Travel Day is here!

Flying to Edinburgh today (and technically tomorrow too). Leave SF this evening and get to Edinburgh Thursday about 5pm. Need to go thru Terminal 5 at Heathrow so there is no telling if I will actually survive the trip. Assuming I do, I'll run a few miles Thursday evening "on the course" to unwind the legs after flying.

This morning is my last tune-up run: 7 miles with 2 at race pace, so I'll run those about 7:00 pace.

Weather isn't looking any better: still windy, but now it's going to rain too.....

Uh oh! - it's getting windy

The forecast for Sunday is getting worse. Wind is picking up, now up to 16MPH from the NE, which makes miles 6-18 hard, but 18-26 easier.

Waiting

Now just waiting for the big day.

This morning was a slow recovery 6 mile run. Yesterday was 13 miles, with the last 3 at just under 7 minute pace (round about marathon pace) - it all felt great and the many measurements/statistics look good. I am as ready as I am likely to ever be.

A morning easy 5 and afternoon easy 4 for Tuesday, 7 with 2 at race pace on Wednesday, then it's time to get on the plane. Get to Edinburgh Thursday afternoon (have to change in London, hopefully I don't get stuck in Terminal 5 at Heathrow) and I'll run an easy 5 miler to unwind the legs. Friday morning I plan to run at 9am Edinburgh time (race time) to get the body clock as ready as I can. Another easy 4 miles Saturday morning and then it's game time.

Trying to eat lots of carbs, drink lots of water and not drink lots of beer this week. So far so good, but it's only Monday.

Weather is still pretty much the same forecast...

Weather Update

The weather forecast amazingly didn't change all that much in the last 24 hours......

12 MPH easterly still forecast, but now it looks like rain the day before.

Race Weather Update

Forecast is now back to normal, which is an Easterly wind....

I will keep an eye on this over the next week.

Race Plan

So I am all planned for the race. I've built an overly complex spreadsheet (based on one I found on the web) that calculates all my mile splits based on the course elevation changes, anticipated wind, water stops, and race strategy. It produces a nice little bracelet that you can strap around your wrist so you remember what you are supposed to be doing after 3 hours of running.

The one on the left is the plan for a 3:10, assuming no significant wind. I have a bunch of others with different time goals and different wind factors. As of now, the 3:10, no wind adjustment is my official plan!

Right now, about 8 days before the race the weather looks OK. Mid 50's, 10 MPH winds, 20% chance of rain. The prevaling wind is easterly, which means a headwind from miles 5-16 and a tailwind from 16-26. However, currently the forecast is for NW, which means cross wind most of the way.

Looks like the weather is going to be the big variable and it really could do just about anything. So flexibility is going to be the key.

Here's the course.

Final Workout

My final pre-marathon "real workout" is done. 3 x 1600 meters at 5k pace. I've been really light on this type of speed workout as it was the thing that was most likely to get me injured, but I decided it would be good to get a little speedwork into the end of the schedule just to get tuned up for the big day.

It's going to be really hot today (high 90's) so I went out early to run laps at the high school track. Out the door before 7am and it was already creeping up towards 70 degrees, not a trace of wind.

My 5k pace is "supposed to be" 6:04 minute miles. Mind you, I have never run a 5k at that pace but there you go. That works out to about 90 seconds per 400 m lap. So 3x4 laps with a 2 minute recovery jog in between.
.....First 4 laps were 89, 91, 91, 90 - 6:01
.....Second 4 laps were 87,92,91,93 - 6:03
.....Third 4 laps were 90, 93, 93, 90 - 6:06
Last set was definitely hard but I was happy hitting that last lap in 90. I was glad it wasn't 4 x 1600m.

So now it's all easy stuff from here to Scotland; nothing but easy miles, a few strides and some marathon pace miles to get the timing down.

Taper Week 2

So a 17-18 miler out and back over the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito yesterday morning wrapped up my first taper week. 62 miles, with an unplanned day off Friday.

I have decided that my unimpressive 10k race on Saturday (in which I was 14th out of 310 finshers - so 296 people were even less impressive than me) is a sign that perhaps a sub 3 marathon attempt is going to end very badly. And that perhaps a more sensible plan would be to aim for 3:10. So that is now the official plan - 3:09:59, which is 7:15 average pace. If it is all going swimmingly at mile 20 I'll speedup for the last 6 miles. And if it's not, I'll be very grateful I wasn't running at 6:52 pace.

It will be adjusted only for these 2 scenarios:
1) the weather is dreadful, in which case I will probably just go for 3:20
2) I change my mind and go for sub 3 - which won't be smart, but is not out of the question.

This week is a short week at 54 miles. Still keeping the intesnity/pace of the workouts, but the mileage is dropping.
Monday - 6 miles easy pace
Tuesday - 8 miles w 4 miles at tempo (6:29)
Wednesday - 6 miles easy pace
Thursday - 8 miles w 3x1600m at 5k pace (6:04)
Friday - 6 miles easy pace
Saturday - 7 miles w 5x100m Strides
Sunday - 13 miles easy pace
So it's all easy stuff except for Tuesday and Thursday.

I can already notice the effect of lowering the mileage last week and things are feeling good.

Out of Tune

So this morning was a 10k tune up race......

It was a bad race (long and a very twisty/turny last 1/4 mile), and I ran it really badly (wimped out)...... Some friends who ran this last year said they were around 1 min slow so I figured the course was probably a bit long but figured I'd go for it anyway.

Warmed up OK, started fine.
Mile 1 (goal 6:17) - actual 6:16
- no mile marker so this was by garmin distance
Mile 2 (goal 12:34) - actual 13:37!
- this freaked me out as it I hadn't slowed down
- checked the distance and this mile was way long
- garmin was at 2.16m
- pace for the 2.16m was about right at 6:19 and felt OK
Mile 3 (goal 18:51) - actual 20:02 - 3.16 miles
- so despite running 6:20 pace for 3.16 miles i was over 20 mins and not even at the "5k" mark.

At this point I got a stitch and decided it wasn't worth killing myself for a long course, wimped out and jogged it in around 6:40 pace for a very unimpressive 41:17. (6.35 miles - 6:29 pace). I came about 15th out of 500 or so people.

Overall, a really lame race. I hate crappy courses, it is not difficult to measure them properly, but even with that I had a crappy race. I was off pace at mile 3 by a few seconds and then I wimped out - not very good. I will decide what this means to my Edinburgh 3 hour goal later.

Midweek Update

The week is progressing well. My legs are now back to normal and I'm feeling fit and healthy. Heart rate is low and things are all looking good. Had my annual Doctor checkup this week, and I was 18lbs lighter than the last one.

Monday was an uneventful double for 10 easy miles.
Tuesday's tempo was short, but fast. Did 3 miles at an average of 6:09, which is a little faster than tempo pace (6:29). But it was a downhill route. Miles were 6:17, 5:58, 6:15 - so you can tell where the bulk of the downhill was. Fekt good to run that fast.
Wednesday was a windy 12 mile out and back. Ran right by the bay and on the way out it was a 20 mph headwind: very tough going. Of course, coming home was great. if it's that windy in Edinburgh all bets are off and I'll be lucky to run a 3:30.
This morning was an easy 6ish with 5 strides.

More easy miles tomorrow then the 10k tune-up on Saturday. If it's not windy I'll go for 39:04 - but I know it's a stretch goal as I've done zero speedwork for months.
Sunday should be a 17 miler in San Francisco (probably a little hungover....) to give me low 60's for the week.

Tapering

So I am officially tapering for my race......

Rounded out last week with my tenth and final run of over 20 miles on Saturday (20.6m at 7:50 pace) and then a couple easy runs Sunday for 13 and change. Weekly total was 82 miles. Stepping it down from the planned 100 seems to have helped a little and my legs are starting to feel a little less heavy.

I looked back at my original training plan (Daniels' 24 week, 70 mile max) and noticed that I am supposed to do a 8-10k tune-up race this Saturday. I'd somehow lost that in the various replanning activities.

Fortunately there is one just down the road on Saturday morning that looks pretty good, so I'll probably run that. I haven't done much in the way of fast running so it should be interesting. My equivalent time for a 3 hours marathon is 39:04 (6:17/mile pace). That's a 80 seconds faster than my best 10k time so it's going to be ugly.

I should definitely PR, but I'm not sure that 6.2 miles at 6:17 pace is gonna just happen.

Rest of this week looks like this...
Mon - Recovery 10 as a double
Tue - short tempo (4m) 8m overall
Wed - easy 12
Thu - easy 6 with some strides
Fri - easy 5
Sat - 10k race 39:04 goal
Sun - easy 17
should be in the low 60s for the week.

The week so far....

Not a great week so far. Last Sunday's run left me feeling beaten up (I dont think the last 4 months of solid training has helped much either) and I probably should have just taken a day or so off, but instead I have been slogging thru.

Monday was a sloggy 7m in the morning that felt like my legs were 200lb weights. For the afternoon I picked it up a little and ran 4 miles at 7:30 pace.
Tuesday's tempo didn't really happen, but I did get a fast (6:20) mile in as part of a lunchtime 5 miler.
Wednesday started with an early 7m slog that felt much like Monday morning's run. In the evening I decided to go up the track and try to get my legs working. After some warmup I did 1m at 5k pace (6:04) , 1m at tempo pace (6:26) and 1m at marathon pace (6:50). This was a good run and my legs enjoyed the change of pace (and also the softer track surface and total absence of hills).
Thursday was a reasonably flat 13 miler with 3 miles at 6:52. The 3 fast miles were gradual uphill - nothing big, just 150' climb, but enough to keep me honest. A good run.
Friday was a 7m easy run this morning and my legs are back to feeling like lead. Good news is that I have no double planned today.

Saturday is 10 easy miles, I'll probably split that to 6 and 4.
Sunday is my last long run - a 21-22 miler with 3 miles at MP.
There's a chance I'll switch the Sat/Sun workouts around as I am in SF drinking/eating too much Saturday night and the thought of 22 miles hungover isn't too appealing.

I'm hoping that the next 3 weeks taper will restore some of the sproinkiness in my legs. If not, I am in deep doodoo for Edinburgh.