10 April - Sessions 87-90

1309 BST - I have been lazy the last few days, at least as far as the blog goes. Sorry. The last few days my training has gone really well. Read on!

Thursday afternoon I went to the track with my trainer Paul for interval training. The weather has been particularly nice here recently. Officially it was 19 degrees (Celsius). It was sunny, not a cloud in the sky and it felt much warmer. Arizona weather! I was concerned that my performance would suffer a bit as I'm not used to running in warmer conditions. Since I started training for the marathon, most of my sessions have been in less than 10 degrees. I had a few sessions in the mid teens while in California, but this was the warmest day yet.

I certainly sweat a lot more and it was more challenging running in the warm sunshine, but I think my performance was pretty good. 7x800m was pretty tough. About half way through I considered switching to 400m intervals, but decided against it. I was determined to stick with the plan. Anything less would be admitting defeat! Max HR was good. 177 on the last interval. My calf was pretty good too. Paul gave it a quick massage before hand and it seemed to help. In fact, I haven't really had any trouble with it since. Hopefully that problem is past and opening now. My ankle on the other hand, was a different story. It had been aching quite a bit. Seemed to hurt the least while I am actually running (which is why I haven't slowed down or stopped), but it was pretty sore afterwards and has been throughout the day over the past few days. Anyway, it was a great workout, but I was glad when it was over!

Friday is a day off running, SnC only. I had an afternoon session with Paul. First one in about 4 weeks. I warmed up in the pool and then worked my ass off in the gym. It was good though. I worked hard on my own the last 4 weeks, but I work harder (as most of us probably do) when I'm with someone else. It's too easy to cheat a little when I'm by myself and I start to get tired!

Recovery run on Saturday...pretty much unremarkable except that my pace is improving. ~8 min/mile @ 65% HR intensity. Wow!

LSD on Sunday (today)... 15 miles @ 75%. I was a bit concerned at the start because I didn't feel well when I got up this morning. My stomach was very unsettled. I decided to go anyway because if I didn't go first thing, than I wouldn't have went at all. Besides, if it was race day, I would have run without a second though. When I started running I was sure today would be an off day because I felt I was laboring more than usual. It was a struggle to maintain this intensity. I didn't worry about it though and focused on running. I again carried along my water bottle and a gel to eat about half way through. The longer I ran, the better I felt. My stomach troubles came and went in waves. I eventually had to make a pit stop. I thought I might be able to make it home, but I didn't want to find out because if I couldn't it would have been absolutely miserable and today would have been a wash for sure.

After the pit stop, I felt better, but my stomach was still giving me fits. Then I got a bad cramp, or some kind of pain on my left side at about mile 10. I pushed through and it eventually subsided (thankfully) after about a mile or so. I also had to stop and tie my shoe. Ugh! Not a big deal I suppose, but it was just one more nuisance today! My hands were also cold most of the way...especially my right hand, in which I was carrying my water bottle which I filled with cold water from the fridge (lesson learned for next time!) The last couple of miles I just wanted the run to be over! I kept going though...it really wasn't that bad, but I was getting tired and I was a little bit annoyed. For some reason too my ipod stopped shuffling which irked me a bit.

Anyway, the water and the gel was a good idea. The water was almost gone by the time I finished and I ate the gel about half way through the run. When I downloaded the data from the Garmin and review it I sure was surprised. I couldn't believe my times. Not only did I run at ~7 min/mile pace, but I ran a negative split too. I thought for sure I was around 8 minutes. It really made my day. The training program is really working. Seems like magic to me. I never would have believed it back in January.

My ankle seems to be getting better. Yesterday and today it didn't really bother me at all while running and it also has not been as sore either. Definitely a good thing.

So whenever it was about a week ago or so that I was having so many problems with my HR monitor, I cleaned the little metal connections with some rubbing alcohol and that seemed to do the trick. No problems since, which sort of makes sense as I didn't have any problems when I first got it. I did order a new one, the one piece type so I have it as a backup if I have more problems with the soft one and can't resolve them.

Edinburgh Marathon Training Session 87
Edinburgh Marathon Training Session 89
Edinburgh Marathon Training Session 90