Yorkshire Marathon 2016 - W/E 14th August - Eight weeks to go

M 13 miles (6:13mm), 5.5 miles (7:08mm)
T 11 miles (6:32mm), 6 miles with some hill sprints and strides (7:13mm)
W 9 miles (7:13mm), 4.5 miles (7:34mm)
T 17 miles with 3, 6, 9, 12, 12, 9, 6, 3 minute efforts (6:00mm)
F 10.5 miles (6:35mm), 7 miles HA (7:28mm)
S 9 miles HA (7:15mm)
S 24 miles, including 22 miles @ 91.7% MP (5:52mm)

Total 117 miles (6:35mm)
Aerobic efficiency 981 beats per mile
Weight 141.7 lbs
Body Fat 10.7%

For the first half of this week I was still on holiday in Poland and so would see how the legs were before attempting another Marathon Specific session. Optimistically I thought it would be Wednesday but I let let my head rule my heart and pushed it back to Thursday to give an extra days easy running after last week's long tempo. That said I didn't feel to bad on Monday (a decent progressive run in the morning!) or Tuesday other than a bit of expected tiredness in the legs. I did however make sure I took the Wednesday incredibly easy with a sight seeing run at a very leisurely pace.

 Looking back towards Westerplatte, where the first shots were fired to start the Second World War

'Molo Brzezno' - Pier at Gdansk Brzezno

Grand Hotel Sopot - a venue we considered for our wedding reception, but my Yorkshireness got the better of me.

And so onto Wednesday which would be the first of two main marathon specific sessions of this week. It was to be a medium length run with decent efforts at and above MP. The session was 3 mins, 6 mins, 9 mins, 12 mins, 12 mins, 9 mins, 6 mins, 3 mins with recoveries of 2 minute jogs except after the 12 minutes where I took an extra minute. Now its been a few weeks since any fast running and within the first three minute effort I was writing my letter of resignation to the marathon Gods questioning whether I could put myself through another campaign. I quickly grew a pair of balls though and decided to just work into the session and hope for the best! In my previous blog I mentioned I was taking a more Canova style approach with this build up where some of the faster running needs to be at somewhat quicker than PB marathon pace. The six minute effort was very hard but by the nine minute effort I was starting to feel a little more comfortable and by the 12 I was very focused on a successful session. And so it turned out thankfully. I was working incredibly hard in the last couple of efforts and the legs were filling with fatigue but it was job done with the 3, 6, 9, 12 minute efforts coming in at 107% MP - 5:03mm, 103%MP - 5:16mm, 102%MP - 5:19mm, 100.4%MP - 5:23mm respectively. The paces weren't quite what I had hoped for but on reflection a very decent start to the specific phase and very satisfying to have the first sandwich session banked. It gave me a total of 60 minutes at an average of 7 seconds per mile quicker than marathon PB pace.

I flew back to Blighty on Thursday afternoon so there was no second run that day and Friday's run saw fatigued legs in the morning run but the pace was still pretty pleasing. I followed this up with a 'by-not-so-popular-demand' treadmill Heat Acclimatisation run of 7 miles. I had only planned 6 miles but Andy Murray was on the box in a griping final set so kept going a bit further to see the conclusion of the match.

Hope you like the cheesy music. :-)

The second hard run of the week was Sunday's long fast run. This was done fasted and without fuel/water on the run. The aim had been to run at about 6:00mm pace but I felt very comfortable from the off and the run average 5:52 which is 91.7% of current marathon PB pace (Canova recommends a number of long fast runs at 88-95% of MP for a really specific session). Even taking into consideration a bit of Garmin optimism, I suspect it was more accurately 5:55-5:57 pace. There were lots more miles that could have been covered at that pace too so it was a nice confidence booster, especially after how difficult last week's 16 mile Tempo felt!

I also built up the confidence to step on the scales after Saturday's run and was pleased to see that I seem to have maintained my weight pretty much. I'm not sure anyone has every managed to lose weight while on holiday in Poland for two weeks, certainly not me so to come back the same weight is a bit of a relief.

This was a really good week overall with a build in mileage and two hard sessions.