4 days and 10 hours to go

What, no bulleted headlines?!


Yes, it's time to express my inner marathoner - enough with the bish-bash-bosh highlights - time to let it all out in my best fluent English!  I shall take you into my confidence and share my thoughts on my near 15 weeks of preparation and how I'm feeling as the race approaches.   You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wish I'd stuck to the bullet-points and graphs!



In many ways I've had an excellent preparation.  Living on my own, working at home, getting in plenty of training runs in daylight, indulgently lazing for hours in the bath after long runs.  Four years ago (time does fly)  I had to employ far more selfishness to train properly, negotiating my way around my obligations to two children under 6 and a wife recovering from serious illness.   This time I could be obsessively focused with a much clearer conscience as a relatively unencumbered 50-year-old born-again bachelor.    I may not ever have a better time to train for a marathon in fact.

Broadly, I stuck to the 2010 plan and it's gone pretty well, apart from hitting an over-training blip 6 weeks out.  I recovered from that, managed another mileage peak and the taper seems to be doing it's job - I feel fit, but my legs are now feeling quite fresh and, despite the blip, my confidence is returning.  I think I am in pretty good shape, but not as certain of my fitness this-time-around. 

I managed to average about 60 miles/week for the peak 6-week period of my training, which I was very pleased with.   Both my extended marathon-effort and my 20+-mile runs went well, perhaps even better than 2010 on the whole.  I also posted a few excellent 10k-pace training sessions along thee way, hitting some of my best splits since 2010.  Spending my last week before the taper in the beautiful surroundings of Lyme Regis was an excellent tonic and made my big 22.5-mile effort an absolute (albeit very undulating) pleasure.

So, what's going to happen on the day?   If I am in the shape indicated by my best sessions, I could have an excellent race - perhaps even close to my 2010 time of 2:51:40.   However, due to my blip 6 weeks out, I am no longer feeling so self-assured.    I'd certainly hope to go under 3 hours - even 2hrs 55mins is not unrealistic.  Perhaps feeling realistically-optimistic is the best way to approach the challenge of a marathon anyway?  In 2010 I knew I was in great shape, but this was tempered by having zero marathon experience.  This time, I have the experience of 2010, but tempered by a degree of uncertainty about the shape I'm in.  The result of this is that I feel pretty much the same mentally as four years ago at this point.   I simply hope I enjoy the race and give a good account of myself.

I've done the hard work, had a few bad weeks (but mostly good ones).  Time to trust in the work I've done, enjoy the rest of the taper, arrive at the start line feeling fresh and positive, set off sensibly and let the training do its work.  Thanks for taking the time to read my blog over the last 3-and-a-half months.  I hope you've enjoyed sharing my journey to the start-line of the Rotterdam Marathon 2014.

I dedicate my efforts to my two wonderful and beautiful children

Cheers
Asylum Pete