On 31 August 2008, Nike+ is organizing a virtual 10k worldwide race they’re calling The Nike+ Human Race. Basically, if you have the Nike+ sports kit, you run 10k on race day and then upload your time to the Nike+ web site. The web site will then compile the results and publish them.

A pretty cool idea, and I’m really looking forward to it (obviously, I’ve signed up for the race). I don’t expect to achieve a competitive time, but I’m aiming for a personal record of under an hour.

According to the Running Times Magazine Race Time Calculator, if I can run a 10k in 55 minutes, I will be able to run a full marathon in 4 hours 18 minutes. Obviously that’s way slower than my target of 3 hours. So there’s still a lot of work to be done.

In fact, according to the calculator, I need to cover 10k in just 38 minutes to have any hopes of finishing a marathon in 3 hours.

I had a terrible run today. It was slow, it was intermittent, and it was short. Here’s the run:

I’m starting to learn more about my body and what makes it operate at its peak. For example:

• When I haven’t slept well, I feel drained the next day. Pretty obvious but I’m starting to understand exactly how much it impacts my performance
• If I don’t have breakfast, I have a labored, heavy trudge, rather than a fun run
• Even what I eat the night before (I run in the morning) can have an impact on how well I do the next day

Unfortunately, today all three of these factors were off. I didn’t get much sleep, and when I finally did fall asleep I overslept and woke up late. This made me skip breakfast so I could run. And finally, I realized that I still hadn’t digested last night’s dinner.

All in all, not fun.

Stay tuned.

I decided to go for a slow, long run. So far, most of my training has been to raise my fitness levels and so I’ve been pushing my heart rate as hard as possible.

So yesterday I thought I’d go for a longer run and ended up running 13km before it was time to go to work. I could’ve gone a bit longer, but I was happy with the result. I know 13k is considered by many to be just another run, but for me it was an achievement and so I’ve marked it as a milestone on my calendar.

Here are the details:

Today I decided to not run and let my body recover. I’m still feeling a slight soreness in my legs. I know I’m probably being too careful, but I don’t want another knee injury to take me out of the race, especially as I still have some weight to lose. Those extra kilos can’t be good for the knees.

Stay tuned.

I’ve talked about this before. I tried training to run a marathon for the first time in my life last year, but had to stop because of a knee injury.

I haven’t given up! I’m trying again this year.

Here are the details:

• Marathon: Dubai Marathon
• Date: 19 January 2009
• Target time: 3 hours

Yes, I know I’m crazy to be aiming for 3 hours on my first ever marathon, but I know I can do it. To my advantage, I’m pretty fit. To my disadvantage, I’m about 9kg overweight (that’s 20 pounds). So one of my goals is also to lose enough weight to be able to achieve my time target.

I’ll post my training progress here, and the marathon day results. I hope you enjoy reading it. And if you’re into running, maybe it’ll motivate you to step up your game too!