Sooooooo

Almost a month has passed since my last post...how did that happen? It's been so long I had to go back and have a read over my previous posts just to see what had been happening at the time. I'm a bit disappointed in myself to be honest as I really wanted to document this training cycle and see what has worked and not worked when I look back after the marathon. Back to it then!

Training has been going well. The long runs are starting to get longer (obviously) and I'm up to sixteen miles (more on that later)  The mileage is in the high 40's the last couple of weeks and I'm tolerating it well which I attribute to maintaining a fairly good base all summer.  Not starving (any more than usual) and not really feeling it in the legs so far.  Fingers crossed this will continue!

I can't even remember if I'd mentioned my target time here. It's 3:50 so a pace of 8:47 minutes/mile.  Now this had been intimidating me a bit and I was wondering if this was a realistic target. I didn't really have any good reason to doubt myself but that has never stopped me failing to believe in myself before so why break the habit of a lifetime!

This week of training has been a bit of an eyeopener though! Firstly I did a longer session at the track of 6x1200m at 5k pace. To say I was scared beforehand is an understatement but I hit every interval at or under my target pace of 7:30. Happy happy!

The second key workout happened almost by chance. An athletics club night out last night meant that I was contacted by some of the other girls doing long runs to see if I wanted to run with them yesterday morning instead of doing our long runs alone on Sunday. This was lovely of them to offer and I accepted but was really nervous. They are both 3:30ish marathoners so I was worried I wouldn't be able to keep up. Faster than my long run pace anyway! They assured me they wanted to take it nice and easy. Conditions yesterday were perfect and to cut a long story short we ended up doing the entire thing at 8:39 minutes/mile. Easily. On a hilly route. While chatting. To be honest I felt like I could have done a few more at the same pace or faster.

This of course was a massive confidence boost and I'm delighted.  But also it now begs the question....is my target too soft? In my opinion it's too soon to tell. I'm edging towards making a decision once I do the twenty milers. Today my legs are fine and I'm enjoying a lovely rest day which I'm taking very seriously here on the couch. The foam roller beckons!