Fall Marathon announced as season winds down

Philadelphia, Sunday November 18th

Yes, I have chosen Philly for my 4th attempt at 26.2. After weighing up a few other options, the pull of a bigger city marathon and the opportunity to run alongside Jay and a whole plethora of Charlotte’s finest distance runners who are also making the trip proved decisive. In my previous 3 marathons I have progressed from 2:43 to 2:38 to 2:35 and the aim will be to maintain that improvement in November. A long way to go and hundreds of miles to be run before then but I’m glad I’ve made the decision early and can focus the rest of the year’s training around it.

Speaking of which, I have just over a week of my current cycle to see out. After the knee injury that blighted October last year I went straight into Myrtle Half Marathon training and carried on after that race in February to take in Richmond 10k and Skyline 5k in April as goal races. The first two races both ended with 1 second improvements over my previous best US times, the 5k last Saturday was (as documented below) significantly less successful and the final evidence I needed that it was time to wind down what has been a six month block of training and regenerate before heading into the next cycle refreshed and ready to work.

After the Twilight 5k next Friday night the plan is to take one whole week off, follow it with a very easy week and then hit the next training block. This block will take me through to the end of July before I take another couple of down weeks, leaving me a 14 week build up towards Philly starting in mid August. The upcoming week of entirely no running will almost certainly be the first ever time I have taken some extended time off voluntarily and not because of an injury of some sort! I am looking forward to it and so is the family!

Since the race on Saturday I had a nice long run with friends on Sunday, took Monday off, did Miners Run on Tuesday, a mile repeat workout yesterday and Dowd run today and all things considered have felt pretty decent on each run. Coach was in town for the past three runs so it has been good to get some runs in with him. Yesterday we headed to the track to do his planned workout two and a half weeks out from the Cleveland Marathon that he is racing. I ended up doing 2*2 miles and 2*1 miles with one lap recoveries at an average pace of 5:17 which I was pleased with (Tim went on to run an additional mile and a half). It would appear that I’m in great 10k shape right now, just unable to convert it to 5k!