Sunday marked 16 weeks to the Berlin Marathon. Although the real marathon focussed training won’t start immediately I have picked the miles back up to >100mpw & the regular quality long run will be back! I have several races planned through June which I’m looking forward to & that will be enough for me to then focus solely on the big target in September.

Mon 5/6 – 6M Easy / 4M Relaxed + XT

Tues – 6M R / 8M Steady + XT

Weds – 5M R / 12M R + XT

Thurs – 8M Inc Sum-max & Max testing at EIS / 7M R + XT

Fri – 6M R / 11M S

Sat – 11M Inc 3M tempo + XT / 5M E

Sun – 21M progressive, 10 @ 6mm, 11 @ 5:40mm to 5:15mm / 5M R

Total 115M, 4 1/2hrs XT

Happily everything felt in good working order from the start of the week in terms of fatigue. However having neglected my glute recently due to the 10K races I was right back on to getting that firing again so spent all week with a sore backside as I hammered the exercises on it! The plan is to continue them at a high level for 2-3 weeks then be able to back off to the maintenance I was doing previously.

It was good to get back in the lab for some testing having not done anything meaningful for some time, & will be useful to get the follow up results after 8 weeks of marathon training.

Sunday’s progression run was down as the second half at marathon effort – it certainly wasn’t marathon pace! However I did finish well & with the mileage for the week well above 100 some fatigue was bound to impact on the pace/effort given the lack of longer quality runs over the last couple of months. It will also mean I shed the extra kilos I’m currently carrying & approach the magic (for me) 60kg mark. Unfortunately running alone won’t do that, so there’ll be plenty of this to come:

Next stop the Notts 10 on Friday & it should be fast!