Health / Sport
Running man instalment one
With 270 days to go before the first ever Bristol-Bath Marathon, Mike White dusts off his daps and faces down the foxes of Easton
A kebab-chewing fox fixes me with an insouciant stare before slinking off into the shadows. It’s 6.30am. Still definitely dark. My wife, son and cat are all still adrift in their separate beds.
But not me. Today is Day One. The start of a structured regime of five-days-a-week training, following a downloaded fitness plan that promises to prepare my chicken legs for the first ever Bristol+Bath Marathon in October.
Confession: I’m not a total jog novice; I’ve done a few half marathons before. But the proper-job 26.2miler follows basically the same route as the Bristol Half, then, just when in previous years I’d have been tumbling gratefully over the finish line, continues inexorably all the way to Bath.
is needed now More than ever
Ulp.
But that’s 269 days away. Today’s plan says all I have to do is ‘Easy Run, 30-minutes’. So I’m up before the dawn, wriggling into undignified gimpwear and pounding off up the Bristol-Bath railway path towards Fishponds, dodging dog eggs and demonic cyclists who hurtle towards me like flying lighthouses.
I’ve got an app on my phone called Endomondo (‘Free Your Endorphins!’) which charts and quantifies my exertions. 15 minutes from home, I turn tail and puff back again. Endomondo glows a pallid pride onto my sweaty face. Apparently I just covered 4.14miles in 32 minutes, and burned off 484 calories. Which I immediately replace in the form of beans on toast, stretching half-heartedly while I wait for the toaster to pop.
So. Day 1, done. It wasn’t so bad. But by week 10 I’m supposed to be running 18 miles. A month after that, 22 miles. My knees are going to hate me forever.
Is there time to get back in bed before work? No, there isn’t.
The first Bristol+Bath Marathon is on Sunday, October 25. For more information, visit www.bristolbathmarathon.com
Images: Shutterstock Kstudija and Mike White
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
