I’ve now taken on two speed sessions a week, including drills up and down the Mall at Buckingham Palace and a 5K handicap race against the people at the Virgin London Marathon. As a result I’ve knocked a full 4-minutes off my 5K PB time and can run (for at least 3 hours) at an 8:30 min/mile pace. This is a massive improvement on last year. It’s ball-busting work, but well worth the effort and I’m very lucky to have access to this little running club!

You might ask why I’m training so hard, when I’ll only have to run at an 11-minute-mile pace at the London Marathon this year.

Partly, it’s for confidence. A lot of people rely on the Runner’s World pace team and I certainly don’t want to let people down by not being prepared come race day. But mainly, it’s because of the three half-marathons that I’ve paced at this year already! And I’ve been pacing at 9 and 10-minute-miles.

It’s been a hell of a lot of fun. I’ve run Watford, Dorney Lake and the Silverstone Half-Marathon this year and I’ve nailed the finish time at each event. It’s a funny old game and as close the world of celebrity that I’ll probably ever get. If you miss a mile time (which I did on my very first mile at Watford), there’s a lot of whispering and moaning. It’s also surprisingly difficult at times. Obviously, GPS watches are pretty accurate (RW are sponsored by Timex this year), but weaving around the road adds 10 seconds here or there and the pacers’ aim is to hit each mile-marker dead on. So we have to judge it and run slightly slower than the watch says to.

While it’s a very rewarding experience, helping people achieve a personal best, it’s also very lonely. Almost all the pacers finish the race alone, having been left at the last mile by runners eager to beat their times! Boo hoo, poor me.

There’s a little over a month to go until London now and the excitement and nerves are starting to kick in again. I can’t wait to help a few bods reach the finish line in under 5 hours and I’m already brushing up on my knowledge of local London landmarks for an SJAL-style tour of the city! I’m going to bore you all so hard that you’ll have to crack 5 hours just to get away from me!

Peace out,

SJAL x

Firstly, an apology.

Secondly, some congratulations. After some rigorous training with Coach Jog A Lot, Lady Jog A Lot completed the Royal Parks Half-Marathon (her first) in under 2 and a half hours. I was there to cheer her on (trekking around London and spotting her an impressive 6 times) and was very proud and impressed with how well she did. Hopefully she’ll be up for writing a review of the day soon, as it was a great event as a spectator.

Thirdly, some exciting news. As some of you may know, I was sadly denied a ballot place for the 2011 Virgin London Marathon (again). As I entered for the first time three years ago, I’ll be entitled to a guaranteed place in a couple of years (a scheme which the VLM team have now phased out), where I can hopefully finally crack sub-4. But this week I found out that I’ll be running in 2011 as a Runner’s World Pacer!

Now this is a very proud moment for me. Although I ran quite well as a school kid, cigarettes and alcohol through my teens meant that I didn’t get back into running properly until about 4 years ago. In that time I’ve run a fair few races, improving on my PBs (almost) every time and can run a marathon well under 4:30. Runner’s World wouldn’t put me in a pace group unless they didn’t think that I’d be completely comfortable completing London well under an allotted time. So in 2011 I’ll be pacing the 11-minute mile group.

I’m so pleased to be part of this event once again. I will be training my arse off over the next few months, making damn sure that I am in the best shape I’ve ever been. I’ll also be up and down the country at some of Britain’s great half-marathon events before April, so I hope to see some of you there. But it’s an honour and a privilege to know that I can hopefully help some people meet their targets come race day and it’s a role that I’ll be taking very seriously.

If you’d like to know more about the 2011 Runner’s World Pace Team, there’s a Q+A page here, where you can find out where the team will be over the next 4 months.

There are 9 different events to choose from on the day. Obviously the main event is a full marathon, but also available to participate in is a quarter marathon, 10km walk, ‘mini’ races for children and a handcyles half marathon. However, the most popular distance (with over 3000 more entrants than the full marathon) is the half marathon.

The starting point is a 20 minute train journey away from the finish line, in La Tour-de-Peilz, a cool 13.1 miles away. Handily, your running number is your train fare, but the train runs almost side-by-side with the running route, painfully showing you just how far you have to run to reach the finish line back in Lausanne.

1:30 pacer

The standard of runners is very high in Switzerland. The fastest time in 2009 was a 1:05:58. Brilliantly, this means that there are pacers everywhere. These athletes, with coloured balloons strapped to their backs, position themselves at the correct starting points and run at the right pace, so that if you follow them you will match the time written on their balloon. I followed the purple 2:00 balloon (having not trained nearly enough and feeling very out of my depth). I didn’t see a balloon with a pace slower than 2:10 on the day, which goes to show the calibre of the runners there.

The actual race was fantastic. The road back to Lausanne follows the coast line of Lake Geneva. With the lake on your left the entire journey, you pass through some incredible countryside. However, this does mean that the level of support is very sparse. While you do pass through a couple of small towns, there aren’t many people around to cheer you on until the last half mile. This race is the first that I have run with headphones. Obviously, at one point an ambulance used the route, which I of course did not hear and was pushed to the side of the road by an angry Swiss man. Luckily, my French wasn’t good enough to understand the profanities being hurled my way.

Drink stations were frequent and the road was wide enough to allow a good spread of runners. It was quite congested at the start and around the pace setters, but after the half-way mark the congestion had thinned out. The course did seem to be a constant uphill climb, albeit not very steep.

I crossed the finish line (outside the Olympic Museum in Lausanne) after passing the 2 hour pace setter, in a time of 1:58:13 (a personal best for me). Considering I had only really trained by doing one long run each weekend for the previous month, I was very pleased. The cool weather and clean air must have played a part!

The Lausanne Half Marathon is a very well organised event. It costs around £30 to enter and for the number of people participating the facilities are impressive (ample toilets, free pasta party, an expo, good quality medal and a courier system to transport your belongings to the finish line).

You can enter here for next year but if you do I have three pieces of advice for you:

1. Learn how to convert kilometres to miles. Being a European country, all distance markers are in kilometres and I was forced to do some tough maths in my head to work out if I was going at the right pace to finish in a good time.
2. At the finish, make sure you park your car at the bottom of the hill. Lausanne is full of incredibly steep hills and walking up them at the end of a 13-mile run is not recommended.
3. Hang around a little at the end. If the podium frees up enough you can get some great pictures!

My two running buddies, Gemma and Matt