One month to go!!

My training is all currently geared towards the Virgin London Marathon, which is taking place on Sunday April 25th. Training has been going well, everything has gone pretty much to plan so far with the biggest mileage weeks out of the way and the focus now switching from lots of marathon paced running to road racing and some faster 5k and 10k paced sessions.

I have completed seven marathons now and trained for another three (two DNFs and a DNS) and so I have a fair bit of experience and have learnt some things the hard way. I was only 23 when I ran my first marathon in 2002 and it was a euphoric experience, a pleasing debut of 2:21:01. I ran the next five London Marathons improving one second in 2003 (!) then running 2:18:53 in 2004 and then my personal best 2:18:34 in 2005. I was beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about as I'd never really had any bad experiences, but as the body has got older, I have found it more difficult to withstand the training. In 2006, I ran my slowest London 2:23:26 in a tremedous amount of pain, later to be diagnosed as a double hernia! My last attempt at a London was in 2007 when I succumbed to the warm conditions and withdrew from the race at halfway.

But it is more recently that I have had my biggest problems. An attempted return to the marathon in 2008 ended in disaster when a niggle I carried into the Florence Marathon caused me to develop cramp early in the race and I again withdrew midrace. And then an attempt at training for the Loch Ness Marathon was going very well until I developed bursitis on my heel and I was forced to withdraw. This injury has come and gone ever since and I'm currently undergoing twice weekly physio at Athlete Matters in Worsley. The injury recurred badly in February and meant that I started my build up for London a week later than I'd hoped but I've since managed to keep on top of it so far.

The injury forced me to reduce my usual training load for the first part of the winter and this coincided with probably my best ever spell of racing with a 10k personal best, the best race of my life at the UK Cross Challenge in Liverpool plus an England International vest at Cross Country. Given how well I raced off much lower mileage for a long period of time and the years of high mileage I have accumulated, I am not afraid now to lower my mileage for the final 4-5 weeks of my marathon build up and regain those fresh legs now that I have topped them up with a good block of training. And boy do they need freshening!

Starting late meant I have piled a lot of work into the last five weeks and I've been treading that fine line between improving fitness and overcooking it. I crossed that line last week, attempting to train through the Northern Road Relays which I was taking part in for my club Altrincham & District AC. Coming into Sunday's relay I had racked up 105 miles in 7 days with a 20 mile race the previous Sunday, a 17 mile run on the Thursday and a testing session of 8x1000m at 10k race pace with a couple of hill sprint sessions thrown in for good measure. It's easy to see why I felt so rough and had such a poor performance (uncharacteristic of me recently) but there have been many instances in the past of me being able to absorb this level of training, and myself and my coach Norman Poole felt that it was a gamble we would take.

A great example of this is when I was training for Loch Ness last summer. I ran the Morpeth 10k race in the middle of a 113 mile training week expecting a fairly easy ride and ended up finishing 3rd in 31:10. Two weeks later with fresher legs, I ran a 10k on the track in 29:55. I think the key is to recognise when you have crossed that line and back off accordingly, so I look on Sunday's poor run as an amber traffic light!

This Sunday is the Wilmslow Half Marathon, which incorporates the England Athletics Half Marathon Championships. I am pretty philosophical about Half Marathons before a marathon. I have ran 65mins twice for a half marathon (2002 and 2003), with a 2:21 marathon clocking following on both occasions. Yet my 2:18s came on the back of a 66:19 and a 67:24. The reason behind this I feel is that I started much earlier in 2002 and 2003 and probably peaked for the Half Marathon whereas when I ran my 2:18s off slower half times having started my marathon training a month later.

For this reason, I won't be heading into Wilmslow anticipating a personal best time. Based on the above, anything under 67mins will tell me that I am well on course. But after such a poor race last weekend, I really don't want to be too far outside 67 and feeling like I'm killing myself in doing so.