Week 12, 2012

Good week with a 41K long run at the end.

On Tuesday I was still tired after the half-marathon so instead of doing intervals I just went to the gym. On Wednesday I started off with easy 13K and then another 17K in the evening. On Friday I still felt too tired to do speed work and ended up again doing two easy runs of 12K & 18K.

So a fairly boring week... except for the Sunday long run. I decided to do a last really long run before the marathon -- 40K. The plan was to start with easy 23K and then follow up with fast 15K at the marathon pace and finish off with 2K of easy jogging.

I started according to the plan. I went to Baarn and planned a route from there that went though something that looked green on the map :). This something turned out to be a forest that was really great for running. It reminded me of Stratumse Heide in Eindhoven where I did so many runs. It also reminded me of why I love running. With this weather it was pure bliss.

I took the first part real easy with two walking breaks of few minutes for drinking and I finished with a 10 minute break for some power bars before proceeding to the next stage. I have to say that after the whole week and the preceding 20+K my legs were actually fairly tired. So having to follow up with fast 15K seemed scary.

And scary it was. It took a lot of strong will to accelerate to the required speed and even more to maintain that pace. Right from the start I knew that keeping this for 15K would kill me. And as I didn't want to get killed so shortly before the marathon I decided to do 10K instead. That was still tough as hell.

I barely managed to average 4:42min/km at that stretch, which would give me 3:18 in a marathon. If someone asked me after this training whether I believe that I have a chance of improving my PB of 3:15 in Paris, I'd say 'no way'. My only chance is that being tired (as I was that Sunday) VS being fresh (as I hope to be in Paris) will make all the difference. Which also means I need to make sure that I'll be rested for the big day!

Next week I still plan to do some decent trainings, maybe 70-80K in total, maybe 1 or 2 tougher trainings. Week after that I plan to drop to around 50K with a fast 10K on Sunday (I'd love to do a race but I don't think I'll find one on Easter ;) and finally the week of the marathon the plan is to keep it super light, with few jogs only. Let's see how it goes.

Yet again, I didn't manage to upgrade the soft for my training overviews. And I didn't even have time to get rid of those annoying messages about unsupported browser, that are plain wrong. Ehh...

Comments

jean said…
Good plan to do some proper tappering. And of course the 10 can be organized! Looking forward to the parisian showdown.
March 30, 2012 at 1:55 AM
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