Week 3 - The Magic Bullet - Day 16 of 112

Notwithstanding the fact that they said it would be like this and told me what to expect, it still comes as a bit of a shock to the sytsem that the the excitement of starting the training schedule has now been replaced with drugery of souless, energy sapping, zombie like 6am runs and we are only in week 3 and at the begining of week 3 to boot! In addition, the realisation that there is no magic bullet to make you run a 3 hour marathon other than hard bloody work is no easy pill to swallow.

Today's catatonic excursion took me back down to the cricket club at Partick for a murderous 5X1 mile intervals at 10k pace or as I rather stupidly did at 90-94 max HR. The first mile is always pretty easy but there is always the hint at the end of first mile of the pain soon to be suffered. It just peeks its head out to say - "You see how you felt in the last 50m? You remember how your heart was about to smash out of your wall cavity? How do those legs feel? Lactic acid yet? - well instead of 45 seconds of that - here's a full 6 minutes worth!!!!!" and then off you plod to do another 4 of them. Managed 6.20/6.25/6.38/6.30/6.36. It was no fun. By the end the legs just wouldn't move fast enough and I lurched to the finish grateful that it was over.

The whole thing about a marathon is really that it is just a mental battle - from getting out of bed at some daft hour to smash yourself up twice a week to demanding that your legs work twice as fast as they want to do in the last 6 miles. Up until now I haven't really smashed myself  over the last 6 miles in a marathon as I have not been anyway near the 3 hour mark - a pb of 3.11 at Boston in April last year is the current high spot and by the end I was hanging on. I do think however that achieving the goal will be very much down to how hard I am prepared to work over those closing 6 miles. I will not just be able to switch it on at mile 20 without going to the well during training and this is my logic in smashing myself twice a week.

Those numbers include 1 mile warm up and cool down and 200m recovery after each interval

7.62 miles - 1.03 hrs - 8.22 pace overall - 148 bpm - 73.7 rpm