9 minutes

It has occurred to me that I am making slow progress. OK, so my jeans are getting looser, and I'm able to run further, longer and faster, but not actually by all that much. Five days after my 40th birthday, on 11th October last year, I ran the Gun Run, a half marathon, in 1 hour 51 minutes. After that I began training in earnest, following my vaunted plan. In that eighteen weeks of training, I have run more than 700km, and spent about 65 hours on the road or the trails. I'm getting perilously close to working out an hourly rate of sposnorship here...

Anyway, after that 700km, and lots of sweaty socks, I ran another half marathon ten days ago in 1 hour 42 minutes. The improvement generated by all that running is therefore - wait for it .... 9 minutes. Is that it? It doesn't seem like a lot, and it translates to about 15 on my marathon prediction (that's 15 quid for you, Shug!), but it doesn't sound like much. It suggests to me that however hard I train, there is a firm limit as to how fast I can go. Maybe there's a sudden improvement just round the corner. I've still got about 600km of training to do before the big day, so maybe there's another few minutes to be gained. Maybe I should give up the beer. Let's not get silly here.
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