December - the road to London

[marathondan]

Week 1 of 18
Lunar phase: waning crescent, new moon Saturday

Tempo, interval and 8.5 miles easy completed around the green.

Despite the lack of moonlight, the urban ambient glow generally casts enough light to pick out the dark ribbon of trail and avoid any obstacles, so again I didn’t bother with the torch. After a month or so finding my way round the green, the darkness is now my friend: paranoid concerns of stumbling over a dead body in the grass, encountering an escaped serial killer, or just being attacked by enchanted trees have been put aside. Things might be a little different at midnight after 3 hours in lashing rain or thick fog, when the phrase "ethereal glow" will surely be all but worn out, but that’s for a later date.

For last week’s long run I plugged in the mp3 player and caught up with Episode 97 of Marathon Talk. The training talk was the second of two parts - the first having covered deciding your marathon strategy, this one implementing it during the race. They’re really big on negative splits. Could I achieve one? I guess aiming for a negative split is just another way of saying go out really, really slowly. I have no problems running to a strict pace plan, but would I still have the energy reserves to pick up the pace in the final hour? I guess one way to find out is to try and speed up towards the end of long runs. I see Mr Higdon is now advocating speeding up for the final third of your long run, but only for every third week. He also doesn’t advocate intervals or hills for anyone except advanced runners. And walking is fine. And keep those long runs slow. Caution, caution, caution.

No barefooting this week - all in road shoes, to give my back a rest. A lot less aches and pains as a result. But I will try and keep up a short barefoot session at the end of each long run.