I used to blog my running activity in the belief that setting targets and monitoring performance is the only way to ensure consistent progress towards a specific goal. Makes sense, no?

And I do have a goal. It’s a long standing one. It’s very simple and a nice round, easy to remember, but difficult to achieve, number:

1 hour and 30 minutes

That’s been my target time for a half marathon for some years now. It’s my favourite distance and I have come reasonably close (1:32) a few years ago.

I have the Great North Run in the diary for September (download my GNR 2010 Training Schedule.) Based on current performance, I won’t be hitting 1:30 at that event. But, I do think it’s achievable for my other favourite race – January’s Brass Monkey in York. So that’s my goal. And I’m going to start blogging and tweeting my running activities again (at the risk of boring Twitter followers into desertion!).

So, here’s the target (45 miles) for what’s left of this week (I always start running weeks on a Sunday, so I’m not including yesterday’s run in this week’s target):

Delighted with the first week’s running. Didn’t quite manage to keep the heart rate at the desired level, but only 5bpm over which isn’t so bad really. Felt very comfortable at 9:40 (and so it should). I think the target for this week is to try to maintain – or perhaps even slightly improve on the average pace – whilst bringing the heart rate down to the 154 target (easy pace).

I’m looking to increase the mileage by 10 per cent this week, before a step back week next week. Step-back weeks will happen every third week. During a step-back week, mileage from the previous week is cut in half before proceeding to the next 10 per cent increase. Here’s the plan for week commencing 4th October.