Marathon Training - Week 10

This week has been a week of decisions.

There's a fine line between running to your best ability without a) causing yourself an injury and b) running becoming a chore rather than something enjoyable. This week I felt my training schedule was coming close to ticking both boxes.

On Tuesday I was due to run some intervals but didn't feel right as I left the house at 6am. My hip was still hurting from the long run on Sunday and I didn't feel right in the head. It had all the hallmarks of over training. I ran about half a mile down the road and stopped. I sat on a wall and thought about what I was trying to do. My plan has been to run a marathon in under 3 hours 30 minutes. I wondered if this was a step too far considering that my previous best was 3 hours 44 minutes and that I had been injured only a couple of months ago. So, I cancelled my session for the day and decided to re-think my goal.

I decided that I would reset my objective for the marathon and would aim for sub 3 hour 45 minutes with the intention of beating my previous personal best. So I uploaded a new training schedule into my Garmin watch. This schedule was still based on pace rather than heart rate and the biggest difference I noticed was that although the training schedule required the same distances to be run the pace that they were to be run at was significantly slower.

New schedule in hand I started the training on Wednesday morning. This was a 9 mile run at a slow pace. I was much happier with the new schedule as it took some pressure off me. That was until I finished the run and realised that I had paced it at exactly the same pace as before I had changed schedules. Basically I could have run the same run using the old schedule and probably would have thought that it was tough but just because I had changed to an "easier" training schedule I enjoyed the run even though both would have been run at the same pace. This made me think that it was all psychological and hatched another plan.

This time I decided to revert to the 3 hour 30 minute schedule but instead of training by pace I am going to train by heart rate. This means that no matter how I feel my pace will be limited by how well my heart is pumping. As I improve then my pace will improve although my heart rate will stay the same. That is this week's plan anyway! With only six weeks to go until the marathon I haven't got time to be messing about with the schedule.

Staying over at friends for a barbecue on Saturday evening meant that I had to run my long run on the Saturday morning rather than the Sunday. It was meant to be a half marathon race but I couldn't find one locally being run on the Saturday morning so I had to go out on my own and just knock out a fast half marathon time. I managed to go sub 1 hour 40 minutes which I am pleased with and I think that under race conditions I could have gone up to 5 minutes quicker. That's what I like to think, the truth may be somewhat less. Here's the Garmin link to the half marathon.



This week I have to run another 20 mile long run. I will be running this on a Friday because I am away for a friend's 40th birthday weekend. I am hoping it doesn't go as badly as the last 20 miler that I did!

GPS AWOL

Sometimes, very rarely, my GPS watch goes nuts. Today it decided that my starting point was somewhere in Hammersmith and took about five minutes before it realised its mistake. The upshot to this is that I can apparently run a kilometer in thirty five seconds! Maybe I should enter the olympics next year. I'm certain I can improve on that time.
Apart from this technical strangeness I had a relatively pleasant, and short, run around west Ealing. Because I can only run for twenty minutes at the moment due to my schedule I have to be more inventive with my routes to make it more interesting. This basically means running down local roads that I've not been down before. It's nice to see a few new places so close to home. Nothing to really shout about mind you, the roads don't vary greatly. They look just like any other roads, but the fact that they are different is enough for my little mind to be happy with the change.
My resting heart rate is now in the lower 50s. Which means I'm either becoming much fitter or my heart rate monitor needs new batteries. Probably the latter, but I can hope for the former.
More good news, my weight is now down to 84.1 kg. Just over 4 kg to go to get to my ideal weight. I've given myself until the start of July to acheive this so I need to shed 1 kg every two weeks. As long as I can keep my booze consumption down then this should be achievable.
Here's my run from this morning, with the aforementioned crazy GPS. I'm up to 1 minute 30 seconds of running per 5 minute interval. Today's podcast was Adam and Joe.