I’ve made it to the final two weeks of this training block! Thank god for that! It hasn’t been the training block I had hoped for and my race day goal has shifted from chasing sub 2:50 to making it to the finish line. That said, no training block is perfect and we often have obstacles to over come and adapt to.

Adapting is what I have been doing for the last 6 weeks since returning from Egypt and what I did well at the 2024 Berlin Marathon last week. I adapted my pace and race strategy and had a really enjoyable race.

I finished week 13 & 14 with that big confidence boost from Berlin and very little groin pain during that marathon / long run.

Week 15 – 30th September – 6th October:

• Monday: – Rest Day
• Tuesday: – 4 mile easy run @ 9:10/mi 131 HR
• Wednesday: – 10 x 5min @ MP, off 60sec (1.2 mile warm up & cool down). ABORTED
• Thursday: – Rest Day
• Friday: – Progressive Reps: 3x4min @ MP, 3x3min @ Tempo (HM) pace, 3x2min threshold (10k) pace, all 90sec recovery (10min warm up & cool down)
• Saturday: – Non-running day
• Sunday: – 10 mile long run @8:08/mi

24 miles for the week.

The plan for this week is more or less a carbon copy of two weeks ago. Back to the first taper week plan and rest & recover as much as possible in between the runs.

I took Monday as a rest day to give the body a day to get over the 26.2 miles from Berlin and the late night after returning home from Berlin at 1am.

Tuesday I ventured out for a 4 easy miles. The legs felt a little tight but not too bad all things considered. Heart rate was elevated compared to similar paced easy runs last week, something to keep an eye on, typically the heart rate isn’t too high for too long straight after a race but I have come into this block and race week with a much lower level of fitness than normal so who knows. The good news was the groin felt manageable during this first run back.

I had planned a 10x5min at marathon pace session for Wednesday, I made it half a mile into the warm up and stopped. My legs felt too tight, heart rate again too high and I felt fatigued so I didn’t want to stress the body any more with Chicago 11 days away.

I took Thursday off then ran a mix of marathon pace, half marathon and 10k paced intervals on Friday. These went better although the heart rate was noticeably higher than when I ran this session in week 13. Saturday was another rest day.

My last long run before Chicago should have been 12 miles although I set out thinking I could extend that out and run 16 miles then when the legs and groin were aching 3 miles in I contemplated stopping at 5 miles before bumbling around to mile 10.

This week pretty much sums up how the whole training block has been really. Like a rollercoaster of good runs, bad runs, confidence boosters than getting kicked back down.

Week 16 – 7th – 13th October RACE WEEK!!!!

• Monday: – 4 mile easy run @ 9:31/mi 134 HR
• Tuesday: – Race Week Intervals: 3x2min @ MP +10sec, 5min Recovery, 3x1min @ MP (10min warm up & cool down).
• Wednesday: – Taper Week Intervals: 3x15sec Strides, 10min @ MP + 10sec, 3min Recovery, 4x1min @ MP, off 90sec (1mile warm up & cool down).
• Thursday: – Rest Day
• Friday: – Rest Day
• Saturday: – 3 mile Lululemon Chicago shakeout run
• Sunday: – Chicago Marathon!!!

44 miles for the week.

It feels good typing race week! I am so over this block and looking forward to a break and period of recovery and rehab.

After a rollercoaster of a week last week heard hoping for an ‘up’ week this week. Plan for the week is the exact same as Berlin race week. Run Monday to Wednesday, rest Thursday, travel Friday, shakeout Saturday and race Sunday. Sounds simple, right?

Easy run to start the week and another continuation of the high heart rate. This time I was convinced the chest strap is putting out dodgy data. Even at 10min/mi pace my heart rate was 14bpm higher than what I’d expect for 8:30/mi pace a few weeks ago. I get that the body needs time to recover from Berlin but this feels out of the normal routine post race week. It means I will have to adapt my pacing in Chicago on Sunday I think, probably to a slower pace than Berlin.

I ran the same mix of marathon, and slightly slower than marathon pace intervals on Tue & Wed. As expected, heart rate higher than two weeks ago despite same pace and route, although, maybe grasping at straws here but the max heart rate on Wed was lower than 2 weeks ago but faster average pace so maybe that is something positive.

The big positive from these two weeks is I am heading to Chicago with no increase in achilles or groin pain after running the Berlin Marathon, they are far from 100% but no worse is as good as I could have hoped for.

Writing this on the Saturday quite possibly not running again this year is a strange feeling but one I am comfortable with, if not running for 10-12 weeks means I can get back to pain free running in 2025 then I will take that. I have trained and raced with achilles pain since March 2022, the shoulder, neck & back pain since the fall in Boston 2024. In that time I have ran three sub 3hr marathons, three marathon PBs and raced the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii, just imagine what I will do in 2025 pain free!