Today on my training calendar was my penultimate long run before the big event. I know I haven't told many people about my forthcoming race so I'm not sharing this post to Facebook because I don't think anyone, except perhaps Ed, reads my blogs if I don't share with Facebook and Ed knows all about my plans so I don't mind.
I've have a plan in mind which I'm going to use on race day to keep within my goal pace so I used this today to see how well it worked. Basically, I just need to do some maths in my head as I go along, i.e. at the end of each mile, when my watch vibrates and beeps at me, it displays the time taken for the last mile so my plan is to keep a track of how much time I have 'in the bank'. Basically, this is how much time I am under/over my goal pace (my goal pace for a sub four hour marathon is 9.09 minute mile) so I know how good my chances are of coming in under four hours and I know whether if I'm really tired I can ease off a little.
I have also decided to use my first mile as something of a warm up so I wasn't going to be too bothered if it was out of my goal pace as, based on my last couple of long runs where I've been well under my goal pace, I knew I'd have enough time to make it back up.
My first mile took 9 minutes 27 seconds so the first 'bank' figure I had in my head was -18 seconds. I made this up straight away in the second mile as this took 8.47 and mile three was done in 8.30, giving me 43 seconds in the bank.
By the end of mile 8, I had 2 minutes, 29 seconds in the bank.
It started to go a bit wrong after this though and my miles were getting slower. The next mile was slower because I had to run slightly uphill along the locks at Heapey but I don't really have any excuse for the rest of it. It felt great to get to the turnaround at 9.25 miles as I knew I was on the home bound stretch then.
Things didn't get any easier though and I was really struggling. I've set out below my 'bank'
Mile Time +/- Bank
1 9.27 -18 -18
2 8.47 22 4
3 8.30 39 43
4 8.43 26 1.09
5 8.50 19 1.28
6 8.52 17 1.45
7 8.30 39 2.24
8 9.04 5 2.29
9 9.17 -8 2.21
10 9.02 7 2.28
11 9.04 5 2.33
12 9.14 -5 2.28
13 9.14 -5 2.23
14 9.09 0 2.23
15 9.15 -6 2.17
16 9.19 -10 2.07
17 8.58 11 2.18
18 9.09 0 2.18
18.5 4.23 11 2.29
So that gave me 2 minutes 29 seconds in the bank at the end of it which isn't too bad I suppose and my average pace was 9 minutes 1 second per mile. The trouble is, I didn't feel like I had another 7.7 miles left in me which was a little worrying and even if I could have run that much further the pace would have dropped substantially and I'd eat into the 2 minutes 29 seconds pretty quickly. Perhaps I went too fast at the start and tired myself out?
I'm just a bit worried because I only have one long run left now (22 miles in two weeks time) so if that doesn't go well, I'm worried that I won't achieve my goal on the day. The last two long runs I have done (both 17 miles) went really well though and I felt like I still had a lot left in me and was running comfortably the whole time. The first one I did in an 8.46 pace and the second in an 8.53 pace, both of which would bring me in way under four hours so I really should focus on them rather than this one.
Why is it we always seem to dwell on the negatives though?
I'm going to make sure I eat well and don't drink much alcohol over the next two weeks and see if that has any bearing on my performance as I've been eating quite poorly lately and have had a lot of boozy nights out so time to get all that out of my system and have a detox I think.
Total distance - 18.5 miles
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