It's Thursday after the Sunday before...

... and I'm quite pleased the way this week's training has gone.

I've completed three training runs since the 20 miler on Sunday and have managed to keep to the times specified in the programme for all of them. For example, today was a 1 mile warm up, 4 miles brisk, 1 mile cool down. The important section, the 4 miles brisk, should (in my case) be run at a pace between 9 minutes 44 seconds and 10 minutes 04 per mile and I averaged 9:56 for each mile - almost exactly in the middle, i.e. spot on.

This coming Sunday is the longest training run I'll be doing before the Marathon. The idea is that you 'taper' for the final three weeks, reducing rather than increasing the mileage so the muscles have a chance to rest and recouperate before the event. According to the programme, last Sunday's run should have only been 18 miles and this coming one should be 20 but I was a bit concerned that if the longest run I did was 20, I'd have to find an extra 6 miles in the tank on the day so I modified the programme and did 20 last week and am doing 23 this. That way I only need to do an extra 3 miles on race day, it just feels more manageable.

As an aside, I'm sitting here writing this and the phrase 'I only need to do an extra 3 miles on race day' jumped out of the page at me. It's not that long since I would have been puffing and panting if I walked 3 miles never mind ran it........ on top of running 23 miles! Actually, I'm fairly certain I'll be staggering it but hey ho!