Taper?

With the Clonakilty marathon only 13 days away (I must remember to sign up for it) I completed my one and only race specific workout today, heading out of the house shortly after 8:30 this morning for a two and a half hour run. The plan was to run in a reasonably glycogen depleted state so, as for all my morning training runs, I had no breakfast and also left the gels at home. The aim was to encourage my body to burn more fat at a moderately hard aerobic pace, so that on race day my glycogen stores will last longer.

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Instead of heading east towards the City I turned west heading into the hills between the Bride and Lee valleys on a beautiful sunny morning. As Clonakilty has a few hills along the course it was hills I was looking for. With a long hill at mile 3 using the 4 or 6 mile cut-in wasn't going to work today so i just eased into a pace under 7:30 until I hit the hill. My target was to average 7:30 pace through the hills taking advantage of the downhills to compensate for the slower uphill sections.

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Things went pretty much to plan over the first hilly 8 miles, in fact I was a minute ahead of my 7:30 target. With a half notion of getting under 3:10 in Clon, I dropped the pace towards 7:10, which I maintained pretty much to mile 19 - passing 13.11 in about 1:35. Over the last few miles the effort of maintaining pace was increasingly stressful and it eventually dropped to 7:31 for mile 20, which I passed in 2:24 - still ahead of my notional 2:25 target. I kept going until 2:30 was on the clock and was glad to stop - 20.83 miles (7:12 pace & 144HR Avg). If i'd kept going my pace would almost certainly have dropped to 8:00 and slower as fatigue was well and truly setting in. Hopefully the hills in Clon won't be as tough and i'll be a little more rested.

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Now time to taper, I suppose. Although with my weekly mileage at 45, I'm already halfway there.

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