5 more weeks

Well, perhaps not yet five more quite yet to the North Shore Marathon. But I've reached a nice clearing in time to write about my feelings (almost) five weeks out.

It's the 26th of the month and I'm just 15 kilometres short of the record mileage of June. 15 kilometre is really nothing to me these days, it won't happen tomorrow though. It'll happen on Saturday when I run a parkrun and then keep running. It won't be tomorrow because tomorrow is a rest day. A well-earned one, it's the rest after six straight days running, which, appropriate for a record breaking month, was the first time I'd run six days straight in my adult life. It's a nice little ticked-off goal - to run a good marathon it's good to be running 5-6 days a week, according to a lot of the resources I read.

For me it's something quite symbolic. I see myself as a fragile runner, with niggles a-plenty, injury always around the corner, over the horizon or at least swept under the carpet for a rainy day. The six days straight took me 110km, with three really focussed runs and three "easy" runs in nine hours twenty six minutes of running. And there aren't any sore spots.

That being said I had my "classic" moments of doubt: after day four's intervals (15km where three sets of 2 miles were done at speed) left my calves feeling beaten up. For a moment on the last interval I feel a sudden tightness in my right calf near where I had a calf tear in early 2017. I ignored it, ran just as fast but with that sensation. Two other points in my calves felt sore and so I chose not to run the next morning, leaving it to the Run Club in the evening to check them. They still "felt" it but I ran easily and by the end of the run all sensations in my calves had diminished. I'd run them out. If there is one learning point for the year it's that the cause can be the cure. The knee pain that blighted the last half of 2017 only went when I trained smarter with exercises. It simply became less obvious as my mileage increased. The rest day tomorrow will be enjoyed guilt and worry-free in that my legs are great, the rest only makes them stronger and I'll be ready to close out the month in style.

This should be my third straight week over 100km, touch wood, and barring any incidents. I've planned another two before my taper. This kind of volume and intensity should make my fitness quite formidable when it comes time to compete. Sometimes it's hard to believe that. In my pre-marathon half I should be able to maintain 4:20/km based on my understanding of my fitness. But that's a ridiculous number in the context of my previous running. That's fast! How am I meant to do that? The truth is that classic line: Trust your training. If there is one thing that is astonishing about running it's that when you put yourself out there sometimes your body responds and you just keep going. After my last blog I did a 10km race that was exactly that: I ran it in an unfathomable time in respect to my previous running: 40:50. I haven't recorded an official 5km time under 21:00 yet managed to keep pushing myself to the wire in a 10km at less that double my 5km race record. There were reasons, namely that the course was reasonably flat. Also, I jumped onto the tail of a regularly fast runner and once he couldn't keep it up leapt onto the coattails of another bunch and then another. Get with the right runners you'll have your carrot always in front to tease you to the end. And if the body is well-tuned, as long as the pace is vaguely reasonable, you'll sustain it to as far as you need.

I'm going to sleep well tonight.