Mini Taper

Everyone else in the running blogsphere appears to be tapering for a marathon and things are very quite. No hard efforts or long endurance runs to read about. That will all change over the coming weeks as we'll read about heroic feats, personal triumphs, feelings ranging from ephoric to despair...........the good, the bad and the ugly.

While my Marathon is still 4 weeks away (God is that all!!.. sounds closer now that I have typed it) I am in a mini taper of my own ahead of Sunday's 15 Mile run from Cork to Cobh. I am looking forward to the run as it was this time last year that I competed in my very first race, ever!!! along this route. I am getting excellent updates on the weather forecast for sunday from John's Blog . It looks like it will be close to perfect running weather which should help me get a PB. To be quite honest if I don't PB by more that 10 minutes I will be dissappointed (PB of 01:58:29). There I've nailed my colours to the mast....is that wise? After tuesday evenings interval session I ran a medium long run of 14.9 miles on wednesday morning as there would be no long run on saturday. I intended to run into Cork on a long loop until I discovered at mile 5 or so that I had forgotten to put out the rubbish bin (bin collection can start as early as 0630hrs) so I doubled back to the house, put out the bin and added a 5 mile loop anound Ballincollig. My legs felt reasonably fresh, which was good given that it was less than 12 hours since my interval session.

I followed that up with relatively short runs on thursday (5.3 miles) and friday (5.84 miles).

On thursday I upped the pace for the middle 3 miles to marathon pace as opposed to the scheduled tempo pace (taper tactics).

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Today I ran with Brendan a colleague from work who is heading off the Newcastle tomorrow to run in the BUPA Great North Run, a half Marathon with about 50,000 participants. While Brendan is aiming for 01:30 he has been placed well back in the starting pens (expected to cross the starting line 50 minutes after the elites) as he has no previous form in this race. He fears he may be running with teddy bears, superman and a few lifesize bottles of newcastle ale. We both ran easy, discussed strategy for our respective races and wished each other well.

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Wed 14.9 Miles in 02:01:01 (08:07 pace @ 130 HR)

Thu 5.3 Miles in 00:40:08 (07:35 pace @ 134 HR - with 3 miles @ 07:21 pace & 136HR)

Fri 5.84 Miles in 00:49:53 (08:32 pace - No HR Monitor)