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...