Contact the Sports Science Institute if you want to attend these great motivational talks in your preparations for the Old Mutual Two Oceans Marathon.
This week we ran:
9km outdoor/road run
5km time trial
8km road run
On Monday, we ran 9km along the Mouille Point, Sea Point promenade up to Bantry Bay. A steep little hill rounded it off and we ran back again. My growing fitness levels again impressed me, and I must admit that I had all sorts of positive affirmations floating around in my head from the previous evening’s workshop.
Dave Spence, super-coach, who will be helping us from December to train towards the half Marathon, made an interesting point in the workshop that will help me focus on goals for races: if you want to run a 10km in 60 min., don’t aim for 60 min., aim for 58 min..
Our minds have a funny way of working and we can get tricked. Many people that aim for 60 min. will land up running 63 mins. I would so like to run the 16 December 10km in under 60 min., but I can’t yet tell if it is unrealistic or not.
We still have a couple of weeks of training and we definitely are still building fitness and a bit of speed, so I will assess closer to the time. I want my goal to be a push, but realistic so I can achieve it.
One of our Superstar group, Humbu, is a UCT student and is going home this week to Polokwane until late January. It will be interesting to see how she manages to keep training and motivated, without the rest of the group to help. We will keep in touch though, so we hope she will be flying by the time she gets back.
I had to miss the Wednesday run, so I did a fast 5km on Saturday, on my own. Last week, I was a bit disappointed when I learnt that the time trial was actually 4,7km and not 5km. I thought I had shaved 4 min. off my 5km time!
Doing the 5km on my own was again much harder than with the group, and I ran a rather boring route that I knew was a 5km distance. I did it in about 30 min. (I must get myself a watch that I can check my time with!) It is probably good not to get too set on beating times and being too competitive with yourself, but goals are the best way to stay motivated, I think. - (Maryann Shaw)
Follow our online programme to run 10km in 11 weeks. Here is week 10.
Don't forget to stretch. Here are the 12 best stretches.