A little secret, new shoes and an update on my goals

Well, that's a long title.  I have been thinking all evening about what to blog about as I have so many little things to say, and that I've been thinking about in relationship to my running, so, I thought I'd say them all.

First, my new shoes arrived yesterday.  A particularly painful sports massage yesterday confirmed that my legs have been taking the impact rather than my running shoes for quite some time, so my shiny new Nike lunar eclipse got their first outing this evening for my interval training, where I had to wear my head torch rather than my sunglasses.  They definitely provided a nice amount of cushioning, and aside from needing to adjust the lacing, I think they will do nicely for my half marathon on Sunday.  The intervals were 5x400m with 90s rest.  I decided to walk the rest intervals tonight, so I could properly work hard at speed.  Can't tell you the paces right now, as I can't log on to garminconnect, but they were all around 6:45, except for the 4th, which was 7:01.

An update on goals.  Well, the major open goal for this year is to complete 1000 miles of running.  I am currently on 690, so I require fairly consistent training of 21 miles per week or thereabouts to achieve it.  Now I've realised how tight the goal is, I have a new dedication to my training, which certainly wained a bit once the possibility of running Bournemouth marathon went away.  I think a good one for next year might be to reach 50 parkruns run.  I've done 6 so far, and will have an opportunity to add to that before the turn of the year.  I'll keep thinking about that one.

And now the secret... I've locked down my spring marathon and entered the Greater Manchester Marathon, which will be on 6th April.  It's a fast flat course, and will hopefully give me the best chance of going for that London GFA, which is why the new shoes were so necessary, becoming my training partners at least for the remaining 310 miles I will run this year as I begin to gear up for marathon training.  I have devised a schedule which takes elements of Galloway's and Higdon's training plans.  Doing a lot of work on form for much of this year, before getting into high mileage weeks through the spring.  I'm looking forward to this journey as its one I start fully fit off the back of many pbs.  So hopefully I'll be smashing that marathon pb too!