Rankings and Recovery

My run from the weekend has now been added to the rankings list so as of today I'm 11th, although as I said in my earlier post I'll probably be around 600th by the end of the year!



A couple more photos floating around the net:

Probably taken at the start of the second lap


Getting a gel out of my pocket - honest! Probably end of fourth lap - hence pained expression!


I've been showing some of the photo's around work for a bit of fun. I did receive a comment about whether I'm running in my boxer shorts and forgot to put any shorts on!

Now that its been a few days since the event I'm more pleased with how I executed my run rather than the end result. I really wasnt expecting to run a negative split with each mile beyond half way getting faster and faster. It shows that the long runs must have been doing some good as I was strong right to the end (even if I didnt feel like it!). I never really expected to run as quick as I did although I did think that as a best case scenario 2.55 might have been possible. To beat this time shows I'm in far better shape than I was giving myself credit.

On the downside I kind of feel a touch deflated as I've worked so hard for this one event that I hadn't really given any thought to what I should do next. I was kind of expecting the marathon to give me some answers as to where my weakness in training lies, but in the end it looks like my training has been more or less correct. As a result I intend to do more of the same for the time being until May time.

Between now and then I've entered the Milton Keynes Half Marathon next week. I'm not sure whether I'll be fully recovered by then but hopefully I shouln't be too far away. I've been on my first run since the marathon this evening and just did one of my 10km routes. My legs felt fine and went round at moderate intensity of 6.54min miles. Between now and the end of the week normal training will be resumed except that I wont be going out for a long run at the weekend and overall intensity will be reduced.

Comments

  1. Dan21 February 2008 at 06:49

    Hey Lloyd, thanks for the advice and tips, it's good to hear it from somene who's done it, so I appreciate it. This week I'm hvaing a slightly lighter week as per my schedule, before I have five weeks of more intense training, and then two weks of tapering. At the moment, I'll peak at around 58 miles a week, and then bring that down to 45, and then 20 like you suggest.

    The pace thing is a funny thing. I've done one 21 mile run, and I was really quite sensible on the pace for that, starting out what I thought was really quite slow, and just maintaining throughout and was surprised when I did it in 3 hours, as I was expecting more of a 3:15 pace. But I figure that my race pacewill be at around 8mins to 8:10, based on training so far.

    The bummer is I've picked up a bit of flu as well... seems to be doing the global rounds at the moment!!! So it's good that it's my lighter week, as I'm still annoyed at not being able to go out for a run tonight! I've got a 23 mile run planned in for next week, and then hopefully 1-2 more before the big race. Interesting comments around hitting the wall too, when I did an 18.5 miler I did hit the wall, but when I did the 21 miler, I never really hit the wall. It will be interesting to see what happens when I try this 23 miler. I think the reality is a lot like you say though. I've found that most people who do a marathon only really do one rn between 18-20 miles and I can see why they hit a wall... whereas I went out for a 17 miler last Friday and thought nothing of it... was a piece of cake and I went round in 2:20. Anyway... enough ramblings, thanks for the tips, all good knowledge for me too. Also with regards to other training, I can see what you mean about being deflated after it... I think the key is to just keep things going and maintain what you do, then from Sept/Oct really ramp up the training to ultra level. All the best mate

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