Week in review

This week has been a very busy one. The week started with huge uncertainty about my calf and my chances of getting to my first marathon. Thanks to some very sound advice from physio-4-motion (and some very sound taping support that he put on my calf), I got back on the move by getting through a number of sessions on the cross-trainer. So at the end of the week I became happier at the thought of attempting the 26.2 miles round Milton Keynes in two weeks time.

My cross-training week:-

Sun - 1hr

Mon - 1hr 20mins

Tues - 1hr 20mins

Thurs - 1hr 20mins

Sat - 3hr (just over 23 miles according to my maths adding up the cross-trainer readouts)

That was a total of 8hrs of cross-training through the week, at roughly 2.5miles per 20min program (dang machine only lets you work in 20min blocks) means I got through roughly 60miles of work. [not that I have any feel for how reliable the cross-trainers estimations of work done are!]

I won't be running before the race other than a short 5km circuit to test my calf about three days before my marathon attempt. Until then I'll be combining things like cycling and the cross-trainer to work my legs and lungs as thoroughly as I can in the time remaining. There is something odd about not running going in the lead up a running event, but I guess it is not all that rare?

Towards the end of the week my race pack arrived in the post box, which I was pleased to find produced excitement in me that I hope will see my through the next few training sessions and into the race. At this point I have to really get my head into the preparation, getting kit organised and meals thought through going into the taper phase. Nerves are building in general, but I am currently most worried about pacing having not completed a planned run in a month. It is not knowing what my cruising pace is right now that is making it really difficult to formulate my marathon pace plan. Increasingly I am coming to the opinion that I'm just going to have to go out super steady, forget totally about my running watch, tick the miles off and do anything I can to get round without injury. I guess that is a plan?