Manchester Marathon Build up Week 3

You know you're a marathon runner when......

Last week a slightly disappointing week of training if you look at quality of sessions and total mileage.  You know your a marathon runner when you are disappointed not hitting your scheduled mileage and 59 miles is a low volume week.  Quite a tough week balancing training , work and pre-christmas build up so on the whole 59 miles is not something to be disappointed with.  There is still 15 weeks to make up for this week and so far I feel like I'm on track.

Other than a few tempo sessions during the week (7 miles on Tuesday and a 3miler on Thursday) the week has been fairly steady and not much to write home about.    A rare complete rest day on Saturday meant Sunday was the opportunity to salvage something from the week and get the long runs back on the agenda.

My schedule said 18 miles.  In the end I did 21 miles.  This included 8 loops (16 miles) of the seafront (or pink) path around the seafront at Redcar.   Not everyones cup of tea but an opportunity to test out my mental resolve with some work on pacing.  

After a steady 2 mile warm up mile splits were 6-36, 6-39, 6-40, 6-38, 6-39, 6-36, 6-36, 6-39, 6-31, 6-27, 6-30, 6-31, 6-34, 6-30, 6-32, 6-34, 6-38 followed by a 2 mile warm down.  

For anyone tackling a marathon in the Spring its worth checking out this article by Alberto Salazar who knows a thing or two about running marathons...

http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/running/Alberto-Salazars-Ten-Golden-Rules.html

GOLDEN RULE No 9. TACKLE DOUBT HEAD-ON At some point you're going to push yourself harder, you're going to enter into a gray area that can be painful, and you're going to doubt yourself. Push through it. Never think you are mentally weak.

That was kind of the point of my Sunday long run this week....

Stats for the week:

Total Miles:   59.5 miles
Longest Run:  21 miles
Ave Speed:   9 miles per hour.
Best Run: Long run 21 miles @ ave pace 6-43.
Weeks until Manchester Marathon:   15 weeks
Next Race:  Helsby Half Marathon.

Merry Christmas...

Manchester Marathon build up Week 2

Week 2 of 18 done and a little bit of jiggery pokery in terms of the "plan".  The thing with plans is that when they work they are great, when they don't work you can blame the plan, when you find the plan too restrictive you can juggle it a bit.  So what about when you have written the plan?  Well you can change it can't you?

On the plan yesterday was a 10 mile tempo at marathon pace to be followed up by a steady 16 miler today. Almost a replica of last weeks plan.  

What wasn't in the plan was spending the best part of 8 hours on Saturday on a poolside coaching and organising club swimmers to make sure they were all in the right place at the right time.   So the Saturday involved two runs.  One at 6:30 in the morning and the other a 4 miler at the end of the day!  Sundays "planned" 16 miler also went out of the window after a late night Saturday night and an early start on Sunday taking one of my boys to a junior football game.  

So Sundays 16 miler was split into two parts.   10 miles at marathon pace in the morning followed by 6 miles later in the day on the treadmill at the gym.  

Where there is a will there is a way!

Stats for the week:

65 miles
Key sessions:
Tuesday - Road based tempo including 6 x 800m at 10km pace with marathon pace recoveries.
Thursday - track session with. 5 x 1200m at 10km pace with a 400m jog recovery.
Sunday - 10 miles at marathon pace followed up with a 6 mile treadmill run.

Manchester Marathon Build Up Week 1

Week 1 of 18.   Had a very decent week.  65 miles of running with some good sessions in the bag.   Highlights of the week were a tempo based session using my usual interval loop.  This involved alternating half marathon pace with marathon pace for 30 minutes and managed to clock up over 5 miles.  Saturday's run was a decent effort over 10 miles at marathon pace (around 2-40 marathon pace) and this was followed up with a 16 mile effort on Sunday at a nice relaxed 7 minutes per mile.

All good?   Well its a decent start but it made me think about recovery runs?   As the marathon training progresses so will the need to include some proper recovery runs.  Using the very popular Pitzinger book my recovery runs should be around 7 minutes 30 seconds per mile.     My "recovery" runs have been based more on feel and at a nice easy pace.   Probably not quite slow enough for me to feel the benefit so the learning point from this week is to slow down!

So the weekly stats....

Total miles for week:   64.2 miles
Longest Run: 16 miles - comfortable!
Average Speed: 9.1 mph
Best Session:   10 miles at marathon pace (6-07 per mile).  Consistent run with the heart rate nice and low (around 132bpm).

Its a long road ahead...