Sunday 28 March 2010

What a difference a week makes!!

I have to admit to feeling a little dejected this week. That poor race at the Northern Road Relays last Sunday really hit me hard. As I touched on in my last blog, I know exactly what the problem was and that was quite simply a case of overtraining. I'm fortunate enough to have an experienced and knowledgeable coach in Norman Poole, who is quick to see the telltale signs and knew exactly what I needed to do to get me right again.

We'd taken a gamble on training through the race as we agreed the result wasn't important in the overall scheme of things but it still hits you hard when you've had a crap result and you've been giving it everything! Looking back, training through the race was essential with the marathon ahead and I just have to put it behind me. What I needed this week was to regroup: get my legs back together and get some confidence back because apart from last weekend, everything has been going swimmingly well!

A very easy training week indeed started with a very slow 9 miler on Monday to try to recover. Felt tonnes better on Tuesday starting slow and then picking up on my first run of 6 miles. Then I did a nice steady 12 miler in the evening with Andy and Pete Riley and we were clipping along quite nicely with most of the run at sub 6:30 miling. Wednesday we were on the track at Wythenshawe Park and my session was 5x800m at 5k race pace with a 2min rest. The last two ended up being 2-3secs quicker than 5k pace but it felt pretty good. Then it was just easy running (7 miles Thursday, 4 miles Saturday) and resting up (Friday) for Sunday's Wilmslow Half Marathon. This race included the England Half Marathon Championships.

What a difference a week makes. After feeling so rotten last week and getting such a shocking result, I needed the opposite this week. As mentioned last time, I'm pretty philosophical about Half Marathons in the run up to a marathon with my two best times of 65:24 and 65:50 achieved en route to 2:21 clockings, whereas my best two marathons 2:18:34 and 2:18:53 have come on the back of 66:19 and 67:24. My logic is that I started my marathon training too early for those halfs and my end product is now better as I peak for the right race! I said last week that anything under 67 would show me that I'm where I need to be.

I was also conscious that with me starting my build up for London later than planned that I want to be able to get some good training in over the next two weeks so didn't want to completely trash myself.

I set off in the 67:00 group and the first 5 miles just flew by, in total contrast to last week I was so relaxed, happily sharing conversation with another runner who was running at target marathon pace, singing (!) and acknowledging some of the spectators I recognised. This is just how I wanted to feel and it was bloody fantastic!! The miles went by so much faster than usual and what was an incredibly large group at 4 miles was whittled down to 4 of us at 9 miles. At this stage I was in 12th position but moved into a finishing position of 6th place with my 13th mile my fastest of the race. My finishing time of 66:54 was pretty much spot on what I was looking for, the huge bonus was that it felt so comfortable and it's left me buzzing again.

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