M 9 miles (6:29mm)
T 10.5 miles (6:23mm), 5 miles (7:04mm)
W 8 miles (6:52mm)
T 11 miles including 15X1minute on/off (5:53mm)
F 7 miles (6:50mm)
S 9 miles including Northern 6-stage relays (5:04mm)
S 14 miles (6:03mm)
Total 74 miles (6:26mm)
Weight 138.7 lbs
Body fat 9.5%
Aerobic efficiency 941 beats per mile
So into the first week of taper which sees a big reduction in mile from last week down to just over 70 for the week with a couple of sharper sessions.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the legs seemed OK following last Sunday’s Great North Run efforts and was ticking along quite nicely in my early runs in the week. Thursdays session was one that Mike had encouraged me to do before London as it gets a bit of speed into the legs and the recoveries aren’t true recoveries but at a more steady effort. I had decided however that I would take it a little easier than pre-London with the Northern six-stage relays in mind, which would make up my second session of the week. The 1 minute 'on' efforts averaged between 4:37 and 5:01 pace and the recoveries were anywhere between 5:45 and 6:13 so all in all a very nice session.
It is in this week that you hope you will start to see a bit of freshness returning to the legs and I was pleased to see on Friday that my recovery run felt virtually effortless, ticking along at 6:50 pace almost asleep! It’s these encouraging runs in the taper that really help build the confidence that it’ll all be good on the day!
Then to Saturday and a trip over the Pennines to sunny Blackpool for the Northern Six-Stage relays. I managed to find myself in the A-Team such is the current list of injuries at the club and I was to run the fourth leg over a course of 6.6km. As any readers of my blog will know I don't tend to do too well at the shorter stuff so this would be a good test with the added pressure of trying to ensure I didn't mess things up for the team! I took over from Patrick Vis who came in in eighth position and although the guy in seventh was only about 5 seconds in front there was a big gap in front of him so I knew it was to be a tough leg to try and get back closer to the guy in sixth, if at all! I caught the guy in seventh after half a mile and got my head down and ran really strongly all the way to the finish. Again, I didn't clock watch which made the whole thing very enjoyable. I just raced. I finished in 7th position having closed the gap to 6th and passed over to Dominic Easter. My leg was timed at 20:47 which is about 5:04 per mile pace. We ultimately ended up in 5th position which wasn't a terrible outcome but certainly with a full strength team we would expect to have been up there. This was a really pleasing run for me personally and good to see some freshness returning. Although I don't think I could have run much quicker, I felt strong at the end almost as if I could have gone around again, albeit a touch slower with a couple of minutes recovery. Of course I didn't and just did a couple miles jog to warm down.
Whilst this week has gone well and I am incredibly relaxed about the race itself and can’t wait to get going, I do actually struggle with this bit of the taper for other reasons. I have suffered with pretty bad anxiety verging on depression this week and the strange thing is it’s not about the potential outcome of the race. That will take care of itself I know that but without wanting to be too melodramatic it almost feels a bit like grief. Grief that the process is almost over. What will I do after? How will I cope without this goal to focus on? I’ve felt miserable, been incredibly irritable and have struggled to see the point in lots of things. What was the point in training this hard and putting everything in to it for it all just to be over? This whole build up and race has completely consumed me for the past few months and in a few short days it’ll no longer be there. How will I move forward and what will I look to do after? I will be OK and my darling wife Hania tells me it will all clear. The fog will rise and there will be other running targets to look forward to. Sometimes I do just wish I wasn’t so obsessive about these things though! I mean it doesn’t matter does it? It only really matters to me. Whatever I run has no bearing on anything in the world and nobody really cares apart from me. Sure if I run well people will be pleased for me as I am for others when they achieve what they want to but no-one can be as attached to your own goal as you are. It just doesn’t work like that and rightly so. Something makes me want to get up at 5am and do the hard miles training twice a day, something drives me to do that, something in my brain tells me it’s what I need to do for my sanity. The reality is that marathon training is a selfish sport and despite me trying to make my training mostly invisible to my family, it isn’t completely and it can’t be. It consumes everything you do. You live and breathe it for weeks and months on end. So maybe this feeling is partly guilt of my own self-indulgence? Whatever it is, it is definitely the darker side of running. It'll probably get darker still as I have already started my carb-depletion before the reload starts in earnest on Thursday. I just have to hope that I can avoid all last-minute hiccoughs and do my hardest to ensure that it all comes together like a dream next Sunday.
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