End of an era

Well, that's the weekend been and gone then. Base phase of marathon training has gone too.

I'd initially planned to do a base pace 5 miles on Saturday morning but an inch of snow hiding patches of black ice beneath meant outdoor running from home could have been tricky so I opted for the dreadmill in the afternoon. Dread indeed: a highly tedious 40 minutes. Followed this up with core exercises and some weights and finally a 10 minute cool down on the x-trainer.

Yesterday was the endurance run but as it was cut back/recovery week it was only 8 miles. The temperature was round about -8/-10 down by the canal and I certainly felt it but the run was completed without drama.

Diet hasn't been bad. I allowed my calorie intake to drift well over target but still stay comfortably below maintenance, so I should have still been losing at a tiny rate but the scales show a small gain just due to the food/water in transit. That's ok.

Base training all done. I think its been good. I'm essentially injury free as the slight achilles niggle has slowly abated, if not yet gone completely, and the groin injury (despite the odd slight twinge) also seems to be under control. This is against a backdrop of slow but steady increases to mileage, twice weekly speedwork sessions and running 5 days a week with cross training on a sixth.

Glancing at the next 8 weeks the focus changes a little. The general run distances will continue to rise as will the length of the endurance run (BUT not by much as the peak distance is only 16 miles in this phase, but with 2 races and a couple of the 14/15 mile runs done at marathon pace). Overall mileage starts in the upper 30s but only just gets into the lower 40s by the end as the big increases will yet be to come.

Biggest change is that there's no more hill training! I actually don't mind them its just that its difficult to find suitable hills for faster paced work that are long enough.

The Wednesday hills are replaced by short intervals with Friday's intervals becoming longer e.g. in a couple of weeks Wednesday will feature a warm up/cool down sandwiching 12 x 0.25m @ 6.40 a mile pace whilst the Friday will have warm up/cool down either side of 4 x 1.0m @ 7.05 a mile pace.

Should be good...but its a rest day today!