Finished my last long run this morning, and now am less than a week away from the Marathon. Only four more (relatively short) runs left prior to the start, so the training is pretty much done and it's just a matter of getting the body rested up for the race itself. The taper has been doing a lot of good to this point, and it's been extremely hard to hold myself back as the legs feel like they can go a lot faster than they normally do ;)
Either way, I took special care to control my pace this morning. I still wasn't able to get myself down to 5:30Ks, but the 5:13Ks were still an improvement over the 5:05s I've been averaging in the last few weeks for my long runs. One thing that didn't help on that front was the four laps of the track (to calibrate my Polar for the new shoes) I did at the apex of the run, as that always prompts me to accelerate a little more. The weather was pretty much picture perfect, and I felt great for the duration of the run so I'm feeling pretty confident about next week.
As for the rest of the week, things pretty much went according to plan. The ride on Saturday got a little mixed up when I missed a turn while ahead of the group. I looped around, but didn't know the entire route so I only found them when I got back to the finish point. The upside, however, is that for a significant portion of the ride I was cruising at a 36km/h clip while trying to cut them off at the pass (ended up being the wrong pass) which is certainly a good sign with respect to my cycling capacity. It's often difficult to gauge how hard to push on the bike, as the feeling is quite different from running - hard efforts tend to feel tougher while you're going, but you recover much faster the moment you let up.
Weekly Totals:
Running: 53.0km (32.9mi)
Walking: 2.2km (1.4mi)
Cycling: 111.7km (69.4mi)
Total: 166.9km (103.7mi)
Year to Date:
Running: 920.4km (571.9mi)
Walking: 148.3km (92.1mi)
Cycling: 1,069.6km (664.6mi)
Total: 2,138.3km (1,328.7mi)
As per Pfitzinger's plan, the cycling sessions are off for this week in preparation for the race so there will be two full rest days. After the marathon, I'll likely more than make up for that as I've found it to be a good replacement for running during the recovery phase of a big race. The low impact nature of cycling allows the recovery process to go ahead, but it still allows me to keep working the muscles and cardiovascular system so I'm still in good shape coming out of it.
Upcoming Week:
Mon Rest
Tue 6mi (9.7K) Recovery
Wed 7mi (11.3K) Recovery w/2mi (3.2K) @ Race Pace
Thurs Rest
Fri 5mi (8K) Recovery w/6x100m
Sat 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun Mississauga Marathon
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