T Easy 70 mins
W 110 mins inc Session (6:06mm), Recovery 40 mins (7:23mm)
T Easy 100 mins (6:53mm), Recovery 40 mins (7:50mm), 50 mins inc 20 mins Threshold (5:08mm)
F Easy 85 mins (7:44mm), Recovery 40 mins (7:56mm)
S Easy 70 mins (6:44mm)
S 115 mins inc 30 mins, 4X5mins, 30 mins (5:46mm)
Total 130.8 miles
Aerobic Efficiency 969 Beats Per Mile Vs 994
Weight 142.56 lbs Vs 142.92 lbs
Body Fat 10.92% (15.57 lbs) Vs 11.18% (15.98lbs)
Lean Body Mass 89.04% (126.94 lbs) Vs 88.94% (127.12lbs)
Fitness 90.8 Vs 87.2
Fatigue 107.7 Vs 100.7
Form -11 Vs -15 (Optimal)
I've felt like a seed from a gherkin this past few days. WTF does that mean? Well I've been in a bit of a pickle. I mentioned last week how I felt like I had had a bit of a breakthrough week and confidence was growing. It was growing so much that by Tuesday I was thinking about bringing forward my sub 2:20 attempt to Manchester this coming Sunday. Things had been really starting to go so well. I was seeing fitness that I haven't seen in two years and I thought I could well be ready. A quick check on the weather for Manchester and it looked like conditions might be perfect. More mulling over.... I remembered back to 2014 when Steve Way found himself in the shape of his life a week before London whilst building up for the British 100k championships. Steve made the decision to do an incredibly short and sharp taper and walked away with a three minute PB and got the standard that would allow him the opportunity to represent England at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. I asked Mike, Steve and a few close friends what they thought of the prospect of me going for it at Manchester. The feedback was generally to go for it. I promised myself I would see how Wednesday's session went and if it went like I wanted then I would go for it. Perhaps Fate was looking over me that morning as I chased dreams around Victoria Park as she quite royally messed about with the GPS signal and so I actually had no idea how fast I was running! I wanted to do 6X12 mins at target pace, so this is 5:20mm. Usually I run to effort and HR in training but it was important to try and hit a pace and see how it felt this time if Manchester had any legs. In all I managed 3.5 efforts at this pace (notwithstanding the likely GPS errors I leaned about when looking at the trace later) before reducing the session, knowing that I wasn't quite ready. The effort had been too high for the 'pace'. So at least that was put to bed. Or at least until I started looking at the trace and realising that I could well have been running much faster than 5:20mm. In which case 3X12mins, 6 mins at say 5:10mm would have been a good session! Anyway, it got me thinking some more but really my decision to not go for it at Manchester had been made. Mike agreed to save my beans for London. Either way it was a good session as I was working at some very strong aerobic paces.
I have in the past done a Canova Special Block where you do two hard sessions (Session 1 - 16.5 miles (5:49mm) Session 2 - 11 miles (5:53mm))in one day but for me this was too much, they did completely wipe me out so I adapted this slightly. Following on from Wednesday, I did a decent length (14.5 miles) easy run Thursday morning, a recovery (5 miles) run at lunch and then a decent threshold run in the evening. Even on tired legs the 20 mins at threshold came out at 5:08 per mile. So it confirmed that I was very fit and possibly ready! Maybe I'll see how Sunday goes.....
Friday, the legs felt it. They were like lumps of lead. So a really ploddy couple of runs ensued. I haven't really had many dull leg days this build up so I was certainly due one and in honesty given the 51 miles, quite a bit of which had been hard, I had run in the previous 48 hours it was completely understandable. Even Saturday's run felt a little out.
Sunday I was in a much better place and did the classic 30 mins at MP, 4X5mins, 30 mins session. I reverted to effort on this one as I was keen to get a good one banked and to be honest by the time the last 30 minute effort comes round, as hard as you can go is probably a reasonable approximation of current Marathon Pace. The first effort came in at 5:21mm, then averaged 5:07s for the five minute efforts. The last 30 minute effort came in at 5:26s. So in total I covered 15 miles in 80 minutes of effort which is bang on 5:20 per mile. Maybe I am ready..... No stop it Jason. Don't go there. Decision has been made! I then relaxed a little as my mind had started to get into race mode.
So a big week in terms of miles, sessions and a psychological roller-coaster in terms of the thoughts of should I or shouldn't I bring forward my attempt. I will be at Manchester on Sunday but using it as my last proper long run. I just hope the Marathon Gods continue to shine on me and anyone doing London and there are no last minute hiccoughs.
Body composition continues to improve as does my overall fitness. I doubt there will be much more improvement in fitness over the next couple of weeks before I start to taper and of course the fitness will retract as I freshen up in the taper and try to perfectly time my training stress balance.
This coming week I am going to start my Heat Acclimatisation protocol of putting shit loads of clothes on and running on my treadmill at a constant pace. This is in the hope I will see some powerful adaptations that come from this type of training. Also it will come in handy if London turns out to be a sweatfest like it was last year. I highly recommend Christof Schwiening's blog for an overview of this.
The above chart is available on the link above.
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