The weekends are held for the long runs where I am pushing my stamina and building up for the marathon. I try to do shorter and quicker runs in the evening during the week to help build up my speed, also training your sprinting also helps with muscle stamina for the marathon too.
Saturday I ran 24km at about 5min/km pace which if I kept it up would put me on for 3hr 30min marathon, it included 180m of uphill to really help build up my pace. Most of the climbing is at the begining or the end, the middle is along the river valley or the canal. My new trainers have started to pinch and by the end of this run my little toe was so raw there was blood in my sock.
I followed that up on Sunday morning by running another 15km to bring up the total distance to close to marathon, I faded quite badly after the first 5km here but still feeling confident I can finish close to 3.30. Again there was blood in my sock, I’ve decided to go back to my old trainers for the Monday evening run as they don’t rub.
Then Monday evening was the BRAT group run, I was glad the other B leaders were there today as I had no idea of the route not having had time to look at it before meeting up. This was a nice and easy 13.7km run at a steady 5min/km pace. I definately felt that I could have pushed myself harder on that one if I’d known the way.