Signing Off

One week on and the weather today is perfect marathon running weather!  Its warm but not hot, overcast and a bit of a breeze.  Hey ho, one day I may get to run a marathon in good running conditions.

Passing Big Ben - almost there!

This week has been about recovery, although I didn't follow the recommended advice about a maximum of 10 minutes walking each day.  We stopped in Cambridge on our way back from London on Monday and walked around there for an hour or so.  By the time we got home, it was only walking downstairs which made my legs ache.  On Wednesday, my son asked if we could go for a bike ride and having neglected the family for 4 months, it was hard to say no.  We went out on a fairly flat route but came back over the dreaded Scotch Hills! Not ideal gentle recovery but it didn't make me feel worse!  I was also coaching on Wednesday night, being back coach on the 2 mile.  Although we had some beginners in the group, the pace was definitely not slow!
Yesterday we went out for a lovely 6 mile cross country.  Here's our effort at a Runners World "Rave Run" shot! 

Would I use this training schedule again?  Yes, definitely.  I enjoyed the variety of the sessions and having target times for all the different "levels" of runs.  Fitting in 5 runs a week wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be (thanks to the support of my family) and I didn't often have to run alone.  I found the Sunday morning recovery runs very helpful and think I enjoyed those best.  The training would have been much harder if it wasn't for running with friends.  It wasn't only for their company but also for motivating me to keep pushing forward, and for making me believe it was possible.  
Now I've hopefully got a good fitness base on which to build for this summer's performances.  I've got a half marathon in June, which is a fun one rather than going for time, then a 14 mile cross country in August and another half marathon in September.  Between those there are a few 10k and shorter races in our local league summer series.  Aside from the running, I'm entered for 2 open water swim events and quite fancy another triathlon too.  And of course, I'll be entering the ballot for next year's London Marathon!
I'll post again at the end of the summer to let you know what impact the training has had on my post-marathon performance but for now, thanks for reading this and I hope you've got something useful out of it.