Cancer sufferer Fran Venter's road to London

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Monday, 04 April 2011 17:48

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Fran's road to London

Virgin Active employee Fran Venter (product and training manager) will be running the London Marathon for Charity (Ma’Afika Tikkun) on 17 April. What makes Fran’s story different is she has been diagnosed with lung, liver and brain cancer and will be running the race despite the illness. She has just completed her chemo treatment and has been training really hard to achieve her fitness goals. In a series of blog posts, Fran will be updating you on her progress every two days leading up to the race.

Monday, 4 April 2011: There’s only 12 days to go until the Virgin London Marathon and I did the last long run yesterday, the Glenryryck 30. I was happy to do it during a race instead of training on my own. This was a great opportunity for me to work on pace setting as I tend to approach all races like a 400m, i.e. fast – but that’s probably due to my background as a sprinter.   

I averaged a 7:15 per kilometre which was a great achievement in pace setting for me. I maintained a 7:20 for the first 10km; 7:10 for the next 10km; and 7:15 for the last 10km. It’s amazing how much easier the last 10km are if I do not run at a 5:30-6:00 pace.   Everything went well and I had a very comfortable run with my great running partners.

For the week ahead, I need to do a total of 54km. I’m going to break it down into a 15km run on Tuesday, 10km on Wednesday, an easy 19km on Saturday, and then a good 10km at the Spar Ladies run this Sunday.   

To ensure that I maintain muscle mass, I’ll include two more weight training sessions for the week. I had to cut it down by about 30% from the original plan to allow the old body a bit more recovery but I’m still on track to complete a decent marathon, maybe not the original goal of 4:15.

The week ahead is going to be great as there is no treatment planned and I can recover from last week. In terms of nutrition, I’ll be sticking with healthy portions of veggies, fruit and protein with some healthy fats.

Time flying past very quickly, but I’m all set for a successful Virgin London Marathon.