It’s 12 weeks to the London Marathon and I’m pulling together my training plan and goals for the race. Race day goals are still far away, but I know my training goals – train like I always do and give my best to improve every single day. 

I spent time getting reacquainted with my foam roller and my new hip, glute and core routine.

 Monday – My hips, glutes and core routine

Tuesday – 6 x 3 min Hill Repeats on the treadmill 

Wednesday – My hips, glutes and core routine

Thursday – 2 x 2 mile repeats @ 11:45 in the AM, Ashton’s spin class in the PM

Every time I’ve tried to do some sort of speed workout in the morning, I’ve failed. The cold made it impossible to warm up sufficiently even after 30 minutes of running. This week, a good low 40s helped and I stuck to the 2 mile repeats. Which is one of the most torturous form of speed work anyone can think of! It’s fast enough to be just 15-20 seconds slower than a mile repeat pace, but long enough to want to hang on to dear life. 

When I did the spin class in the evening, I thought that I had nothing more left to give. But I guess I found something deep in me and went for it because after the class he said that I was the most improved from week 1 to week 3. Little things like that is what makes me want to give my extra when I am otherwise spent.

Friday – My hips, glutes and core routine

Saturday – Pace based long run 12 miles

Since my biggest issue is speed, I’ve added in pace based long runs into my training. This is the same as what coach had me do a few times before Dopey Challenge. It helped me to get my legs moving and helped me understand the importance of maintaining a pace for long periods of time. My run was 2 miles warmup, 4 miles @ 13:30, 3 miles @ 13:00, 2 miles @ 12:30, 1 mile cooldown. I’m assuming that something around 13:00-13:00 will be my marathon pace. 

When I started my run, I went easy on warmup. I have run with heart rate readings since July of 2014. But of late I’ve been very disheartened with it. My z2 (145) pace was 15:30-16:00 in July of 2014 and it is STILL the same !!!! I haven’t seen it improve like it’s supposed to. Anyway … I kept to the low HRs for 2 miles and was concerned how I’d make the jump from 16:30 to 13:30 for the pace run. I added in some fartleks to get the legs moving and music to focus and started. I held strong and steady all throughout. Mr. FauxTriathlete joined me for the last 4 miles but I didn’t really need him. 

It was only 9 miles out of the 12 that I did this pace workout, so it was easier to hold than the 15 miles I came apart last time. But I made a good start and I feel that I am on the right track to marathon training and my goals for the London Marathon.

Sunday – Recovery run of 3 miles

It was a week where I took 2 rest days and yet another day was a super short recovery run. I could’ve added in the swim sessions, but all the runs I did was intense and pace based. And I felt it was wise to let the body recover a bit from that intensity. 

Satisfactory Progress

I have built up a good endurance base from all those slow Zone 2 runs for the past 20 months. I never got to apply the speed portion of my training to anything beyond a stand alone half marathon. And now’s the time to pull it together and see what I can do.

It’s still 12 weeks from marathon day, but I am very happy about how the speed work all came together this week. I still wish that my “normal” pace would go back to the 13:30 it was instead of the 15:30 it seems to be these days, but I guess forcing my normal pace to be that slow is helping me hit the pace targets when I go for it. And I’m hoping that I’ll see the gains on marathon day.

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