Heading to the 2014 Virgin Money London Marathon

It's been a while since my last blog post, but I wanted to finalize my spring plans before starting up again. I've also been working with Starting Line Designs on the redesign of my blog and social media accounts. It's been fun tossing around ideas, and I'm pleased with what he's come up with. We'll have a couple more projects together in the future.

I'm excited to be part of an incredibly deep field for the 2014 London Marathon. There are a couple other athletes with similar goals to mine in the race, which makes it a perfect situation. I'll discuss more details on that later. Even though I'll be doing my first spring marathon, I also plan on having a short, late track season. I don't want to leave the shorter stuff yet, and I'll have plenty of time to prepare for a few races in Europe after London. I think it's important to maintain a balance between different types of training throughout the year.

I plan sharing my weekly log again for this build-up, starting with last week's training. It will not differ a lot in structure to the build-up for NYC. I was pleased with that block of training even though it didn't fully reflect in New York. I'm looking to take another incremental step forward between now and April 13th.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been seriously debating whether or not to go to altitude for the earlier segment of this build-up. I have never had a full stint of altitude training, so I am still a bit nervous of giving it a go before such an important race. I have to thank Robert Chapman for sharing his research with me this last week during my decision making progress. It certainly seems there is something to be gained, but Dave Smith and I ultimately came to the conclusion that we should stick with what we've been doing at least through London, and consider altitude more seriously in the spring, when there is not something as significant as London on the horizon. I think I still have a lot to gain in the marathon by continuing to pound out the miles and tough workouts at sea-level.

Here is last week's training, which was 14 weeks from London. The first few weeks will consist of some faster, shorter workouts to keep from getting stale through 3 months of the same pace. It will also help me prepare for a tune-up race which is yet to be decided. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to interacting with everyone again through my blog!

Week 1	AM	PM	Strength/Drills	Mileage
Monday	12 + drills and grass strides	6	40 minutes core	18
Tuesday	10 x 1 mile starting 4:57 and working down to 4:42	off		16
Wednesday	11.5	5.5		17
Thursday	10x200 meter hills	5	1 hour	17
Friday	4 mile tempo in 18:51	5		17
Saturday	11.5	5.5	40 minutes core	17
Sunday	20 mile long run, pushing miles 15 to 18 @ 4:58			20
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