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…