9 weeks to London Marathon / My plan

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post, so a bit of an update on what's gone on in between.

First off, some background on how I try to plan out my week. I start my weeks on a Monday and culminate them on the weekend, trying to get my long run out of the way on the Saturday so I can relax on Sunday and recover before Monday's interval training kicks the cycle off again.

Broadly, I'm following the 3plus2 training plan, which I've mentioned in a previous post. The quick summary is that it involves 3 intense running sessions and a couple of cross-training sessions. For me, this equates to the following being my typical week:

Monday - Intervals (45 mins) e.g. 6x800m with 1:30 Recovery Interval
Tuesday - 20 mile cycle (1h20 commute to and from work)
Wednesday - Tempo run (45-60 mins); 20 min swim drills
Thursday - REST
Friday - 20 min swim drills
Saturday - Long run (18-20 miles; 13 mile on easy week)
Sunday -  REST

Yes, perhaps this should be the 3plus3 plan, but given my weedy 20 min swim efforts and the fact that I'm claiming a commute to work as cross-training, I'm not counting them as proper workouts and just hoping my 3 non-running sessions actually add up to 2 proper ones.

Here's how the week commencing Mon 6th Feb looked.

We'd had a little snow that week which made for a stunning long run on Sunday. The air temperature had remained cool preserving much of the snow in the woods where the sun couldn't quite reach it. In fact, that Saturday run has to go down as one of my favourites. I took in several woodland areas, including chancing upon a superb cross-country race course 30 minutes or so from starting, and was on such a high that I decided it fine to throw in some extra hills midway round, just to take in the scenery and give myself a few more slopes to bound down in the snow. I kept going for the full 20 miles, without having to stop and, despite the hilly terrain I'd chosen, managed to maintain the target pace of 8:08 min/mile. Very happy at the end of that one.

The following week saw me tackle the longest tempo run of the schedule so far, which I had to put in after a long day in the office and not much sleep the night before, due to unsettled children!

It was an 8 miler, with 6 of those at 7:05 min/mile pace. It's pretty much having to knock out a 43:30 10k in the middle of an 13k run. Considering the thought of breaking 45 minutes for a 10k was a pipe dream, little more than 3 years ago, you could say this felt like a reasonable challenge. I got through it, just, but couldn't wait for it to finish and collapsed into our porch way at the finish.

The high I'd been on the previous Saturday had seemingly ebbed away. I noticed this, even more so, when I had to tackle my shortest long run to date, a 13 miler, and had to pull up 4 or 5 times just to summon up the energy to finish it.

Sometimes it's like that. I've had an unsettled week sleep-wise, which is never going to help, and my meal the night before the long run was pizza. To top it off, the first 4 miles of my chosen route were into a headwind and uphill. Nevertheless, I'd hoped for more and it's knocked my confidence a little.

Here's my summary for the week:

Mon - 6x800m in 2:55 (1:30 RI)
Tue - 20 mile cycle commute
Wed - 6 mile @ 7:05 min/mile, 1 mile warm up/down; 20 min swim (intervals)
Thu - REST
Fri - REST
Sat - 13 miles @ 7:40 min/mile
Sun - 26 mile cycle, moderate hills

Totals: 52 miles; 6h30m