Putting it back together...

Well, I followed up my slowest 3k in 10 years with my slowest half marathon ever. Nicely done, I know. I basically shut it down after 15k, when some dude named Nellio who I'd never heard of went by me. I did manage to drop Debardi, after he showed up at 17k and ran with me for a while. He couldn't handle the 4min Ks up the last hill. Haha, so at least I can feel good about burning him, despite the fact that he's run maybe three times in the last month.

It went down thusly: Algerian guy not registered and doing it as a workout took off from the gun and ran it in 67. Dave Jackson from Victoria, coming off a solid 3000m at CIS the night before, and Terry Gehl led the way, with a chase group of me, Kevin Dunbar, Jean-Nic Duval and Alan Moore. We were all about 3:40 for the first K. Jackson and Terry pulled away then. The four of us kept about 3:40-45 Ks until about 8k, at which point I dropped back. I felt ok, like I could still talk and stuff, but my legs were toast. Dunbar and I were chatting, and I was annoyed that I COULD talk to him, but I couldn't keep going because of the legs. At 8k Jean-Nic made a move, and Dunbar covered, and they dropped Alan. I kept pushing to try to keep them in sight until about 12k, then I was just pushing for pride until about 15k, at which point I decided to save it for a better day.

I did run 20miles on Wednesday, and it went very well in fact. The last two days I was easy, but not enough rest, clearly. I am not too worried, as I know that if I rest my legs, I should be able to go ok for the marathon. The question is will I be recovered enough on the whole. How much of a hole have I dug with my training? Do I have enough time to get out of it, and still do some decent work in the meantime? So the plan is to focus on long runs and one workout a week, and not worry at all about the other days. Hopefully that will let me recover. Three weeks of that, then two weeks of real tapering, with the High Park 8k as a test in four weeks. I am sure that physically, I have done enough to at the very least run faster than Toronto, but I am concerned that I may have done too much, and that I won't be able to use what I have done. I suppose this is the question of marathon training: how much, how long, how fast, how soon, how late?

We shall see. I'm sure that the beers Cantin bought me last night won't help, though some people would have you believe that drinking is an important component of training, and one that I clearly don't do enough of. I beg to differ. I did get out for a run at 9am today though, time change included, so I can't be THAT old! ;)