With just two weeks to go until Marathon Sunday, I have to admit to bring pretty happy with my last long training run. Same route as last week, broadly circling most of Inner North London, with an added loop back along the Thames at the end to give me the additional mile over Bank Holiday Monday’s attempt.

On a recommendation from a colleague and co-runner Matt, I enjoyed the “Marathon Fuelling” episode of Steve Runner’s excellent podcast. Also subscribed to the twoplustwo poker podcast, so doubled-up my physical training with some mental training from Daniel Negreanu and Brian Townsend. All in all, rather a good day’s work!

Thanks to jet-lag and an Asian body-clock I managed to spring out of bed at 6am on Bank Holiday Monday for my penultimate long-run before Marathon day on the 13th.

Was somewhat depressing to return from 30C Thailand to a sub-zero London and heavy snow over the Easter weekend, however this was more than made-up for by the opportunity to run in tolerable temperatures, and the secluded beauty of the snow-encrusted quiet streets and parks of our capital. I have a particularly vivid memory of the Hyde Park bandstand, slowly being covered with big fat snowflakes as I trotted past somewhere in mile 4.

As this was the penultimate long-run, I set out to break my distance record and notch-up 19 miles. Used my previous route through St James’s Park / Green Park / Hyde Park / Regent’s Park / Victoria Park, and finished it off with a last leg down to Limehouse basin, and then the three miles home along the river. The route turned-out to be perfectly estimated, as I just had to overshoot my door-step by another 20 metres up to the riverside to achieve my goal. This was the same route I ‘discovered’ with Irfan and Ian in January (see previous blog entry), so this time I was determined to complete it rather than allowing injury to stop-play at the 13 mile point.

Writing this run up on Tuesday I note that the usual aches and pains are rather subdued, perhaps as a result of finally getting a decent mileage into my legs. Nikeplus is showing 270 miles (over ten marathons!) run since I started training, so maybe that’s finally starting to make a difference - despite my best efforts to eat and drink myself stupid in Thailand over the last three weeks!

I note that my time for the 19 miles was a pretty reasonable 3h11m. By the last mile my feet were really starting to ache, but I was still running a reasonable 10 min/mile pace. Allowing for a bit of slack-off in the last seven miles and subject to no major problems on race day, I’m relatively confident that I’ll achieve my 4h30m target for a first marathon. There’s just one more opportunity to verify this the coming weekend, then I have to taper off the training and start carb-loading for the big one.

By the way, I heard last week that Fiona (my delightful dentist) broke her leg skiing last month, and has had to pull-out of the 2008 marathon. I’m now reduced to looking-out for a colleague Lee Runciman, who’ll apparently be running London in a Borat man-kini. Fortunately he’s running a 3h30m pace, so I’ll at least not have to contend with the sight of his backside for too long if he does pass me somewhere in the field…

In the gym though I’m afraid. Air conditioning set to a still warm 24C, but a welcome repite from the 30C+ outside. Even with the help of the staff I could only get the treadmill set for a 90 minute run, so after some incredulous looks from the staff at my request for 3 hours I ended-up doing it in two parts.

To stave off the boredom of the treadmill, did the run while being entertained by a few ebook chapters from “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” by the excellent Arthur Conan Doyle. Elementary my dear Watson!

Touring Thailand for the best part of three week’s with Kat this month. Beautiful scenery, good food, good company and a chance to interact with a selection of wild animals!

Not too much time to blog, but will just let anyone who’s reading know that I’m doing my best to keep the running going. Nothing much to speak of, but did manage a 10K on the treadmill in Bangkok and another 11K on the roads of Mae Hong Son a few days later on an afternoon run out with our tour guide, Sonn.

Was a pretty interesting opportunity to see how I fare in the heat. And it was HOT. A road route, but quite hilly; and every uphill stretch was tough. Sonn was clearly used to the heat, and not even carrying water. Whereas I had to ration the small bottle I was willing to carry so it’d last the whole hour or so.

In the end I feel it was a pretty reasonable performance, given the conditions. Met up with Kat and the rest of our party by the pool to cool down and glug a few recovery litres of water.

Another Sunday afternoon, another long run. This time a slightly unplanned trip West along the river to circumnavigate the parks. A full loop around St James’s Park, Green Park and the far side of Hyde Park. The pedometer was only reading 9.5 miles as I finished the loop and found myself about to hit the return leg, so picked-up another two laps of St James’s to make it a full 13.

Somewhat serendipitously I managed to find the perfect route around the lake to make one lap almost exactly a mile, and to pass the water fountain adjacent to the children’s playground. Will be a great place to setup some fartlek laps on a future long-run.

Was back on the old trainers for this week’s long run. Thanks to Runner’s Need’s excellent after sales service I was able to return the slightly used (see last week’s posting) Saucony’s that chewed up my in-step. The blister has healed by today, so I’ll be popping back on Tuesday to test drive a few new pairs of shoes. Am looking for something to correct my mild over-pronation, while maintaining an even pressure along the length of the foot.

Also test drove a few Go-Gel isotonic energy gel’s, the manufacturer’s website has this to say:

“Science in Sport, leaders in sports nutrition, introduce the world’s first isotonic energy gel. Each handy palm size GO Gel sachet contains 25g of isotonic carbohydrate energy. That’s enough energy for 20 to 30 minutes of exercise, and because it’s isotonic, it will still deliver energy without the need for extra water. What’s more the unique gel structure of GO Gel goes down easily, so you don’t get that sticky throat feeling associated with other gels.”

Thought they might be a bit of a waste of money, but actually did feel a pretty major boost of energy right through to the end of the run. In fact, coming back along the Thames on the last 2 mile stretch I kicked-up the pace and felt fantastic. Will definitely be buying an arm load of these tomorrow for further experimentation!