Marathon training

I've been reading Nico's blog regularly recently and the training that he's putting in at the moment is scary. He's obviously very determined and has even gone so far as to put in 2 sessions per day on some days. This has spurred me into action as I know that if I don't start taking this seriously, then there is no way that I'll catch him over 10km in the next few months.

Toulouse marathon is in 11 weeks, so I've started my 3 hour 10 week programme again but a week early in order to be better prepared for the 10k in Conflans in September. This has always been my favourite 10k race and where I've run my 2 fastest times ever. I'm lacking the interval training at the moment and I'm well off my peak, so the marathon training is destined to lick me into shape.

Today was supposed to be 2*2000m off 300m rest. I ran over the usual route around Maisons Laffitte and started the first interval.

The kilometre times were 3:58, then 3:58. So very constant if not quite as fast as I'd have liked. It was supposed to be run at threshold speed less 5 seconds. This should have meant target times of around 3:50.

I rested for 300m then started again, knowing that I had a little uphill stretch in this second interval. Perhaps it was because I knew that I had to try harder to stay under 4 minutes or the first interval loosening me up, who knows but these were run in 3:48 then 3:34.

Just compared these times to the start of the marathon training in February for Paris and I'm faster. This has been a real boost.

I was really pleased as I'm not as shot as I thought! Will probably go out this evening just for a warm-down run with Nico - that'll soon bring the morale back to normal.