I decided to start this blog page so I could keep everyone up to date with all my training, life, work and well just anything that crosses my mind while I write.Everything is going well for me right now. My marathon training is in full swing, my life affairs are all in order and the weather is starting to get warmer so i'm pretty happy about that (although i'm sure the notorious spring Flagstaff winds will be arriving soon).
Training - When I write in my training diary everyday I colour code the days so that I can easily flick back through it and see when I was feeling good (green), average (yellow) and bad (red). On looking over it this morning I realised that the last time I had had a green day was at the World Half Marathon champs back in October. I have felt a little stale since then as we really hadn't been hitting the training hard and I felt as though I was almost coasting through the daily rigours of training. Well today was a different story. I finally had a green day and i'm really happy about it because we have started the marathon training and putting a lot of miles in. The workout this morning was a 12 mile steady state run on Lake Mary Road (a very scenic and quiet road where most of our marathon pace training will be done. This is also at 7,000ft). I woke up and the first thing I did was check the weather as the wind can really hamper a workout out there and I was relieved to see that the temperature was moderate and the wind would be minimal. I met Brett Gotcher and Ian Torrence for the warm up at 8.30am and I knew it was going to be a good morning as we set off on the warm up. After our 3 mile warm up and drills and strides Brett and I headed off down the road with Ian following in his truck behind us. The first few miles are rolling but its good because when you hit the hills you can really gauge how you feel and whether you are using too much energy for the pace you are running. Luckily I felt fine and we cruised along nicely hitting the pace we intended to. Greg wanted us to hit 5.15s and we were slightly up when we got to the first 3 miles and so I figured it was just a good day to roll with it and not worry about the times as the course gets harder later on. On these longer runs we get our drinks handed to us every 3 miles and i've had problems in the past with this as it is very hard to get the fluids down when you are sucking for air. I had no problems today which was good as i was trying a new product that had been sent to me from the guys at Sport Assist back in the UK. I was using the Shotz electrolyte drink and it went down fine. I intended to use the gel they have at the 6 mile point but when I got there I decided to stick to the fluids. Brett finished his workout at 8 miles and continued to warm down towards where I would be finishing 4 miles down the road. Miles 8 and 9 on this road are the hardest so I decided to push these to just stay on course for the pace as I had started to feel good. I did this workout with Martin Fagan 2 weeks before and had a hard time of it as I didn't know what the road felt like at a hard pace and he had warned me about these miles and they indeed hurt very much on that day. Today though was a good day and I finished up with mile splits of 5.13, 5.13, 5.08 and 4.57 (62.28 for the 12 miles). Ian drove us back to where we were parked and I warmed down from there very slowly as I had tightened up a little bit in the truck. It was really amazing what a difference 2 weeks had made to how I felt on this workout. One week I am hurting at half way and using all my mental strength just to finish the workout and then the next i'm floating along and feeling fresh when I finish. I'm looking forward to the next couple of months training as I relish running lots of miles and long workouts.
The other good thing about the run this morning was that I was testing out my new Mizuno Spacer AR that I will be using in London and they worked out great. I was really happy with the way they felt and my calves had no tightness from the workout.
After having some breakfast, I met Julie on her lunch break and we went over and checked over all our house plans that we signed off on last night. The builder is due to start building our house next week so that is pretty exciting as we only live a quarter of a mile from the plot so can watch the house going up brick by brick. I am now going to head down to Phoenix to stay with Julie's parents for a few days because first of all we have to meet with our wedding photographer on Saturday morning to do some casual photos i guess (I should look great after finishing a 26 mile run an hour before the meeting) and secondly my aunt is going into hospital to have facial surgery as she has sinus cancer. I talked to her last night and it was good to hear that she was remaining very positive about the process. Life will be very different for her after the surgery so I hope she remains strong and positive.
I now have a few hours to recover for my second run of an hour and finish off a 27 mile day and then its off to listen to a talk by Father Gary (the priest who is marrying us in Phoenix).
Well, sorry that was a long post but it was the first one so I guess I have an excuse.
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