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 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.