March 2011

[marathondan]

Week 17 – 2 weeks to go

News from Taper Central.

Spring is sprung alright. It’s been a glorious week in southern England, warm enough for three runs in shorts and t-shirt (including finishing after 10pm on Sunday night). I treated Wednesday’s effort as a recovery run from Sunday’s fairly disastrous 20 miler – just 3 easy miles, with one big hill thrown in.

Thursday I picked up some new shoes – Asics Gel 1160s to replace my previous 1120s. The sales guy was quite honest that they’re a straight replacement for the previous model, so next time I might just go straight to a discount retailer without seeking expert advice. Although at £75 they’re at the lower end of the cost range, and to buy a pair of shoes that gave me problems would be a disaster.

Friday morning I was up at 6.00 for five miles tempo, cut down from the prescribed 8 but I still wanted to take things relatively easy. It was a beautiful morning and I was in brand new shoes. It still felt somewhat hard going, but on finishing I found it was the first time I’d completed that route in under 40 minutes this year.

Sunday night the long run tapered to 12 miles. Such a run can never be truly easy, but all things considered it was pretty comfortable. By Monday night I was feeling fully recovered and ready to run again. I guess if I could sustain 25-30 miles a week all year round I’d feel this good all the time.

There was some interesting stuff on the Marathon Talk podcast – in elite half marathon news, the world record was within 7 seconds of being broken, and there was a British winner in the New York City half. There was a very interesting technical discussion on the use of caffeine before and after races (and also some interesting stuff on the mechanisms of fatigue), which I heartily recommend you listen to (listen here - fast forward to 35 mins if you don’t want to hear the whole show) and the first part of an interview with run / walk marathon guru Jeff Galloway – although he hasn’t got onto the interesting stuff about technique yet.

Thoughts now turn to completing the costume: shoulder padding, paint touch-ups and decoration.