The Cheshire Runner

Tuesday evening I had a 50min easy ride on the turbo, just something to get the legs moving again. Monday’s 40min easy ride, Tuesday’s 55min Tempo Run and swims on Friday & Sunday were all missed. I did manage to do a 1hour easy interval session on the turbo on Wednesday, this wasn’t great, I felt terrible and really struggled but being on the turbo meant I had no issues with balance at least. Sunday was race day, I love race day and the whole race atmosphere, it was so good to be back racing again after the high of running PB’s in Jan & Feb 10k’s and Tokyo.

In 2018 I ran the first 16 miles fast then turned my knee around 16.6 miles, with running the London Marathon 2 weeks later I decided to slow the pace and took 8 walking breaks in the hope of saving my knee for London. Since signing up I beat that PB in the TCS NEW YORK CITY MARATHON running a 3:17.42 and then beat the PB again and ran that BQ time in the TOKYO MARATHON with a 3:01.09. I will not be attempting to run sub 3, not attempting a PB and not attempting to BQ (again). I am not 100% on my strategy yet but something like: I feel if I run something like that, it will keep me engaged during the race, its a bit of a challenge and would beat my 2018 time and also be my 3rd fastest marathon.

We would all run together until the 10k runners split off at 3.2 miles run 0.3 miles down a lane and then turn to head back along the route we just came. There was a total of 4,100 running in either the half marathon, 10k or 5k fun run, the narrow lanes could be busy, but starting near the front I should keep ahead of that. The gun went, I went off with the half marathon leading pack, they were flying and I was struggling to keep up even though I was running a 10k these boys were pulling away. I did really think that I could stay at the front running at 10k pace with the half marathon guys.

The bike week was made up of three rides, a short 1-hour interval session on Monday, a 1-hour tempo ride on Wednesday and Sunday was a long 2-hour tempo ride followed by a 29min brick run and 15min cool down spin on the bike again. The plan only had an easy run, a medium tempo run and the brick run which I felt was not sufficient for the week prior to taper starting, I wanted to back up last weeks great week of running, I did start the week with the cold but that pretty much cleared by Sunday. Monday was a 4-mile recovery run, testing the legs out after the long run and they felt great. Five runs this week, starting with hill reps on Monday, easy runs Tuesday & Sunday, Intervals on Thursday and a 20k marathon pace run on Saturday.