March 2012

[marathondan]

Two laps round the lagoon tonight, at tempo pace. A shade under 8 miles in 64 mins. Managed a negative split, although the first mile was a warmup so that should be expected. The promenade was lightly filled with people of all ages and races taking the evening air. I guess the temperature was around 25C; in direct sunshine that would be unpleasant for running, but in the dark with a gentle breeze it's pretty great. Spent quite a while pondering how much manpower it took to lay the 4 miles by 10 feet of immaculately tesselated octagonal tiles underfoot.

Sorry, didn't bring a camera!

Not exactly nervous about the marathon... I'm really looking forward to it, but I know that my time target is going to make it hellish, and if I was a betting man I wouldn't back myself to achieve it. I'm now convinced that to plan for a negative split is to plan to fail. When Sweder, aka The Machine, aka The Animal, says that negative splitting a HALF marathon was really tough, I don't think it's the way to go. So I will be carefully pacing myself for a gradual and hopefully graceful decline in pace, as usual. But which also means I have to run the first half at a rather startling 8:27 pace. I'm going to be absolutely spent by mile 20. But I will have a million people cheering me on. So I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns out. Such is the mental illness of the long distance runner.