The day before the marathon

Manchester Marathon tomorrow.

My fourth marathon and have trained harder than ever before. Back in January I blogged what my plan was for the marathon training block. I've pretty much followed it. Only difference being instead of two runs on a Tuesday I just started the day with a double session. But in summary:

  • Go into the training block doing 90km (55mi) a week. Take it up to 120km (75mi) a week. 12 weeks of increasing efforts, with a three week taper at the end.
  • At the maximum do four weeks in a row with 36km (22mi) long runs on the Sunday. Long runs to be at decent pace with at least an 8km (5mi) mara pace section on tired legs.
  • Run every day - alternating between efforts and recovery
  • Tue - hard session (Typically 4x1mile efforts followed by 5k tempo)
  • Thu - hard session (Typically three sets of 5km at mara pace with floats inbetween) 

Weekly distances

Not sure how much to read into the Strava Fitness and Freshness chart. But fitness went from +59 to +103 to +86. Form went from +12 to -49 then up to +37 today. Looking back over my entire Strava history these are peak high and lows.
Strava Fitness and Freshness
As a reference - purely on distance as a crude comparison - my previous three marathons...
  • York 2021 - 3:05:56 - training block max of 72km per week
  • Edinburgh 2022 - 2:58:29 - training block max of 100km per week
  • London 2023 - 2:58:16 - training block max of 103km per week
The extra distance this time around has come from the harder and longer Tue and Thu sessions.

Finally, for the last six weeks, I've been trying to do at least some press ups and sit ups to firm up the upper body. Nothing heroic - but at least a bit...
A few press ups and sit ups when I could find the motivation
...and finally, finally, last seven days before the race - no alcohol and no red meat (but yes to chicken and fish) - Vitamin C smoothy each day and salted cashew nuts :)

The weather forecast for Manchester is good.
10deg, bit of drizzle and 8mph cross wind - perfect?
So, what is the race plan?

At Edinburgh (my best executed run) I kept the pace below 4:12/km for 35 km then slowed to 4:30/km as I started to get cramp twinges.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and keep it below 4:06/km and ideally hold this pace to the end.

2:52 to 2:54 would be a huge PB - but I fancy it is possible. A follow up blog post will reflect on what actually happened.

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