3:00:23

Ok, so the dust has settled now. The numbers above definitely aren't what I wanted from this campaign, but it was a full-on effort at a low 2:5* that just didn't happen on the day. My quads were getting achey from as early as 14-15 miles so I knew from then on really that it wasn't going to happen. Full post-mortem in the link below:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/171382457

All that said, I really enjoyed the race (on reflection...). I enjoyed the crowds for a change, and the city looked great in the sunshine. It felt good to have found my absolute limits on the day and yet I'm still sure that on a different day it could have gone very differently. That training is still in there somewhere, it's given me a few PBs on the way here and I fully intend to build on that from this point on. Lyndsey saved the 'Team Armstrong' day anyway with a gritty 10-minute PB, finishing in 4:03:45; if I can ever persuade her to run more than 3 times a week then she could be deadly at this marathon lark!

So champagne drunk, pizza eaten. Been for a 2-mile jog tonight and my quads are still thoroughly wrecked, but otherwise all is well. Already planning the next one, it's going to be epic...

Weekly Update w/e 15.04.12 - 1wk to VLM12!

Mon - 4.11 miles (7:33mm)
Tue - 11.69 miles Interval Session (6:35mm)
Wed - REST
Thu - REST
Fri - 12 miles (7:14mm)
Sat - Dulwich parkrun - 17:23 (5:34mm) 6th/161 - New PB! | +2.4 mile wu/wd
Sun - 13.11 miles (6:53mm)

Total mileage – 46.5 miles (6:54mm)

"It's precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get that feeling, through this process, of really being alive."

Haruki Murakami

So, week -2 of the taper done and it went almost exactly to plan. Quite a brutal reps + tempo session at club on Tues was the last real fitness-builder. Two days of rest following that because I felt like I needed them, then Friday morning's easy 12 miles proved to be good prep for a fast 5km on Saturday. I made the relatively long trip to the inaugural Dulwich parkrun because I thought I was in better shape than my 17:32 at Bushy had shown and I thought it looked like a pretty quick course. I turned out to be right on both counts. The most stubborn of all the PBs falls again, a little more convincingly this time; and to be honest I couldn't have asked for a better final confidence booster for this Sunday. Yes, it's now officially 'this' Sunday...

Will probably do another update pre-race, but for now I'm just focusing on trying to look after myself this week, sleeping enough, eating enough, resting enough. Expo Wednesday evening, day off Friday, into London to the Hotel on Saturday. Bring it on.

WEEKLY MILEAGE SO FAR: 53, 70, 43, 61, 73, 48, 63, 0, 50, 74, 61, 49, 64, 73, 45, 53, 46

 

Weekly Update w/e 08.04.12 - 2wks to VLM12

Mon - REST
Tue - AM 4 miles (7:57mm) | PM 6 miles (7:16mm)
Wed - 10 miles (7:14mm)
Thu - REST
Fri - 8.77 miles (6:17mm) inc 3km | 3km | 2km (average 5:49mm)
Sat - 6.5 miles (7:24mm)
Sun - 18 miles (6:43mm)

Total mileage – 53.3 miles (6:59mm)

"Training for a marathon is the reverse of racing a marathon. You train the first ten weeks with your heart, pouring yourself into every workout, and then you run the last two weeks with your head, purposefully not allowing your heart to take your legs even close to the well. But when you race a marathon, run the first 20 miles with your head, keeping your emotions, excitement and energy harnessed until the last 10k, when you let everything in your heart out."

Ryan Hall - Fastest US Marathoner ever (2:04:58)

Taper time is properly here then. I've been saving this quote; I really like the idea of running a marathon with enough intelligence and control to be able to 'attack' the last 6 miles. But the statistics tell us that the vast majority of runners never manage this. We'll have to see how I feel coming out of the Isle of Dogs. As long as it's significantly better than I did at that point in 2010, that'll be good enough.

It's been a pretty good week of running, just easy-paced runs through the first part of the week to help recover from last Sunday's race and then a second rest day on Thursday mostly because, with an early start at work and then driving back to my Parents' straight from there, there was just no slot to fit a run in. That left me reasonably fresh for a speed session on Friday. Lyndsey had some reps to do on her programme so we both headed to the excellent, 'olympic-standard' track at the sports centre in my home town, Bury St Edmunds. It was good fun, in the sunshine and with the track to ourselves. I aimed to do 3 x 3km but ended up cutting the last one short as I couldn't hold the pace anymore. Still, high quality stuff and just the kind of sharpening up I should be doing at this stage.

Sunday's long run was the last proper 'long' one of the campaign and that was useful motivation to get out and get it done as it was raining pretty heavy all morning. Being the last long session, I wanted to do some faster paced running within it, as a final confidence booster. I was running a 4-mile (ish) loop 4 times and the plan was to do the first lap at 6:55mm, then drop the pace my about 10 secs a mile for each consecutive lap. It went almost exactly to plan, although I had to absolutely bury myself on the last lap to hit the numbers. It felt good though, probably because I knew the next time I'd be digging that deep wouldn't be until marathon day:

1 mile w/u

4.06 miles @ 6:52mm

4.06 miles @ 6:45mm

4.05 miles @ 6:35mm

4.83 miles @ 6:26mm

(17 miles @ 6:38mm)

Quality wise, it's the best long run I've done (not including the races) so it's a great way to bookend the campaign as I enter the taper now. Two weeks of reduced mileage coming up, to let the body recover and get fresh again for the big day. Lyndsey and me have managed to book a room in a great hotel right near Tower Bridge for the night before the race so it should make a real event of the whole weekend and means we only have an 11 minute train ride to contend with on the morning to get to the start now. Can't wait. 13 days to go...

WEEKLY MILEAGE SO FAR: 53, 70, 43, 61, 73, 48, 63, 0, 50, 74, 61, 49, 64, 73, 45, 53

Weekly Update w/e 01.04.12 - 3wks to VLM12

Mon - REST
Tue - 7.00 miles (7:03mm)
Wed - 3.49 miles (7:23mm) (binned it halfway through and went home, v.tired still)
Thu - 9.66 miles (6:40mm) inc. 4 mile Tempo in 23:16 (5:49mm)
Fri - 6.76 miles (6:46mm)
Sat - 3.19 miles (7:12mm)
Sun - Kingston Breakfast Run - 15.75 miles in 1:37:54 (6:13mm) 23rd / 1400+

Total mileage – 45.8 miles (6:41mm)

Me and my new mate, Pete. Making a mockery of my focused approach with his baggy shorts and unattached status. I beat him... only by one second though!!

I wrote the below last night. I felt pretty bummed about yesterday's race then. Less so now. Either way, I've written it so you may as well read it...

"I really don't know what to write today. This morning's race went well, actually as well as could be expected based on the calculators. It's just, I thought I might be able to run something a bit special today. All through the build-up I'd earmarked Kingston as a final chance to nail a really fast long run, and today's run fell short of what I'd hoped for.

Still, when I decided to run Cranleigh hard last weekend, I knew it would make it less likely that Kingston would go perfectly and that turned out to be the case. Despite the light week, my legs didn't feel 100% fresh this morning. I was feeling it in my quads by 8 miles today and that turned out to be telling.

Enough grumbling though, training has gone and continues to go brilliantly and I'm injury-free with 3wks to go (touchwood)! Also, from these last two long races, I now know everything I need to know about how fast to try and run on the day. The lack of any sort of 'performance epiphany' this morning in Kingston perhaps served as a timely reminder for me that I probably won't see any sort of revelatory breakthrough in my fitness levels on the streets of London either. At the end of the day, your training and the best runs within it tell you all you need to know about what's going to be achieveable, very tough, or impossible come marathon day. It's really just about how honest you're being with yourself when you set off. Of my three attempts at the London Marathon, the two when I finished and 2010 when I dropped out, I have without exception suffered badly from 18 miles onwards. There's only one thing that causes that and that's running too fast in the first half, which ultimately comes from kidding yourself about what time you can realistically run. There'll be no kidding myself on the start line this year; because more than anything I want to walk (hobble) away this time, having had a good experience of what is one of the most epic road races in the world. And if that means an attempt at a PB-of-my-dreams has to wait for another day and another campaign, when I can be more sure of it (for we can never be totally sure of anything over 26.2 running miles), then so be it."


One final thing thing worth pointing out. My tempo run from Thursday, done round the course of Sunday's race, makes me think that my 10K PB (36:03) would probably be under serious threat if I could find a flat 10K race somewhere accessible in the next 2.5 weeks to test that theory (I can't, I've looked). That was 4 miles at PB pace on my own in training, and my usual rule-of-thumb is if I can do 2/3rds of the distance solo in training, I can probably nail the whole thing in a race. And this particular run was a little compromised too; by dodging pedestrians, kerbs and side roads through Hampton Court, whilst monitoring the run on my HTC on a shit GPS training app I downloaded free because my Garmin battery had died about 2 minutes into the warm-up. Touch screens, sweaty hands and sub-6 minute miling do not mix.

Here we go then, week -3. I've had a rest day, and a sports massage this evening, and all is well. Bring on the, um, snow... on Wednesday apparently! Random but true. 20 days to go...

WEEKLY MILEAGE SO FAR: 53, 70, 43, 61, 73, 48, 63, 0, 50, 74, 61, 49, 64, 73, 45