Marathon #4 11 days away

11 days 'til my next marathon, which will be my fourth (excluding my ultra in December), and it's already time to reflect on the process. It has been so different to previous build-ups - fewer sessions, typically just 4 per week, but a greater emphasis on tough long runs.


I am however feeling for the first time somewhat overtrained. Yesterday I completed 24 km in the hills, and on a gentle tarmaced down-hill section could only just manage 4:17 for that kilometre toward the end. I just felt so weary. It's time to back off, and it's time to taper anyway, but I must find ways of keeping the wheels in motion, I don't want to be rusty a week on Sunday (my word that sounds close!) I hope to still feeling up for a final 10 miler on Sunday.

Other recent long runs have included:

• 36 km in 2:42, adopting a 4:45/km x2 4:15/km x1 strategy throughout, and attempting to hold this in the last couple of K. 
• 29 km, inc. 1 km warm up, 15 km 4:45/km, 4 km 4:15, 4km 4:10, 4km 4:05. "Fast Finish". That's how to knacker yourself!
• 2 x 18 km with 1h30 break between. Not too difficult really.

Nutrition and health

2 weeks to go diet: It was recommended on a recent Marathon Talk episode 165 by Matt Fitzgerald to have a high-fat diet until 2 days before the event.
2 days before the marathon: Switch to high-carbohydrate diet.

I was intrigued by this (and generally love eating fatty products!), but was quickly scuppered as I am also battling chronic stomach issues, which are gastritis, but are caused neither by gluten or bacteria. Advice is against a fatty diet. I shall be emphasising rice and bananas in my last two meals.

I am also undergoing a couple of heart checks as I sometimes get heart palpitations. Quite satisfying to hear the cardiologist make a comment about me having a "sportsman's heart", around 50 bpm, sometimes less! Something must be going right. I have another check in another couple of days...

Why run?
Taking it a bit easier is also an opportunity to reflect on those bigger why do it questions. It's great teaching some PE to a local christian class, where we focus on the fact that running, and functional bodies, really are amazing and quite a privilege to be appreciated in recognition of who made them, gave them to us. We certainly didn't deserve them or ask for them! I still want to run for Him.

What's on the horizon?
I still feel that my longer term plan is to steer away from marathons to off-road long-distance stuff, it's just so much fun! But I'm not abandoning it yet as I still can't wait to experience what London 2014 is going to be like. Apparently Mo Farah will be making his London marathon debut there too, so it's a head-to-head there! I wonder what he'll do? My vote is for a new British record, finally breaking Jones' 80s record. Of course I won't be too far behind, just an hour or so ;)

Otherwise, I have two more off-road events scheduled, one around 24 km with 2000m positive ascent and a 55 km ultra later in June with similar climb (i.e. a "quick" ultra, pacing shall be an interesting one).

Picking it up

It's a wee bit tricky when you have two "A-races" isn't it? My Autumn goals have centred around the Luberon marathon on 7 October and the SaintElyon on 1 December, two very different challenges. The first one is now obviously over, and so is my first week of recovery from that: Tuesday = 3 mile jog, Friday = 3 mile run, Saturday = 1h50 min off-road gentle and some clambering over rocks. And I feel tired still, not that recent just run hard tired, but a deeper, still-needing-to-recover from 3h04 of grilling myself! And in some ways I should be glad. If the recovery had been really quick (last year's was quicker than this), then maybe I hadn't run as hard as I needed, and proper recovery does take time. In fact, most of us, and I am well and truly in the "most-of-us" category, need to be thinking about a very low number of very-long (marathon and above) events in the year.

But having these two races together, 1 in October and 1 on 1 December, seemed like a really decent gap. The idea was to allow my body to recover from the marathon and then use that training to benefit my first dabble in the Ultra world. I think it will work out, but what I realise now is that actually I have given virtually no thought to how I will build up to Dec 1. My thinking now is to keep it gentle until my body feels able to clock it up a bit, and keep in view a few training programmes for marathon (I use MarathonTalk ("competent") and Runner's World (sub-3) downloads and tweak as needed. The only thing is that even if I were to jump on that band wagon now, I would already be more than half way through! That is quite scary. The key change to those programmes that I will be looking at is extending the easy stuff. I really need to build up to some outings. I estimate the SaintElyon to take me in the region of 7 hours, which is I hope taking into account my lack of experience and forcing a slow 6 min/km-ish pace for the first 50 km. This expectation is of course likely to be tweaked also as I factor in the experience from my remaining long runs.

Incidentally, there is also a long trail event with 1000m of vertical assent of 28.5 km planned for 4 november. This will obviously be one of my long runs that I will be running faster than long-run pace but not flat out either as I will need to be not recovering for the next two weeks, which basically precede my taper period. This planning stuff is quite tough!

Easy 5 km (6 days to go)

5 km in 28 mins

What's the difference between an "easy" pace and a "jog"? My definition is that the easy pace maintains cadence with a short stride length; a jog is slower cadence and short stride length.

Enjoyed today, although I hope it doesn't point to me being a fair weather runner (the weather is very fair relative to yesterday!)

10 miler (7 days to go)

10 miles only on hills. 

I found this much less encouraging. Went offroad for a third of this and expierenced severe need for a No. 2. A "gingerbread man" in Marathon Talk parlance. Too many figs? Not enough starchy foods? It's difficult to know exactly why and annoying that I can now no longer experiment with different foods to correct the problem before next Sunday. The other reasons why this was less than encouraging than the previous day at race pace is I didn't sense I had my wife's blessing plus I'd got a bit annoyed when the "window" closed earlier that day (so the emotional/psychology side), plus 16 km felt far and tiring at much less than race pace.

But the miles are in the bank! I need to adopt a positive attitude, with more long runs, speedwork and hill sessions under the belt than before. Particularly in terms of marathon prep, 460 miles (you can probably add 10 or more miles to that figure by the end of the week) absolutely obliterates previous distances run in build up season.

At the same time, the struggle and tiredness of this run highlight again how important it is to stick to the plan as best as possible. I cant just "listen to my body" for this distance yet. I still find i am capable of dropping off the pace if my mind wanders (admittedly this is less likely to happen in an actual race) or going to quick. Looking at the race plan though, I did think it would be good to allow myself at least the possibility of getting close to 3 hours (target is still 3:05) should I feel strong in the last quarter. The issue here though is that because of the elevation profile, I have set myself checkpoints according to the hills and not distances.
1although realistic.