The Taper

Well, I've made it to the final week of my training (wait for it...) uninjured! This is the first 'long' race I have trained for since moving to the US in which I am going into final preparations not carrying an injury. I've probably completely jinxed myself with that comment.

These last two weeks went well. I actually eased off the schedule a little last week. I had some aching muscles after a 15 miler and so decided to skip the following weeks short runs. It had the desired effect; the following weekends runs were very strong and I have continued that through to the final week.

Despite temperatures reaching 100f daily I am comfortably running running a 7m30s mile pace on a regular basis, and for high mileage. I know I cannot complete the marathon at that pace but it does give me high hopes of beating my New York 08 time of 3h55m. For that race my average pace averaged at just under a 9 minute pace so, I should have it well beaten!

I fell short of running a full 20 miles as planned during my training but did cover 15+ miles multiple times, running 18 miles on one occasion. For the race I am going to link up with the 3h30m pace team which is an 8 minute pace. It's possibly a little aggressive but I will try and stick with it. Anything above a 3h40m time is the goal.

The key this time is to not stop. For New York I hit the wall around mile 18 and stopped multiple times over the final stages. That caused my average pace for the whole race to fall dramatically.

If I can complete the race without stopping I will be delighted. Training this time has gone well and was almost exclusively run on pavement. As a result my legs are in their best condition ever for 26.2 miles of pounding!

Wish me luck; "Run Cookie Run!

The downward spiral...

For all of you worried about my training for the last weeks I am pleased to say that despite procrastinating on my blog, the running continued.

I am now 3 weeks away from the race day and am beginning the taper. Yesterday was my final 'long' run of 15 miles and it's downhill from here. I am feeling pretty good, some soreness on my hamstrings but nothing too bad; some stretching and massaging over the next few days will sort that out.

The training has gone well. Aside from the unintentional vacation from running when in the UK I have managed to meet most of my goals and have actually run 368 miles so far in preparing for the race. By the actual race day I will have over 425 miles under my belt in training for a 26.2 mile race! Craziness.

This last week was actually my strongest in regards to distance. Over 5 days I covered 43 miles which included an 8m and 10m at around 7m30s pace and a 15 mile run at just over 8min pace. My times in comparison to the training for the NY Marathon are incomparable, if I can just manage to maintain a sub 8m15s pace per mile over the course of the race I will comfortably beat my previous time.

It's good timing that my mileage is declining as it's hit 100f daily now. As an added bonus, snakes are starting to appear on my runs! In the last week I have seen 2. I actually ran over 1 of them with the jogging stroller (Ava is my new short distance running partner!). I kind of cut it in half; does the same rule apply to snakes as with worms? Cut one in half and it becomes 2 snakes? Guess not; no head...