I was well pleased with this week. I went into it concerned that my foot wouldn't hold up and finished it feeling strong and confident.
I also quickly forgot about my utterly appalling run in the National, and was running on my favoured surface all week. I was going to run the Inter-Counties XC on 5 March, but am going to concentrate on London now, with every run aimed towards that goal.
I really gave my foot the care it deserved this week and it eased off as the week closed out. Gentle massage and stretching of my calves and applying regular ice to my foot has worked wonders. I kept the orthotics in until the Friday before taking them out without any problems over the weekend.
With seven weeks left to London I am enjoying my training more than ever, possibly because there's so many other people training for London as well as me, notably my brother and mate Matt Janes. I've known Matt for over ten years now and we train regularly. All my long runs have been done with him and this makes them much more enjoyable than a lonely two hours or so with only my thoughts for company.
I felt strong all week and was pleased when my quads started to feel better for the weekend, as they'd been fairly sore all week from the National/24 mile long run combo the previous weekend.
Race-wise I'm going to train through all my races, no tapering off until London. I'm going to run a midweek 20 miles before the Trafford 10k on 13 March, which I plan to race and treat as a very hard session, the type I couldn't muster in training alone. After this I've got the Reading Half Marathon and the Oakley 20, the latter I want to run at Marathon pace and at Reading I just want to race as fast as possible.
This week's training:
M - 11.3 miles with Matt Janes, fairly easy 74 mins (11.3)
T - am 6.4 miles easy, pm 8.3 acceleration run moving up through the gears to end cruising at 5.30 pace (14.70)
W - am 5.1 miles easy, pm 5.5 miles of warming up and warming down, 5 x 1.05 miles (1690m) off 1 min recovery - felt tired but cracked them out in 5:12, 5:13, 5:20, 5:21, 5:20 (approx 4:58-5:05 mile pace) (15.8)
T - am 5.1 miles easy, pm 6.4 miles easy (11.5)
F - 13.75 miles at 6:10 pace on very hilly course (13.75)
S - am 8.9 miles inc 10 x 1min/1min felt superb, pm 6.1 miles (15)
S - 23.4 miles at 6:38 pace feeling absolutely superb - ran with Matt who did 26 in total - then went to Carling Cup Final (23.4)
Total for week: 105.5