop on over and make a donation, your support will be very much appreciated.
Really, at the end of the day, the most important part of Run Melbourne isn’t getting the fastest time, the most important part is twofold; doing a good job by raising funds for my charity, and making it across the finish line. It’s important to respect all the wonderful people who have supported me by making a donation, it’s ultimately about sticking to your commitments and respecting everyone involved.
You too can be involved and share my journey, I’m not asking you to throw on your running shoes and do the 21.1k with me, but a small donation would make you a part of this journey and involvement is all the matters. So get on board and enjoy the ride.
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This post was written by Jonathan Martin, COO at Evolution Business Systems.
His expertise extends to software development, support, implementations and project management, he can envisage potential problems and identify them to improve the client experience and outcomes, like a mad scientist, behaviour, statistics and data are where he gets his insights from and lives by a golden rule to always start at the beginning as there are no shortcuts. Jonathan’s passion is to make a difference by assisting clients with their business problems.