10 April 2010

Still toast

All the best to Craig and Rob who will be running Boston Marathon next week !

Rob - I think you have an excellent shot at sub-3 in Boston given how well you have trained over the last couple of months. Craig - hopefully your injury will come good by race day.

Here is a Ryan Hall video on the Boston course for some motivation :)

see here


The Seoul result means that I have qualified for Boston 2011, however I don't think we'll go there in the next few years. Not sure Sling Jr will enjoy the 20 hr flight! Furthermore, sub-3 is much higher on my scale of fixation a the moment. I think it's more fun to run Boston as a holiday marathon, enjoying the course and atmosphere.

On the training front, I seem to lose some juice this week. My legs feel dead and burning although I've ran quite little since the marathon 3 weeks ago.

Tuesday run turned out to be walk-run affair since it was a hot & stuffy day. Just had no desire to run. On Thursday I did 4 x 5mins at threshold pace and it was bloody hard. My av pace was 4:00-4:03 min/km, with 2min rec in between and HR in 170-183 range. In contrast, during the marathon prep, I did 6 x 5mins averaging 3:50s with only 1min jog, and HR was only around 170 and didn't climb above 180 at all. Thus, my threshold session this week was 10secs per km slower, with twice the length of rest time, but HR was 10 bpm higher!

Maybe this is a sign that I am still not 100% recovered from the marathon effort. To make things worse, I had an uncomfortable niggle in the ankle too. Possibly due to the jarring effect from wearing racing flats during the marathon.

Interestingly. I always have bad jinx after marathons. After running Joong-an Marathon in 2008, I jumped straight into training with a view of running a fast 10k the following month, but a week before the race I damaged my ankle ligament and was then out out action for 2 months. In 2009 after running Gold Coast, I jumped straight into hard training with a view to run a HM 1.5 months later. At the end, I completed the Army HM but only averaged at my marathon pace due to tired legs.

Let's hope the post-marathon curse will go away !

S: 40 mins (av 4:45) including 15 x 30secs on/off
M: 30 mins easy (av 5:30)
T: 60 mins run/walk (av pace 6:00+)
W: 35 mins easy (av 5:12)
T: 50 mins including 4 x 5mins @ 4:00, 2mins rec
F: off
S: 98 mins easy (av 4:55)

3 comments:

Clown said...

Widi, normally takes a few weeks to get back into the swings of things, all the best over the coming weeks. Hope the ankle is ok.

Thanks for the best wishes.

Cheers

Ewen said...

Yes, I think it pays to be conservative with marathon recovery - no workouts or hard running for a month, or the old 1 day easy for each mile of the race.

Thanks for the Boston video. Training on the course doesn't look to be the greatest idea if you ask me!

speedygeoff said...

Ewen is right.