22/4/16 – Here I Come… Ready or Not

It’s been a funny old week.

It started with the ghastly realisation that my Charity’s vest is primarily yellow, red and black… in other words, Watford colours! Is there no end to my football-related marathon torment…

As far as Tapering goes, I think I’m on top of it. Yes, there’s been a few nagging doubts, but I’ve countered those with some ‘positive visualisations’ about the race. Mind you, none of those included Snow. Sky News, clearly short of a story or two, made a cheerful ten minute feature about the ‘very real chance’ that this will be the first London Marathon where it snows! The feature got quickly relegated when they had some celebrity deaths to occupy themselves with.

Overall, training has gone okay this week, I decided to force myself to slow down on Monday’s 5K and ran with Sue, who was just doing a steady 30 minutes after her brush with illness. The time was a very modest 37:12, but the main thing was getting around unscathed, feeling bright and without twinges. Mission accomplished for us both.

I ran again on Wednesday and mentally set myself a target of 32:30 around the classic course, without looking at my watch. I felt it was a decent run, despite much of it going into a strong headwind. I was a little disgruntled to find my time was exactly a minute slower than my mental target, but decided not to dwell on it. Aside from the stiff breeze, I had daydreamed my way around mindful of the fact this was to be my last road run before Sunday. With no physical complaints to report, I classed the session as an overall success.

I’ve just not been able to get my head around the gym sessions, this week, though. I like to work up an early sweat and briskly rattle through my exercises, then head to the pool for 40 lengths breast-stroke. In fear of straining something, the weights were reduced by half, as was the swim distance. This left me feeling rather dissatisfied and under-exercised. I guess it was necessary, though.

On Thursday we headed to the Marathon Expo to pick up our numbers and have a general mooch around. I have to say I really enjoyed it. The talks were especially useful, although they did start to raise some questions in my mind about the race strategy I had formed based on my training experiences.

I had decided to start steadily at around 11 mins per mile and try and keep to that for the first third of the race, easing out to 11.30 to 12.00 for the next third, but trying to keep on running. The last third, well, that’ll be a case of getting through it as best I can. I’m expecting to run/walk and to try and keep the mile splits around 14:30.

The received wisdom of the Expo experts was to try pace evenly throughout the race, even if that means taking it slower at the start. I’m genuinely not sure that will suit me, but as it was explained, I really can see the logic in it. Should I change tack now? I honestly think it’s going to come down to the weather on the day. Whenever it’s really cold – as is currently forecast early on – I seem to naturally go quicker at the start, simply to get myself warmed up.

Having used the race pacers to good effect in the North London and Tomoka Half’s,  I think I’ll be taking advantage of the 5 hour pacer for as long as I can.

Tomorrow will be dedicated to a lie-in, rest and relaxation… Oh and Carbs, lots of Carbs. We were both really surprised by the nutritionists advice about just how much we should eat in the last two days. It was more ‘little and often’ than pasta mountain, but still far more than either of us is used to. Now I like a good feed, but on the train uptown earlier, I was struggling to stay awake and fell fast asleep in a carb-induced stupor. Getting off was real effort, had the train being going back on my line, I think I’d have probably stayed on.

That said, after a couple of hours of catching up with my old quiz-winning work colleagues, I caught the train back for the obligatory early night. Upon arriving at Elmers End, I found myself buzzing with energy, to the point where I had to force myself not to run home. Given how hard it was pissing down, it was a real struggle.

I’m hoping that come the startline on Sunday morning, I’ll experience that feeling of crackling, buzzy energy rather than dopey, bloated narcolepsy, but knowing my luck…