2 Weeks to the ING New York City Marathon: Last week's training

The NYC Marathon is approaching quickly, and the bulk of my training is winding down. The workout intensity was high this last week, but the volume is dropping. The intensity and volume will be falling significantly over the last two weeks. The work is done, and the challenge now is to maintain control of all the energy that is developing from a combination of the taper and nerves. It's always difficult to predict marathon fitness, especially on a course that I've never run before, but I can say for sure that my fitness level is significantly higher than when I ran my 2:11:45 in Fukuoka last year.

This particular 7-day block ended up having 3 workouts squeezed into it, which is unusual for my marathon training, but my long run was pushed back due to the half-marathon in San Jose which pushed things closer together. Also, the Monday long run did not have a push scheduled into it because my coach and I were expecting me to still be recovering from the half-marathon, but I felt good enough to get Dave's approval for a push from 16 to 20 miles @4:56 pace in some nasty weather. I went to Oklahoma to get away from the cold fall rain of Portland and ended up getting dumped on for each of the 22 miles. The other days in Stillwater were excellent though.

The Thursday workout was definitely the toughest but really the last one of the season with that kind of volume and intensity. I started with a 4 mile tempo at 19:15 (4:49) with three minutes rest, followed by 3 x 2 miles with two minutes rest (4:46, 4:44, 4:41). These were again done on the track. I don't do a ton of repeat workouts at that 10+ mile range, but when I do, the quality is high. As I progress in the marathon I expect to integrate more of the high volume repeats into my marathon training blocks. Sunday was a familiar combination of tempo pace mixed into a long run, but this time all the tempo effort miles were at the beginning with a longer run following. This was simply to make it a lighter workout after the ten miles of work on Thursday. There won't be much to write about in terms of training over the next two weeks, but I will be focusing on getting plenty of sleep, recovering, staying healthy, and staying out of trouble. Thanks again for reading, and I'll post again next week.

Week 12	AM	PM	Strength/Drills	Mileage
Monday	22 mile long run w/ push from 16-20 @4:56	off		22
Tuesday	14.5	off	20 minutes core	14.5
Wednesday	12.5 + drills and strides	5	30 minutes strength/core	17.5
Thursday	4 miles (4:49), 3 min rest, 3 x 2 miles (4:46, 44, 41), 2 min rest	off		16
Friday	5.5	11.5	Strength/Drills – 1 hour	17
Saturday	12.5	4.5		17
Sunday	3 mile w/u, 3 mile, 2 mile, 1 mile (4:43, 4:38, 4:38) + 60 min run	5.5		19
TOTAL				123