Week 4 of marathon training

Thankfully, I have this week off work.  I thought this would mean lots of extra training sessions, a few doubles etc.  the truth is, after my abysmal long run at the weekend, I'm trying to take it as easy as I can, and will only do what's on the plan.  I've jiggled the plan around a bit, as I have other commitments all day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so the adjusted plan looks like this:

Tuesday: 30 mins with Cd. (I also did a core circuit in the evening)

Wednesday: 40 min Acg with pace

Thursday: 13 mile LSR

Friday: rest

Saturday or Sunday: 55 min, Acg 

Given the run malfunction at the weekend, and my intention to do a long run tomorrow, I'm going to do a carbo load today, and hope that will see me through the run, which I will carry a couple of gels on just in case.

As I was conscious of the build up for the marathon, and my laissez fare approach to training over the summer. I've been putting goals into garmin connect.  You can see a week of illness really hundred my progress:

For marathon training, these are all relatively low mileage weeks, so they shouldn't be showing less than 100%.  I'm not going to beat myself up just yet, but when I'm on the 18 week to go plan, I expect a lot more yellow bars.  (The bottom half of this picture shows the last few weeks of my build up for Halstead Marathon).  Many people do multiple 50+ miles training weeks for the marathon, and it looks like I didn't even get 40+ in my last campaign.  I will be doing at least 1 more 20 miler this time, so I think it might be good to set some other goals in the plan/build up, so I don't get bored just slogging out the miles. Perhaps a 50 mile training week.

Anyway, yesterday, I did the 30 minute run with cadence drills.  I still felt a bit slow compared with how I've been running recently,but trying not to dwell on that.  For the cadence drills the first one was 44, then I hit 46, 47, 46, 45- an unintentional pyramid.  I didn't stop to walk between each one like the guide says, though I did walk between 1 or 2 of them.  They also varied between flat, uphill and downhill.  In fact the highest cadence was set on the uphill.  This is good as it shows I was shortening my stride running uphill, which is what you're supposed to do :)