Anyone signed up for Royal Parks Half marathon or Great South Run in OCtober

[londonmummy1966]

I've just got the email from Royal Parks with the training plans. I don't know any local runners so I wondered if there were any runners on MN planning to do either of these runs who might be interested in supporting each other through training?

Basically I'll probably not stick to it if I don't have people to report back to....

have you secured a place?

i didn't get one

Royal Parks is my favourite half marathon - I've done it for the last 5 years - it's always so well supported and freakishly lovely weather. I'm hoping to be well enough to do it this year too!

What sort of training plan are you thinking of doing, london ?

I've signed up for a place with Stroke as I have never managed to get one on the ballot....

Sweary (love the name!! I was thinking of doing the "get me round" training plan they emailed out yesterday as I haven't done a half marathon for ages and had some issues with the Great South last year (not doing enough training etc). This plan has 4 runs a week so it seems doable although the longest one is only 8 miles which concerns me a bit but I guess I could lengthen some of them as I am managing 16k walk run at the moment. Does that sound doable?

I'm doing great south run.

Gah - wrote a long post and then lost it. Essence was I'd try to get up to 10 miles as a long run in training if you can as when I did my first half marathon I didn't get past nine in training and the last couple of miles sucked. So much of Royal parks is in the parks that the support really will get you round the last few miles - it's really full.

My top tip for long races though is do a run/walk from the first mile as it really helps your legs towards the end. I broke 2 hours at half marathon having a 1 minute walk break at every mile marker (DH did a 3:30 marathon using the same technique) and when we're running for fun rather than chasing times I run 8 and walk 2, which conveniently adds up to 10 minutes so I don't have to do tricky maths on the course. I managed 2:10 at Royal parks with that split so it really doesn't slow you down too much!

A half marathon is infinitely doable on any amount of training by the way, you're just quicker and recover faster with the training. I'm firmly in the camp of a (slow) half being blaggable by just about anyone. It does hurt if you haven't trained though.

Thanks Sweary - I have been looking at run walk run and have been using that for the last few long runs - you are right it doesn't seem to mess up times too much - i've been doing 3 minutes 1 minute on long runs and was hoping to bring it down to about 5 to 1 for the actual race.

Scotland would you be up for sharing training progress? I just need to know that there is someone out there who will start asking questions if I'm slacking off as that is what usually happens to me over the summer - I'm a fair skinned Celt so I hate the heat....