Lochaber Marathon Week 3 Round-up

So the plan for this week was;


Monday - Rest
Tuesday - 4
Wednesday - 7 Hills
Thursday - 6
Friday - Rest
Saturday - 7
Sunday - 15
Total - 39 Miles


What I managed was;


Monday - Rest
Tuesday - 4.20
Wednesday - 6.10 (8 hill reps)
Thursday - 6 (4 x mile repeats on the treadmill)
Friday - Rest
Saturday - 6
Sunday - 15.21
Total - 37.51 Miles


I'm really happy with how this week has gone. The weather is slowly improving so I've gradually been doing more and more of my runs in the big bad outdoors! My gym membership also expired on Sunday so unless there is another major downfall of snow then all of my runs from here on in will be outside.


I have to say that when I first ran on a treadmill I hated it. Absolutely hated it. The problem was that it was just so boring. When I decided to join the gym due to the weather conditions I decided that I'd need to mix it up a bit to break down the boredom. When I first ran on the treadmill I just set it for a distance or time and just ran. Now I always do some sort of interval or hill session so the pace or incline is always changing. I have to admit that over the past month I've grown to enjoy the treadmill. The quality that you can get from it for sessions like the mile repeats I did this week is incredible. If you think you're getting tired then the fact that you need to stretch your arm out and press the (-) button to slow down often means that I didn't. If I was trying that session outside I would probably have just slowed down a bit.


I know I was a bit short on a couple of the runs this week but I'm still listening to my body and I don't want to increase too much from week to week for fear of picking up an injury.


It's actually quite difficult for me to pick out a highlight of the week for this weeks training. The hill repeats on Wednesday and the mile repeats on the treadmill on Thursday were pretty good, but the top session for this week had to be my long run today.


I had no idea how the run was going to be today as today's was outside. The past 3 weeks long runs have been on the treadmill where there is no weather, cars, inclines, declines etc. to disrupt your run. I decided to split the 15 miles into a 10 and a 5 mile route so that I could take on some water and a gel. I also wanted to do some sections at race pace so in the first 10 miles I wanted 6 miles at race pace and in the final 5 miles I wanted 3 of them at race pace. I didn't manage that exactly in terms of pace but it was probably not far of a race pace 'effort' for the 6 and the 3 miles.


Splits: 7:51 7:33 7:14 7:28 7:07 7:04 7:02 7:16 7:28 8:48 7:14 6:50 7:20 7:14 7:31 1:39


(I should probably mention just now that I'm not really sure what my 'race pace' is going to be. When I do race pace sections in my long runs I'm looking for somewhere around 7:10/mile. After my long run in week 8 which is my first 20 miler I'll try to nail down a pace more accurately)


Mile 4 was pretty uphill, mile 10 included the water/gel stop and mile 11 was actually a lot faster than I wanted it to be and mile 12 was much much faster than it should have been! It was quite interesting around mile 13/14. I really felt like I was struggling but I though back to the Marathon Talk podcast with Prof. Tim Noakes. He has some very interesting theories and basically says that if you have two marathoners in a sprint finish, then one of them will 'choose' to come second. Well when it was feeling tough today around 13 or 14 miles I decided that I was going 'choose' not to feel bad. And do you know what? It worked! So that's one of my marathon strategies sorted!


Sorry for rambling this week, but it's been a good one!