7 week marathon training: week 6&7

So that's it, marathon training done. 

8 weeks ago the idea of completing the Loch Ness marathon was over. 7 weeks ago, I had a crazy idea I could still do this, and tomorrow I attempt to run the marathon on limited training.

Week 7 consisted only of 2 runs, I had run my longest 20 mile run on the previous Sunday so took 2 days off to recover and ran on the Wednesday at lunchtime. To vary the training I decided to push this 4 mile run and was happy with the average 7:41 min/miles.

Thursday another rest day before running into work on the Friday morning. This used to be a regular occurrence before damaging my ankle, so it was nice to be running the 13 miles along the canal again. This was my last long run before my week long taper up to to race day.

The aim for Week 8 was effectively just to turn the legs over and rest well. I only went for 2 lunchtime, 4 mile runs keeping at marathon pace.

I've tried to get some quality nights sleep in this week and been taking CherryActive tablets to aid recovery. The last 2 weeks has also meant no Alcohol!

Typically I've had a bad throat during the week before the race, but thankfully that seems to have eased now.

So do I feel confident to run 26.2 miles? Well if you asked a few weeks ago it would have been a resounding no! But having run 20 miles 2 weeks ago fairly comfortable, I'm now feeling a lot better about it.

Of course all marathoners know the race starts at mile 20 and the remaining 6 miles can be hell. But I was feeling that I still had something in the tank which was the confidence booster.

I kept my long runs to the weekends, the first week started at 8 miles followed by 12, 16, another 16, 17.5, 20 and then 12. Ideally it would have been nice to get another 20 miles in, but overall I'm really chuffed with myself for managing what I've done after 5 months of no running.

The midweek runs were all about getting some tempo and hills in. The 3 8 mile hill runs over the ranges that I done were really beneficial, and really got me back into some sort of shape. Also the faster runs helped too.

155 miles and around 22 hours of running certainly isn't enough to run a PB (3:58:50) but if I could come in around 4:30 and complete the course then that would be great but to be honest I'm just grateful to be running again and starting a race I never thought I would be running even if I can't finish it , it wouldn't be the end of the world.

My seven weeks of training is below: