Tim's 2012 marathon training by tnmboswell

I’m knocking on the door of the first milestone of 2011.  My previous highest mileage weeks have been in the early 40s – to be precise, about 42.5 in 2010 and 43.5 in 2011.  This week’s mileage has taken me to 42.5, and next week I’ll do my highest mileage week to date. 

In fact, there’s not been too much of a mileage jump this week, as last week was just over 40.  The extra miles have come from one extra on Saturday’s long run and one more on Tuesday’s recovery run.

Monday’s run was a 8 miles with 10 lots of 100 metre strides at the end.  I’m still not sure whether I’m running these strides right as I’ve seen conflicting advice on how to run them, but what I’m trying to do is lengthen my stride, keep my knees high and concentrate on pumping my arms.  It’s fair to say I look totally stupid doing them, so I hope they’re providing some sort of benefit.

Tuesday’s recovery run was the last in the colder temperatures as it had turned mild and wet by Wednesday.  I think Wednesday’s run (10 miles General Aerobic, as the training plan puts it), is one of those I’ll keep in the memory bank for marathon day.  There’s not really a 10 mile route that I can think of around Warwick and Leamington that would be street-lit, so I strapped on my head torch and headed out towards Kenilworth.  This is quite a hilly route – no real problems there – but it was dark and spitting with rain.  Not a major test of character, but enough to raise an eyebrow when, about 7 miles in, I was getting wet and dazzled by the oncoming traffic while trying to negotiate the hill back into Leek Wooton.  Roll on light evenings!

Thursday was a rest / cross training day, so I took a trip to the gym for a spin class.  Since I changed working hours, I’ve not managed to get to the Tuesday and Thursday morning spin sessions so it was good to see some of the regular faces again.  After spending most of the week ‘plodding’ (see previous posts about why I’m trying to train slower this year!), it felt good to get my legs turning over quickly, get properly out of breath and get properly sweaty.  Well, it did in hindsight!  I’m stlll baffled by how a non-running session such as spin actually makes your legs feel less tired!  I know it’s all about blood flow and flushing out the rubbish from your muscles, but extra exercise always seems counterintuitive to me!  Either which way, it worked.  The major soreness this week has been in my Achilles, so standing up on the pedals was a bit sore to start with.  I also took my heart rate monitor to spin for the first time.  Feeling so out of breath after the more strenuous tracks, I was interested to know how close to my maximum heart rate I was getting.  The answer?  About 95% (196 beats per minute).

That’s the graph of the up and downs (mainly ups!) of my heart rate during spin.  Interesting to see how good a job it does of building up you up then letting you recover just enough to go full-on once again. 

It’s now a couple of years since I set the maximum heart rate on my Garmin watch to 203bpm, and your MHR is supposed to get lower as you get older so I’m tempted to reset my reading to that 196 bpm I reached at spin.  If I weren’t using both heart rate and pace to measure my runs I’d not bother, but I guess it’s important to be as accurate as possible.

Friday was 4 miles of recovery run – and so on to Saturday’s long run. 

I’ve been thinking for a while now of getting out on to the Stratford marathon route to see a couple of things for myself.  I started trying to plot out a training route on Friday, at which point it became clear that I’d not be able to run the whole loop without running on the busy Bidford to Alcester road.  Not the best idea!  So I settled for doing about half of the second lap in reverse, and back again to the start.  The training pan called for 15 miles, and I worked out that doing 7.5 miles each way would at least help me answer both nagging questions.

Question 1 – is the Greenway as tough as everyone says it is? 

Answer – it probably will be after 20 miles!

The Greenway is a wide, well-maintained public footpath running from Stratford to Long Marston – using the route of an old railway line.  On the marathon route, you use about 2.5 miles of it on the first lap and about 5 miles of it on the second.  I can see why people say it’s tough.  The 2.5 mile stretch isn’t too bad as, while it is straight, there are one or two slight bends.  However, the longer stretch is absolutely arrow straight.  I’m sure there’s one stretch near Long Marston airfield where you can easily see a mile of Greenway stretching ahead of you.  Even towards the end of Saturday’s 15 mile run, it felt as it I wasn’t getting anywhere.  Towards the end of a marathon, I can imagine I’ll need some sort of distraction to help me through that stretch.  At least, looking on the bright side, it’s pancake flat!  Here's just how flat it is.  Well, apart from the hill at Welford, that is! 

Question 2 – is the hill at Welford as tough as everyone says it is?

Answer – kind of ...

After 5 miles of Greenway, I turned right and almost immediately right again to head towards the villages of Long Marston and Welford-on-Avon.  Now, even the Shakespeare marathon’s own website acknowledges the hill at Welford so I really wanted to see how it felt to run it.  To say I wasn’t prepared for what was to come is an understatement BUT it’s far worse doing the marathon course in reverse.  This way around, the hill is short and sharp – the website says it’s 450 metres long with an average gradient of 1 in 18 (1 it 10 at its worst!).  Google street view doesn’t really do it justice, but just to give you an idea ...

However, the way we’ll tackle the hill on race day is twice as long (1,100 metres), but much less steep (only 1 in 35 on average).  Having run it both ways around, I’m perfectly happy the course is as it is!  Either which way, once you’ve reached the top you really do get a  great view of the Warwickshire countryside as it blends into the Cotswolds.

The run went pretty well.  It’s always good to run new routes and the weather wasn’t too bad.  It was a bit windy for the first couple of miles, when the wind seemed to be coming straight from Stratford racecourse and the flat ground beyond, but other parts were more sheltered.  However, I wasn’t very good at keeping my pace down after a week of managing to do so quite well.  The long run actually turned out to be the quickest of the week, pace-wise. 

So that’s my week.  42 miles done and nothing too sore except a bit of jip from my left Achilles.   45 miles next week including 5 miles at half marathon pace on one run and 10 miles at marathon pace on next weekend’s long run.  At least there’s a record waiting at the end of it!