The Final Countdown.

I know that I'm nearly there. Fourteen weeks of training in freezing cold wind, rain, & snow - enough to ensure that a Martian Ice Warrior is frozen in time; forsaking much of what small amount of social life I have; starting work early in the mornings, in fact reorganising my entire working life to fit in longer lunchtime runs and/or swimming sessions; crawling off to bed at 9:30pm because I can no longer stay awake; being unable to remember appointment times and dates, but knowing every scheduled training mileage & split times for a week
in advance... But most of all - I am shattered. My body is fatigued, but to a point whereby I am struggling to stay asleep in order to let my body recover. It is no secret among athletes that in order to improve performance you've got to work hard. However, hard training breaks you down and makes you weaker. It is rest that makes you stronger... Thankfully, to compensate for the fatigue, I am blessed with the most welcome part of any marathon schedule - the taper.  Tapering is the most overlooked phase of marathon preparation. It basically means cutting back your training, so that your body can rebuild to peak strength, thus allowing your muscles to repair the micro-damage of intervals, your energy systems to store up glycogen, your body to overcome the chronic dehydration of hard training, and that last bit of tendonitis in your knee or ankle or hip to finally go away.

An effective marathon taper takes about 3 weeks, but a runners self-confidence is a fragile thing and our egos require the positive reinforcement of a hard workout every few days. Seriously, if we take a few days, let alone 3 weeks easy, we get withdrawal symptons... It's like runners PMT with tonnes of excess energy!! 

Tuesday saw an early start and busy day at work. I'm conscious that I'm having some time off of

work due to the marathon, to incorporate both pre and post race rest, so I'm trying to offset the workload that I will be returning to by getting as much done as possible before I go... I managed to fit in a small(ish) swim session during my lunchbreak before racing back off to the other side of Bath to attend to some urgent jobs.
Post work saw a return to the Whitehall track. The evenings session, for me, was to put in 2 miles (8 laps) as a warm up, 3x1600m at my 5K pace with 400m recovery laps, followed by a mile warm down. Unexpectedly, during the course of the evening, I even ran my fastest ever track mile - 5:28 !!! As expected, and as usual, it was a painful experience leaving me on my hands and knees at trackside gasping for air, but if you had told me six months ago that I could run that fast then I wouldn't have believed you...

A swap in schedule occurred on Wednesday lunchtime when I decided to run Thursdays 8 miles a day early and attacked the hills around Compton Dando with some work colleagues. As they are slower than myself I was able to call it an 'easy jog', enjoy the scenery, and smell the flowers along the way. For once there was no cold wind or rain. Instead it was pleasant in a Springtime kind of way that I had forgotten existed.
In the evening I was fortunate enough to get along to Easy Runner for an Adidas tech talk where I got to try out a pair of Boost running shoes. Suffice to say, they are good, very good, and I really would like a pair, although until they come down in price then I'm afraid that all I can do is wish.

 

The main reason that I had changed my routine was in order for me to honour a promise that I had made to two runners. Both had expressed an interest in joining the beginners group at Bitton Road Runners and I had said that I would meet up and run with one of them. Arrangements were made and I duly trotted off at a pedestrian 10/mi pace for a four mile route that was just above comfortable for my running partner. We chatted (well, alright, I chatted & she snatched words between breaths) and, hopefully, she enjoyed it even though it rained. It was nice to able to give something back to the running community. I must admit, I do like to tell beginners that I used to be an overweight, exercise hating, beer swilling, chain smoking, couch potato, and that I too started out in the beginners group. My point being that if I can improve and run better then anyone can...

The Pensford 10K in relief map form.

Friday has become, by tradition, 'Peppershells' day, when I give myself the opportunity to pit myself against the nasty gradient that can be found halfway around the Pensford 10K route. I will freely admit that this route truly does bring out the masochist in me. Traditionally this run is done as a group with others from the office, but on this occasion the others opted for a shorter 4 mile route. Far too short for my marathon ready legs. Rain threatened so I wore a gilet, which, as the run progressed, was a mistake as the sun came out and I started to overheat. I took off at a fair old pace and cracked off 7.64 miles in 52 minutes, inclusive of nasty hills. I got the chance to fully open up my legs on the final 2.5 mile downhill section. At one point I looked at my GPS and saw that I was running at sub-6 minute mile pace!!

All this moving runs around from one day to the next also allowed me to free up my weekend somewhat in order to give me something that I cannot remember doing for a long while - having a lie-in on a Sunday morning!
This was achieved by swapping Sundays longer 13 mile run with Saturdays 5 miler. Thus, early on Saturday morning I was up and out of the house in order to run from Kingswood, through Hanham, out to Keynsham, where I put in a loop of the Federated Estate, before heading to Bitton, along the Railway Path to Warmley, then back up to Kingswood and home. Thirteen miles in slightly less than 93 minutes.
After all the training worries I have experienced over the past few weeks, these two consecutive fast-paced runs I have now made quietly confident that I may just have cracked the ability to run a marathon at 6:50/mi pace.

So, onto Sunday and the bliss of a lie-in; although I class anything past 7am as a lie-in these days... A leisurely few hours was spent in bed before we relocated to Frenchay Common to watch, support, take photos of some of the participants of the Frenchay 10K run past. M&S & B&Q were visited later in the day before I ran 4.75 miles from home to Keynsham Leisure Centre, where I put in a very easy 32 lengths. Once again, to rest the legs I used floats.

So that's it. All I have to do for the next week is stay injury and stress free, eat lots of carbohydrates, and only do 'light exercise' In less than a week from now it will all be over. All being well I will have run up the Mall and crossed the finishing line in less than 3 hours and, after that, I shall be in a pub, somewhere near Euston Station, getting mildly drunk on Fullers London Pride, and demanding pizza. Incorporated within the rest of the long weekend will be sightseeing galore and getting reacquainted with my rapidly enlarging wife, who I have shamefully neglected whilst I have put myself through this training programme... And in a couple of months time the process of training for a marathon with start all over again as I look forward to Abingdon...

Weekly totals:

Run miles: 45.15

Swim lengths/metres: 167/4175m
Sit-ups: 640
Press-ups: 320