The End Of the World Training Cycle

Assuming the world will go on, Tralee marathon will be in 12 weeks' time. For me, that means that base building is finished and the marathon specific preparation is about to begin.

I thought about this long and hard and eventually decided that I will do a hill drills phase, similar to the one I had been doing under Mystery Coach's guidance. There is no hills phase in Canova's training, but I vividly remember how great I felt last year; every single day of the hills phase was better than the previous one and I carried the momentum all the way to my top-10 finish in Connemara and beyond. Of course there is no guarantee this will work again, especially as I am in quite different shape compared to last year, but I will give it a go nevertheless.

This base training phase has gone extraordinarily well, and if things go right for the next few months a string of PBs is basically guaranteed. I'm really looking forward to racing already.

The week has been very good so far, even the easy efforts are now at a pace that a few years ago would have been the goal pace of a tempo run. That's great. There is a voice in my head that keeps reminding me that I'm almost 43 already and the time when my performances will decline can't be too far away, but do far so good and I'll enjoy the ride for as long as I can.

Because last week's fartlek had started to feel decidedly easier I decided to extend it this week, from 20 to 25 repeats. That went well enough, but I could not fail to notice that the pace had been slower this week, even though I could have sworn the effort had been the same.

Wednesday's easy run was probably the most satisfying run of them all, and that's not something I usually say about easy runs. It just felt great, the pace was nice enough and yet I felt like I could go on like that forever, there seemed to be absolutely no effort involved.

That's not to say that today's run was bad. It was a good bit faster, but still very much controlled, less than marathon effort I'd say. It's great to be in sub-3 shape already. Two years ago, when I broke 3 hours for the first and so far only time, I had to give blood sweat and tears to achieve 2:59. This time it will be easier.

17 Dec

10 miles, 1:15:40, 7:34 pace, HR 138

18 Dec

9.25 miles, 1:08:00, 7:21 pace, HR 151
   25 x 1 min hard, 1 min easy

19 Dec

10 miles, 1:13:04, 7:19 pace, HR 146

20 Dec

10 miles, 1:07:15, 6:43 pace, HR 154