Week in Review (W/E 18th December 2016)

It’s been a while! Since the Frankfurt Marathon at the end of October I’ve been rather busy, having relocated from London to Worcester in order to be closer to my new nephew as well as my father who is unfortunately ill at the moment. I am now comfortably settled, and enjoying the short commute from my bedroom to the living room, as well as the much friendlier runners and more scenic views offered by the paths of Worcester.

The five week break between Frankfurt and the start of training for Brighton disappeared before I knew it. Initially it seemed like my recovery from Frankfurt was going very well, but with all the effort of relocating my life across the country, plus a bit of illness and an allergy to my parents dog, my fitness took a bit of a nosedive along with my motivation. However I managed to keep plugging away at it, and thankfully after the first two weeks of my Brighton Marathon plan my fitness seems to be returning to something close to it’s pre-Frankfurt peak.

Overall I was very happy with my training from Frankfurt. I didn’t miss any runs and posted consistently high mileage. My fitness improved a lot over the 12 weeks, and the training prepared me well for my third marathon. I was especially pleased with all the fasted running I did, which I’m fairly confident helped ensure I could run Frankfurt with just water and energy drinks. I will therefore again be following a plan for the Pfitzinger and Douglas book “Advanced Marathoning”, although this time I am stepping up to the 85+ miles plan which all being well will top out at about 105 miles a week!

Frankfurt Marathon 2016

I’m under no illusion this will be very hard work, but high mileage training seems to suit me and my recent switch to working from home full time means I should have the time needed to squeeze in over 100 miles of running in one week. Who knows what the future holds, I may not have the time to devote to such a high mileage plan again, so I figure I should give it a go while I have the chance. The way the training is structured many of the extra miles come from additional short recovery runs, so I can easily start to drop those if I find the mileage is a little too much for me.

The one main thing I want to improve upon from Frankfurt is my quad strength. My quads were again the first thing to start complaining during the marathon, so I want to try and fix this for Brighton if I can. I will therefore be aiming to do a bit more strength training (particularly squats), as well as some hill sprints which should hopefully toughen them up. I also want to try to add a few marathon pace miles at the end of some long runs, to help me get used to running that pace on very tired legs.

Hopefully the increased mileage and training tweaks will help me toward my main goal – a sub-3 hour time. I will decide upon precise goals closer to the time once I’ve seen how training has gone, but sub-3 is definitely the minimum target this time around. The idea of running 6:52/mi for 26.2 miles seems a little scary right now, but this time last year I would have said the same for running 7:02/mi as I did at Frankfurt. I’m looking forward to working hard over the remaining 16 weeks of my plan, and seeing what I can achieve…

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