Leah O'Donovan

Sorry I haven’t been posting folks but the week before the marathon was a bit hectic and I was a bit stressed! It’s all officially over. I ran the Edinburgh Marathon on Sunday 23 May 2010 in 4:15:08…and with four stitches in my knee (more on that to follow). My ultimate goal was under 4:30 [...]

Tonight I did hill work. This is a mile warm up, run up a hill for 2:00, jog/walk down for 3:00, repeat 11 more times, mile cool down. That is all.

Thursday and Friday were hectic with election work so I wasn’t able to blog. I did manage a run on Friday night of 10 miles at marathon pace, which is around 9:25 per mile. It wasn’t too bad either. I felt strong.
Today was the last long run of the programme. I did 18 miles at [...]

Have you missed me? It’s been more than a week since my last post and there are reasons: primarily that I was ill for almost all of last week and did not run.
It started on Monday as what I thought were just allergies. Sniffles, sneezing, the usual hayfever signs. By Tuesday morning, though, I woke [...]

Sorry I haven’t written in a couple of days. It’s been hectic. Let’s recap:
Wednesday: felt very tired from Tuesday’s speed work so I rested
Thursday: 8 miles slow, run from work to home
Friday: a mile warm up, 3 miles ‘brisk’ at half-marathon pace, mile cool down
Saturday: rest
Today: repeat of last Sunday’s 19 miles slow.
The weather was [...]

Tonight was a repeat of my session a couple of weeks ago: 3 x 1.5 miles at 10k pace of 8:46-8:26 per mile with .25 jog recoveries and a mile warm up and cool down. I think I’m still very tired from Sunday’s 19 miler. Tonight was quite difficult and I’m absolutely exhausted right now. [...]

Well, update first on the tight leg problems. I think the foam roller has helped. I also chose not to run my four easy miles yesterday and take another day of rest. I think that certainly helped. It’s a long road to getting my form perfected and muscles loosened but progress is being made. On [...]

Last night I was too tired and did not have enough time to post. Yesterday’s run was 10 miles at what will be marathon pace of 9:11-9:31 per mile. I finished with an average of 9:23 per mile. My only problem is still my too tight legs. So, today I took a day off work [...]

Quick one tonight: slow six miles. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. I even ran without music hoping to ‘get in touch’ with my body. Yes, I realise how hippy dippy that sounds. I will likely do it again tomorrow night. My aim is if I can ‘listen’ to my body, when to hold back, when to [...]

Well, a lot has happened in the past 48 hours. Let’s start with tonight’s session. It’s the second in the programme but the first time you’ll have heard of it because I skipped the first one as it was the day after we got back from Norway and there was no way in hell I [...]