Ross Running...

Thought I would ping a quick note to say how my recovery is going from that painful marathon.  It's Wednesday morning just now, so I guess I've had nearly three days of recovery and I have certainly taken it easy!!  Journey back from Manchester was a pain cos my car broke down on the M6, but the AA towed me, so all good 😁.  Due to my knee suffering a bit on Sunday I wasn't going to try running for a week or more, but due to lovely spring weather I thought I should get on my bike instead.  I haven't done that yet, but I intend to do that today for a bit, and maybe a longer cycle tomorrow.  I had some shopping to do yesterday and my knee hurt quite a lot on the walk there and back.  Probably an hour or two walking in total, and not huge pain, but significant.  So the cycling idea sounds sensible.  This morning I had another short walk of maybe 30m or so, and for most of it there was no pain at all - I figured I'd recovered!  But in the last 10...

The day of the Manchester Marathon, April 16th, had arrived!!  I am writing this in the early hours of the next morning, as post-marathon I wasn't in a great state for writing anything 😁.  I was running the marathon with my friend Kevin who lives in Manchester.  He did it last year in 3:26, but his training this year had been blighted by injury so he was happy to run it with me at what would obviously be a much slower pace.  It was great running the whole thing with a friend!!  I drove to Kevin's late Saturday afternoon, and then we got up around 7:30 on the Sunday to leave the house at around 8:15 for a 10:20 marathon start.  The whole event was quite well organised, with the only downside being the trams being very busy.  I wore a waist wallet so carried my phone and some gels, and wore an old jumper of Kevin's that was put into the clothes collection at the start.  Pretty much everyone was doing that, and I believe all the old clothes go to ch...

Saturday is typically long run day, but with just eight days to go before the marathon, today was a long but not very long run day.  It was planned to be two hours, and I am very pleased to realise that two hours no longer counts as a very long run!!  Long, yes, but not very long!!  It was the same plan as last week as far as expected power was concerned, but just with some time taken off.  But because of this being an hour less than last week, I figured I could try and go a little faster.  I was way off the power targets last week, and I still didn't hit them all today, but I was closer!!  If I ignore the easy running at the start and end, this run was 85m at a planned power of  236-245w and 20m at a planned power of 262-268w.  Clearly the first bit is a much easier power to maintain, but for quite a long time.  But the second bit is the phase where I get nowhere near the planned power!  262-268w is very hard and a lot of power for me!!...

I have been so looking forward to writing this blog entry!!  That's because I would only write this entry after today's long run attempt.  Doesn't need to be a successful attempt, just an attempt, but the final and longest training run has to deserve a mention!  And it was a tad slower pace than last Friday, but it was absolutely successful!!  The plan was for a three-hour run, so essentially the same as last Friday but with an extra five minutes.  Last Friday I was very keen to make it to 20 miles. but I managed that last week, so today I had no overall goal.  Just try to follow the plan as best I can, but know that, like last week, the plan at this stage is simply too tough for me.  I did a similar thing to last week and ended up at an average pace of 5:27m/km whereas last Friday was 5:26m/km.  So without having to hit the 20 miles I slowed down, but not by much really.  The big difference was that I did an extra stop on the treadmill....