M 10 miles (6:35mm), 5 miles (6:55mm)
T 10.5 miles, including 10 mins(3mins), 8X2mins(1min) (5:49mm), 5 miles (6:56mm)
W 6 mile (7:03mm), 5 miles (6:10mm)
T 10 miles, including 10k Tempo in 32:12 (5:43mm), 4 miles (7:04mm)
F 6 miles (7:00mm)
S 14 miles Steady (6:07mm)
S 10 miles (6:20mm)
Total - 87 miles (6:23mm)
Aerobic Efficiency 938 beats per mile average
Average Weight 140.06 Lbs
Average Resting HR 32
This week was the first week of taper then and it was hoped that this would start to see my legs freshen up. The week basically consisted of a couple of sessions, which were a bit more speed focused than in the past and then some decent aerobic mileage filling in for the rest of the week. All in all it went brilliantly.
My weight has dropped again very slightly to pretty much 10 stone dead! I suspect I shall be a little heavier on the start line next week but that's fine. I shall be carb depleting having had a decent experience of it pre-Edinburgh this year so I shall be extra grumpy for the first three days of this coming week, but it'll all be worth it I'm sure!
Anyway, to the runs of note, Tuesday's session of 10 mins, 8X2mins was another of Steve Way's specials and it went really well. The tempo bit was run at 5:10 pace feeling like I was driving with the handbrake on and then the 2 minute intervals averaged around 4:47 pace. To be fair I didn't even know I could sprint that fast so to do 8 reps of 2 minutes of that was very pleasing indeed. It was nice to get a decent chunk of minutes (26 in total) way quicker than marathon pace. Theory being that next week should make the pace feel easy. Thursday's run was a 10 miler with a 10k tempo in the middle. I had planned to keep this around half marathon effort so it feels like you're working really quite hard but by no means pushing into red line territory. It's nice to do this run when you are in very good shape as it can give you such a big confidence booster. I ran it in 32:12 which is only 7 seconds slower than my actual 10k PB. I was also getting quicker all the way through and finished feeling really strong. Looks like I need to get myself a new 10k PB at some point as with that sort of effort I should be able to go at around 60 secs quicker in a race.
I mentioned last week that I expected my aerobic efficiency to start ticking down (average HR going up for a given pace) as the mileage reduces. Although it did for the first few runs of the week it has ended up staying exactly the same as it averaged last week and with the legs starting to feel really fresh. Saturday's 14 miler came in as the most efficient of the whole campaign to date at 899 beats per mile. To be fair there has been a significant temperature drop the past couple of days so maybe that could also have had some impact.
So this time in a week it'll all be over. Whilst that may not sound like a long period of time, I know this week will drag beyond belief as I double check my calorie intake every 20 minutes and wear out the F5 button on my computer as I refresh the page for the weather forecast on the met office website.
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