Andrew Brennan

I’m doing the Amsterdam marathon on October 18. I’ve been training for it for the past few months, perhaps not as religiously/scientifically as I could have (the New York Times training tool turned out to require too much data entry), but I have been having a pretty good go of it, and my goal time is still 3:20. It’s nice to have something to train for.

Many of my recent runs have been fantastic, and thanks to My Tracks (an app on my Android phone that uses the phone’s GPS) I know exactly how far I’ve gone on my long runs. The longest run so far was over the bank holiday weekend, where I ran from our flat to Hampton Court Palace, which turned out to be 22.64 miles. Anthony cycled along for the whole distance and brought snacks.

This past weekend I had two good runs, one with Anthony (our first time running together ever, surprisingly) on Saturday and one with Anne on Sunday, where I met her in Mile End and we explored east from there–our run was slightly marred by the pack of friendly but slow bikers who crowded the path, but we did lose them eventually and some of the sights along the Limehouse Cut are pretty cool. That run turned out to be nearly 16 miles.

I’ve needed new sneakers for ages, and yesterday I finally got around to picking some up. At Runners Need I learned that I pronate (on the gait analyzing treadmill), so my new sneakers correct that and after the western canal run this morning so far so good.

Now that the marathon is under 3 weeks away, I suppose I should start thinking about tapering. I’ve never been much of a taperer — we’ll see how it goes.