March 2015

[marathondan]

Week 10 of 18

Kicked off the month last night with my 15 miler. Proper old school training for me, Sunday night and on road. Due to a mild, wet week, I've ended up doing all three runs on road this week. Probably not a problem so long as I don't do it too often. And I do have a couple of long hardtop runs scheduled, so I can count this as one of those. Anyway, not such a bad effort. Hard going through the last third, but after 5 minutes stretching my recovery felt very quick and I'm sure there was more in the tank. I reflected that I only need to find another 5 miles of controlled running to take me up to the 20, and then I'm into the grimace-and-hold-on phase of the marathon. Still, we're definitely getting to the tough stuff now. Still suffering a considerable bit of DOMS in the quads, and I'm due to set the alarm for early o'clock for a pre-dawn interval session.

Total for February: 80 miles. Which was only a fraction more than January. But I think that's due to how the dates fell - 14 runs in January, only 11 in Feb. 

10 mile step back next weekend. 

Oh, and I'm definitely running slower than 10 years ago, or even 5. This long run came in at 4:15 marathon pace, which in past years I might have accepted for a 20 miler, but for this distance it would have been a cause for concern. This year, I just feel happy to finish the distance, whatever the pace. Then again, I'm coming off the back of my lightest ever running year, due to the achilles. That must have an effect.