After a couple of days of eating voraciously and walking carefully downstairs (as well as a few brisk inter-meeting walks in London yesterday) I woke up this morning feeling less stiff, although both achilles are really tight. I had the choice of biking into work or taking my running stuff and grabbing a few lunchtime miles, and as both Hinsley and The Newmanator were up for a run I went for the latter.
It felt odd to be going out without a particular objective in mind, and I'd said to the lads this was going to be very steady, so we pootled up to the canal and jogged along towards Riddlesden. My legs actually felt ok, but a few niggly bits that I'm sure are a reaction to those last few miles when I started to tire.
The pace was appropriately steady, at well over 8 min miles, but the HR was gratifyingly low, bumping along not much higher than mid-120's. This was a perfect recovery run, and I even toyed with the idea of picking the pace up a bit for the last mile, but in the end our acceleration was to no more than 8:05 pace or so.
5 lovely, slightly achy miles in a bit under 42 mins, average pace 8:19, average HR 120.
I also took the oportunity to muse on a few lessons from the marathon campaign. I don't want to focus on the injury, as I'm not sure what I could have done to avoid that - it wasn't overtraining (it happened at the end of my lowest mileage week for 4 weeks), and I don't really think it was too much that week - if anything I think race shoes and a dusting of snow caused it. However I do think I've learned some lessons this time that I'll apply to future marathon campaigns:
Andy's Marathon Training Rules
1. Do the bloody miles. I ran 415 miles in the first 3 months of 2010 - and only 45 of those in March. In 2007, my last marathon campaign, I ran 203 in the same period. Had I not had the injury I think I'd have done approaching 600 miles in the build-up.
2. Do lots of the bloody miles slowly. There's three key sessions in the marathon training campaign for me - a midweek tempo/MP run that builds up to about 12 miles, the LR (more later) and some kin of intervals session. I now don't believe in "junk miles" - they all count, so another 2 or 3 sessions run at MP + 60s (at least) all help to build your endurance and strength.
3. Do most of the bloody long miles slowly - but not all. Apart from the midweek MP session the biggest change I've made to my training this time is to run the LR at a very comfortable pace (for me MP + 50s, but I don't think that's crucial) but then run 4 miles or so at MP near the end. This gave me practice at running hard when I'm tired. The confidence from knowing I'd knocked out 4 6:30-ish pace miles at the end of a 22 mile run was brilliant - and really helped when I started to feel it on Sunday.
4. You don't need to race 20 miles at MP in the build up. No...you really don't. Really. You don't. I was worried by missing Trimpell 20 - best thing that could have happened (well, apart from not getting injured). The benefits are entirely mental, and you can get that from sticking to rule 3 - and the risks are material. So don't bother.
Andy's Marathon Race Day Rules
1. Plan the race - and stick to it. Absolutely the best thing about Sunday was knowing what I was going to do and then doing it. Because of the injury my biggest worry was blowing up at 16+, so I adjusted my target from sub-3 to 3:15 (which had always been the goal) and ran steady. Leading to rule 2:
2. There is no feeling better than passing shagged out people when you're tired yourself. I was fine at 18, which is the point in the previous 3 marathons I've started to really struggle (having known from half way the game was up). At 20 I was tired but still moving easily, and had started to pass some people who'd been a long way ahead. At 23 I was knackered - but still passing people who by this time were generally in a really bad way. Leading to rule 3:
3. You can never, ever bank enough time by going out quickly. I saw people who may have gained several minutes by putting the hammer down in the first half or even 15 miles. Those same people will have lost all that and a lot more by running at 10 min mile pace + for 5 or 6 miles at the end. Just do the maths - run 30 seconds quicker than target pace for 20 miles and you're 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Very good. Then walk for 2-300 yds out of every mile to the finish - and lose maybe 3 minutes a mile. You're 8 minutes down on the deal. Don't do it, kids.
So there you go - how to run a marathon in 7 easy lessons - to be applied in the later summer and autumn as I build up for Abingdon.
Probably.
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