28 weeks later

So this one is going to be out of chronilogical order.  I still have the Essex 20 and Colchester half marathon to write about, but with 5.5 days left until the Greater Manchester Marathon, I thought it was time for some reflection.

Regular readers of my blog may recall that I started training for this marathon a lot earlier than many marathon plans would suggest.  This seemed more and more apt as my goal time reduced.  The title of the blog is Long road to Boston.  I had figured out that my autumn 2013 marathon would be my first sub 4, and that whichever marathon I did in spring 2014 would be a London good for age time.  When I planned this all out at the start of 2013, the London good for age standard for a girl in her late 20s was a sub 3:50 marathon.  This changed after last years London Marathon to 3:45.  Having missed my autumn marathon due to family commitments, and not finding a suitable one to replace it, I could have used this years spring one to get the sub 4, or go for 3:50 according to my plan, however, with 29 weeks to go, why not aim for a real stretch?  And get that good for age place which would hopefully give me the chance to run my Boston qualifier on the London marathon course.

I followed an amalgam of plans, but what was different about this time, is a lot more strength work.  In the first few weeks, I did my own kettlebels circuits,  over the November/December period I did gym strength work as I was working toward my gym instructor qualification, in January I did insanity, and since, I have been consolidating my running with tune up races.  I feel much much stronger as a result.  I've lost about 5kg since the start of training, give or take 1kg.  Both the strength training and weightloss, together with real dedication to the quality run sessions has translated into 13 minutes off my half marathon pb in less than a year.  It's where it needs to be for my goal of sub 3:45, and indeed many race calculators suggest that half marathon time translates to a 3:37, the app on my phone even has the illusive 3:35!  I started working on a marathon pace of 8:30 in October last year, and I remember it being tough for 2 miles.  Bear in mind, that was my half marathon pace at the time.

This long build up with a final focus really works well for me.  I like the small gains along the way, but the fact they are all pointing me toward a bigger goal is even more exciting for me.

So, 28 weeks later, I feel ready, but I also feel incredibly nervous.  The reality is that a 3:45 marathon would be 33 minutes faster than my marathon pb... That's over half and hour!!!  There is a real risk, as I've always been better at the shorter distances.  However, the positive is that both in the Essex 20 and the Colchester half marathon. I managed to maintain marathon pace where I wanted to.  These are great indicators, but I can never quiet that realism that 7 miles at the end of a 20 miler is a bit different to the whole 26.2

Anyways, I just have to trust in the training, and hope you'll all send me good luck vibes! 

Losing confidence

I drafted this blog a while ago, but never completed it.  Toward the end of February I was suffering from a lack of confidence in my running, largely because the illness that lead me to missing Great Bentley half marathon and rescheduling to do Dorney meant that I was now scheduled to do 3 back to back 20 milers, something I had never done before.  I decided to spread them out so there were 10 days between the first two, but I ended up not being able to get to 20 on the first run only completing 18.7 as I ran out of time.  Anyway, read on:

I've been having a bit of reduced running confidence recently.  I've started a new job to gain extra experience in fitness whilst I complete my PT training - that's going really well by the way, got 100% on my torso training and core stability exam the other week.

The new schedule has meant fitting in the runs hasn't been as easy, plus getting used to working on someone else's schedule for a while is making me more tired.  I have put in a few extra rest days and I think this is why my confidence is falling despite having hit every planned session in January.  

Because of the low confidence I thought a bit of a race might help me build it up, so I decided to do a parkrun on a weekend I wouldn't be able to fit in my long run anyway- no holding back on the parkrun, just do it and go for a pb.  My previous 400m repeats session back in late January suggested that a sub-22 was within my reach but I thought that would be a stretch on the Colchester course with that energy sapping hill twice!

I tried to convince Ian to run with me- he had previously offered to pace me around to get to 22, but he had his own goals for this day- see his post here:  http://ianelden.blogspot.co.uk 

At the start, Danny offered to go around with me, but I knew he would get too excited and if I tried to stay with him I would blow up by the end of the first mile :)

I started right at the front with all the fast men and by the time we were at the castle my garmin was reading 6:16 pace- there was no way I could keep this up!! 22 min would be 7:04 pace.  I knew from previous pbs on this course that there was a good 20s differential between first and second mile pace due to the hills, so really I needed 6:50 on mile 1 to allow for 7:10 on mile 2, hoping I could speed up again in the last mile.  

However, that early burst meant I struggled to get it back- I was going at a good pace to make my target, but in terms of a well paced run for this course, it wasn't - I went out way too fast and struggled up the second hill, although still managed to overtake people!

Ended up getting 21:36 and a shiny new pb, over a minute quicker than my last pb on this course set in December!  Started to get my confidence back ahead of a few planned races that should help give confidence in my marathon pace...