My original weekly plan was to place a double workout "a la Canova" on Wednesday, something like 20K+20K with a lot of Marathon pace...
Then, since I needed to nurse my left foot, I preferred to stick to easy runs on soft surface.
The foot kept improving, so I was left wondering how to set-up a good long run on the week-end, since I am now 4 weeks out from the marathon, so it was supposed to be one of the hardest workouts.
Luckily I got inspiration from Thomas and his "combo weekend" . It seemed to me a very tough workout, but if he could do it, why not me....
But I seriously complicated the matters by:
a) I forgot the right pair of orthotics in Dongguan... so I had to fit into my Asics Kayano size 265 a pair of orthotics which were done for a 270-275 shoe...
b) for a data obsessed runner, this was a serious mistake: I also forgot the Polar back in Dongguan, while I carried the Garmin back to HK, but without HR belt and charger cable...
So I was left with many Polar HR belts and footpot and a discharged Garmin...
The only way out was to run "old style", with just a stopwatch...
Therefore:
Tuesday to Friday: easy runs in the forest. Foot going better, running on soft is totally another story. Around 15-17km every day
Saturday: "tempo run" to get toasted for sunday's long run. W/u 5k, then I clocked 10k in 35'25". Not bad since I was wearing Kayano trainers and it was raining.
The only problem was that the orthotics were way too large for that model of shoes and they start rubbing my big toes and I ended up with a huge blister..
total 17km, felt not too tired.. and not ice baths or other recovery techniques, but spent the whole day on D-I-Y.
Sunday: felt very apprehensive before the start because it was my first experiment of this kind of training approach... my legs were tired but not aching. I switched into marathon shoes to avoid blister, but I could know foresee how the forefoot could react.
I did not have any reference for my HR, so I run 1h10' at sensation checking the splits on some milestone...
after those 15k-16km it was time to go into serious business and I was really scared of what could have happened...
well... 3'40"-3'40"-3'45" and I felt a bit already in pain...then, the incredible happened: after 5k of struggle, I started to feel better and better and my splits went down to 3'35". I was not even suffering too much, more or less like when you are around Km25 of a marathon, where there is not yet extreme sufference, but a lot of concentration is needed to keep the pace. I ended up with a couple of 3'35" even with 2 underpasses on the way and incredibly I saw also the "finish line" (well... yes, I used the markings of a race to check the split).
Total: 32km with 15k in 54'48" (which is an excellent 3'39"/k pace !!).
This workout gives a projection of a marathon time of 2h34'10"...maybe too good to be true, but now I am totally confident that I could do a good race in 4 weeks time.
Now the problem is how to fill these 4 weeks without screwing up ...
Total weekly: 108km
3 comments:
You seem to be in remarkably great shape.
I think the biggest mistake would be to keep pushing hard and get injured or burned out!
One think I've really learned now is to have the confidence to back off a little once I hit good form!
Thanks Rick,
I got the lesson already in the past. It is 100% true that most "hard core" amateur runners probably arrive too worn-out to the marathon, instead of being well rested.
Now I am basically done with really hard workouts and I will just add 2-3 tune-up workouts at marathon pace, but on fresh legs.
I will do a lot of very easy run in between
That's a great workout! I know all about the fear of the second part of the second run, believe me.
Rick is right of course.
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