Not so smart?

So after a night of non-sleep I am thinking the this whole "go-to-Europe-to-run-a-marathon-thing" was not so smart.

Body clock is way off, and after a night of very restless, sleep, I was in my deepest deepest sleep at 8am when the alarm went off. Got up and ran my 4-5 miler, and also added in the required strides. That all feels fine, but we'll have to see how this time difference thing plays out.

Ran a little bit more of the course this morning, so I have now covered the first couple miles. It's not too windy, but this is the part of the course that is sheltered. Forecast is still 20MPH from the E/NE.

The Eagle has landed

I am finally in Edinburgh, after a long but uneventful trip. The hotel is very close to the start and right by the "Seat of King Arthur". I ran round Arthur's seat twice this evening for a leisurely 6-7 miler. Lots of people were out running and biking.

I covered some of the course. Blue line shows my run today, red line shows race course. I'll cover a little more tomorrow, now that I have my bearings.


It was a little windy when exposed to the East, so Sunday is going to be interesting. Forecast has changed again; rain is gone, but the wind is now predicted to get up to 20 MPH. It's going to be a slog getting out to mile 18.

I'm running at 9am tomorrow morning to get used to race time - this of course, assumes that I wake up.

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.