More Marathon Training...

It's been nearly a month since my last post and the last few days have been a little interesting, so I'm gonna blog it.  I'm still following the Steve Palladino marathon training plan, and so far so good.  I've continued wearing the calf and knee protectors on my right leg, and they seem to be doing the trick, but time will tell!  The plan started on the 7th of November and it's four runs a week, so I've now done 17 runs of the 84 or so runs of the plan.  Still a way to go before Manchester, but slowly getting there...  The last blog was talking about the first long run in the plan which was 80 minutes.  This week the long run was 101 minutes.  Not a huge increase, but I guess upping the distance a little every week makes sense.  It's the same shape of plan, with 10m gentle running at the start and end, and in the middle a big chunk at a slightly quicker pace and 15m  at a decent pace.  But recently I have been thinking about the marathon I ran in April following the same plan, and although it got my speed to be ok, I don't think for me, there were enough long runs.  So, on the day, I could do maybe 25km ok, but beyond that was a struggle.  I thought that was injury-related but I am now wondering if I should up my time "time-on-legs".  This means I am adding an extra bit at the start and end of each day in the plan.  That extra bit is just whatever I feel like on the day in terms of both pace/power and time.  Maybe 5m, 10m, 20m gentle, or whatever.  Right now I am trying to do about 5m at the start as a warm-up and about 15m at the end as a cool-down - both gentle pace/power.  I've only been doing this adjustment for a few days but it seems to be working well!  Very glad to get more time on legs!!  Today is Saturday, and the long run this week was planned to be two days ago, on Thursday, after a day off on Wednesday.  The planned 101 minutes had a new planned duration of about two hours with my extra bits added, but if I am going to run a marathon I need to get to a stage where running for two hours is not uncomfortable!!  But life and weather got in the way and I was unusually busy.  I had run outside a bit recently, but there was now frost on the ground so the gym treadmill was safer.  And I left late, so a two hour run would be problematic.  I still went for it, starting the run with a view to doing two hours.  However, probably because I had excuses in my head, I only did 75m.  A useful run, and pretty long for me (14km), but not the two hours I wanted!  The day after a long run is typically a rest day, so, while doing the 75m run on Thursday, I planned to do the full two hours the next day, Friday, instead of taking a day off running.  And yesterday that's exactly what I did - woohoo!!!  None of this is at a fast pace (over 5m per km), but not very slow, and it's certainly time on legs!!  I even sped up for the last few minutes as I wanted to hit 23k, which I just did!  Yay!!  Now today in the plan is the day after the Friday rest day.  But yesterday (Friday) was a two hour run - so not exactly a rest day!  The next run after a long run (typically two days later) is planned to be a gentle recovery run of only 35 minutes.  I had slightly sore legs after Friday's two hours, and my possibly daft idea, was to do the recovery run today as planned, as it would help my legs get better.  I did that and it worked!!  All good - legs feel fine!!  I even did the extra 5m at the start and roughly 15m at the end.  And I did the end at a decent pace as I wanted to hit 10k, which I managed to do!  In the end, the 35m run was 52:38, so more time on legs.  Not quick but I was very pleased to do 10k the day after a two hour run and two days after a 75m run!  If I keep doing this and upping the time/distance I might get to the point where taking on the marathon isn't terrifying!!  I'm not there yet, but that's the plan, so see how it goes...  And my April 2023 Manchester marathon was so slow (4 hours 40 minutes!!!) ,that aiming to beat my time shouldn't be very challenging!!