17 Miles - 14 @ Marathon Pace

The Long Run today was 17 miles with 14 at marathon pace. The first 3 miles were just a warm up and I decided that for marathon pace I needed to be a bit less ambitious then I had started out when I started the schedule. So I aimed for a pace of 7.40 min/mile.

I was reasonably happy with how it turned out, although its still not good enough. But I feel it was better then recent attempts. Anything better the an average pace of 7.55 min/mile gets me a PB so I'm thinking that on the day maybe 7.40 min/mile will be my target. Disappointingly this is not near the 7.25 min/mile that I thought I'd be capable of, and to be honest I haven't really fully succeeded at this pace today either. I did 9 miles near enough to 7.40 min/mile pace but then had an easy mile, which of course is a mistake.

Its always more difficult to get going once you ease up, and sure enough that was the case here as well. The next two miles were slower but still sub 8 min/mile but then I just slowed right down for the last 2 miles. In summary this run wasn't perfect by any means but I felt a lot more positive about it then I've felt about some of the runs I've had recently. Over all I'm really not happy with how this schedule is turning out for me. It feels like I've run an awful lot of miles to see no, or very little, improvement in my fitness compared to when I started the schedule. If anything I've potentially gone backwards on the basis that had I stuck doing what I had been doing I'd probably have continued to improve.

So, I'm happy with the run, but as the big day approaches I'm getting scared that I will struggle to meet previous performance levels. Oh Boy, perhaps its about time to start panicking. What do you think????????????

Todays Run........