Taper

14 days until the London Marathon. This week I ran for 4:25 this week. (But this was a bit of recovery from last week, where I ran for 7:31).

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Last week was a heavy one on the Pfitzinger schedule, and it culminated in a 25.5 mile run along the coast. I didn't intend to go quite so far, but my route took me to Edinburgh, and once in town, it made sense to just continue running until I reached the train station. Though I took it slow, and stopped to take photos of my route (as seen above), my last mile was 7:40 something. So, I could do 25 miles, and I still had something in the tank. This was a big confidence builder.

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This week was as follows:

Mon.: rest
Tues.: swim 1600m
Weds.: run 8 miles, with 5 x 800 m intervals on the track
Thurs.: run 6 miles, with 2.5 miles club handicap race
Fri.: run 1.2 miles before lifting for 20 mins (core; upper body)
Sat.: rest (including 3 mile walk in woods with son and friend)
Sun.: run 16.5 miles

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So, this is it. The last long run is done, and I am now tapering. I will do a 10k race next weekend. I probably wouldn't schedule this, but it's a local race that I like.

This training cycle has been good. For a long time I felt like I was struggling, and that the miles were all hard. But, regardless of how I perceived it, the fitness has come. One factor here perhaps is consistency: I've done 4-5 runs a week, including a long run, every week since probably mid-December. I'm hoping that the volume of training will push back the wall on race day.