The Road to the London Marathon: 2 Weeks to Go.

[purplecat]

In the end I ran 20km at the weekend (instead of 22 miles). I did the first 10km at my proposed marathon pace and then slowed down for the next 10. Even so I was pretty tired by the end but I keep reminding myself that in every race I've run I've managed a significantly faster speed over the distance than I have in practice, so this will probably work out OK. My ankle was hurting at the end so, following the advice of the masseuse, I fished some ice out of the freezer. However apparently I was doing this wrong (according to B.) and nothing else in the freezer would suffice (according to B.) so I gave up and had a bath and two ibuprofen instead. The ankle then rapidly improved, so much so that I'm reassured that cutting back the mileage a week early was definitely the right decision. To be on the safe side, however, I have invested in a gel pack which is currently sitting unused in the freezer (so that should the ankle hurt again after a run I can ice it in a B. approved fashion) and I dropped £72 on a new pair of trainers. I have a suspicion that the ankle injury was originally caused by a cheap pair of trainers I was wearing as a stop gap, and as my current more expensive pair are nearing the point where Strava is going to email me to get new ones I thought investing in a brand new pair (of the make and model I know I like) couldn't hurt anything except my wallet.

I was organising a conference in Liverpool Wednesday, Thursday, Friday this week which has complicated the training plan - or at least I kept having to sneak out of the conference to go to the gym. I felt vaguely embarrassed at telling the volunteers at the registration desk "I just need to go and spend 35 minutes on a treadmill, but you have my phone number if anything happens". I managed over 25,000 steps yesterday which seems like an awful lot even taking the 35 minutes on a treadmill into account. My legs were feeling a bit wobbly by bed time and my knee was making its presence felt this morning. I'm hoping this is just a minor aberration because I will be seriously annoyed if I survived 10 weeks of training only to do myself in walking the streets of Liverpool in search of a restaurant.

I need to remember to book train tickets to London. I am contemplating weekend first, if such a thing exists on trains to London. Once the train is booked, I think I'm all set...


KM run this week: 37.6
KM run in 2018: 539.7

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While raising money for charity is not my motivation for participation, it is a big part of the London Marathon. Shelter have bribed me with a T-shirt and the promise of a post-race massage. People have been incredibly generous already, but you can donate here should you feel so inclined.

Comments

[summerstorm]

There are trains to London all the time. You should definitely book this week because there's like, a threeish? day window of time between 'early cheap' and 'last minute expensive' with that stuff, in my experience. Trains in the UK are the worst. edit: oh, I'd never heard of 'weekend first' actually. I have no advice there. Just that I haven't found first class to be a lot different than normal on anything under four hours, but I don't know how long your trek is/where you are. In my exp the seats MIGHT be nicer and they MIGHT give you a meal. That's... yeah that's it.

B sounds like they would have been handy when I had to ice my crotch after stretching too hard, and also probably when I iced my armpit after going at it with an epilator. It all worked out all right in the end? (I also have a heat cream that works really well when I fuck up my shoulder. Not that I do that often. But it is LITERAL HELL if it's not fucked up enough, holy crap. I didn't think you could draw so much pain from something in a blogger event goodie bag.)

[purplecat]

I've gone for an Off-Peak single down and a First Class Off-Peak single up. I couldn't opt for an Advance on the way back because I've no idea which train I'm going to want to get, and it was still more expensive than cattle-class on the way down (maybe Weekend First isn't a thing on London Trains, I don't know - Weekend First is where you get a first class ticket for only £15 extra). First class in the London trains often has a decent amount of free food (which on other trains it doesn't) and it definitely has more space (including single seats on one side of the carriage) and usually you can send the attendant to buy food for you from the shop rather than having to trek down the train yourself (which I think I will definitely appreciate).

I'm not 100% sure B really knows what he's talking about wrt. icing - on the other hand totally not worth debating when I could be in the bath.

[liadt]

Wow, not long to go. I hope the new trainers do the trick!

[purplecat]

All good so far *knock on wood*