Saturday 2 April 2011

Getting There

Two days on and things are starting to come together a bit more. Granted, I did struggle to get to sleep last night and was awake for 40 minutes or so from just after 3am but generally it's going OK.

Two more good days of food control and I'm weighing in this morning at 2.5lb lighter than Tuesday. A couple more days of this and it'll be ok.

After that we get into carb depletion and carb load territory. For the latter I've worked out a slightly bizzare 'menu' for Thursday as well as some themes for Friday and Saturday. Only themes for the last 2 days as my foods will be less in my control as I'll be relying on the cafeteria in the hostel. Idea behind these is to:

1. Allow me to hit 600g of carbs a day but...
2. ...not go too far over maintenance calories (so carb dense foods)
3. Limit the number of junky carbs from sweets
4. Limit the amount of wheat (to minimise bloating)

That means I need to rely a fair bit on carb loading drinks, but also things like rice, sweet potato, pulses etc.

Running wise I still feel a bit like I'm just going through the motions, but I think that's only to be expected. The sesions now are not really challenging and I know they won't make me any fitter, only slow the rate of fitness loss in the taper.

That being the case I wasn't really 'up' for yesterday's tempo run. The plan said 9 miles with 7 at half marathon pace but I opted to cut that to 7 miles with 4.5 at that pace.

First two miles were mainly into the wind and it felt a struggle to get under 7:40, but the next 2 were just on target and the final half mile a little faster still. That meant that by the end I wasn't too far off. Happy enough in the circumstances.

Sue is taking the kids to see her mother this morning, back late afternoon tomorrow. That leaves me with a carefree wild agenda including such hedonistic pursuits as:

Going to the library
Making a casserole for tomorrow evening
Planting a few seeds
Starting to pack my stuff
Watching Super Leeds United on TV
Taking a walk to the gym to do a few stretches
Eating a Cauldron vegetable jalfrezi

Oh, and to get with the whole Paris vibe I'll watch Amelie at some point.

Final point today is to say a big thank you for the fantastic comments over the last week - I really do appreciate them!

5 comments:

Jessica said...

See, told you those lbs would be gone in a flash :)

Would be really interested to see that bizarre menu of yours ~ I'm always fascinated by others' pre-marathon eats.

Sounds like a perfect week-end to me! Only minus the football, because I am a stereotypical female in the respect of not 'getting' the fascination with it at all. Watching athletics on the other hand, is another matter entirely :)

TOTKat said...

Amelie is great prep for Paris - enjoy it!

Can't wait for the race report, I really get the feeling it's going to be a good one for you :o)

Maria said...

Trust me to harp on but on marathon talk this week the training talk section was about the taper- I think you could skip to that bit as on the show notes it says what time each section is at. Anyway, you seem to have it all sorted. And a fab weekend planned too- I will be planting seeds if I can get the energy to buy some compost (and also get down the stairs in one piece!)

Alison said...

That sounds like a blissful weekend to me!

And as for the running, diet, packing, etc it sounds like you've got it all under control. This is just the annoying bit where you have to wait the week out.

Like Jess said though, I'm intrigued by the weird diet!

BabyWilt said...

Ooooh you live on the wild side you do, but you reminded me that I still have to plant my veggie seeds - can't remember what my sister in law gave me now .... better pootle and go check!