Taper Time upon us

Oh dear I have not been could at keeping this diary up to date so this is long over due.

Well training and life have been busy busy but that is no excuse to talk about things. So without further ado where are we. March was a good month overall but not a great month.

Training wise I was hitting 2-3 quality anaerobic workouts per week with many of them bang on target pace for the sessions set. I had a few short tempo runs as well and although I did miss a few midweek medium runs (9-11 miles) I was really beginning to feel fitness like never before to be honest.

As March closed with 216 miles for the month I was regretting missing at those easy runs which would have boosted mileage to around 250-260. But given this was the second month in a row of 200+ miles I was not looking at this negatively.

As we moved into April things have been more focused on sharpening and some longer tempo runs (13-15 mile range). I have missed some runs but averaged 50 miles a week over the past 4 weeks off 6 runs and really focused on sleeping well and actively monitoring resting heart rate (this has become automatic as soon as I wake up now) to ensure that recovery wise I am picking up on any issues before they happen with fatigue. Fortunately I have not suffered any illness during the last 14 weeks and amazingly the more I have run the better I have felt. One reason = lots of easy running!!

This weekend marks the last two weeks before Halstead marathon and to be honest I let the recurring issue in my head about getting enough long runs skew my thinking. After yesterdays 10 miles which went disastrously wrong as the effort of trying to hit 7:30 minute miles was proving so hard that I couldn't get my head around it. Then I realised today that earlier in the week I had a cracking workout on Monday with 9 miles at 7:05 average (6:36 last mile) which was not my prescribed workout. So perhaps this coupled with the running load of other workouts has affected me somehow. I don't know though.

So going back to the distance question, I haven't really run more than 16-17 miles in training but they have been off the back of good 10+ miles the day before at tempo pace so today I decided to do one last long run of 20 miles more the mental side of things. Well that was a mistake maybe in that although my legs felt ok I just didn't feel right the whole time and again. My heart rate this morning was around 47 (48 yesterday) and normally it has been floating around 42-43 most days so perhaps I am coming down with something but I don't have any symptoms..yet

 I was sweating bucket loads and towards 18 mile mark the legs felt heavy. I was only plodding today at 9 minute mile pace so this was a little concerning but we shall have to wait and see if I am coming down with something.

As I move into the taper period I am looking at whether trying for a 3:10 is now possible based off the training I have done. One way to help measure where I am pace wise is that I am going to do a 5k-10k time trial on Saturday next week to see whether I can hit 20 mins for the 5k or sub 42 minutes for 10k at 95% effort. Learning not to go at 100% effort in training has been a revelation for me so I am hoping that I can get a good indicator of where I am.

Of course these are much shorter distances so they won't reveal everything but keeping healthy in the next 2 weeks is top of the agenda and of course getting some new shorts and shirt to race in as well :-)