Mais non, Paris – Paris marathon 2018

Before Race Day

After a few nice days in Paris in 2 nice hotels (1 with the worst carpet in the world!) I had arranged to meet Has to sign up to the marathon at 14:30 on the Friday before the race. I handed in my ‘medical certificate’ and got my start number. I wasn’t ready for the race, but I would be running it anyway!

As you can read, the last month before the Paris marathon has been a nightmare, a constant mix of being overtrained, ill, allergic and injured. That’s not ideal for getting ready for a marathon. My heart rate has been constantly high for a while now, at rest and while running. My hope was that after enough rest, my body would somehow digest the training that I’d done, recover and spit out my fitness returns. Well if it was going to do that, it was waiting until the last minute to do it! I was still feeling like crap 6 days before the race, when my last real run before the marathon.

I knew that 2h50 was possible if everything came together, but if not then I would be miles off with my recent form/health. I would go out at 2h50 pace anyway and see what happens. Who knows, maybe I’d feel ok!

Me and Has next to the straw filled toilets! (and the Arc de Triomphe)

Continue reading “Mais non, Paris – Paris marathon 2018”

Mais Oui, Paris – Weeks 13+14 – 2 weeks of very little

For the first time for about 3-4 weeks I am feeling slightly better about things now. I have severely cut back my running in the hope of getting myself right for Paris Marathon. Now it is the last 2 week, so I will do my threshold intervals on Tuesday and Thursday, then the work is done!

Monday:

I cycled to swim training, swam for 1h15 – about 3000m – and cycled home. I was in the slow lane, which was a good thing! I did one harder 400m pull set, which was in 7minutes flat. I am trying to actually kick properly in when doing breaststroke, I hope that makes me slightly less slow!

Tuesday:

Back to the 1817 track after work. As it is the school holidays it was pretty empty at the track (not many kids playing football), so I switched directions for each interval. I wanted to do 6km at T pace again, as I felt fine I split it into a 3-2-1. My heart rate was much lower than it has been, and I did the last km in 3:33 without going all out.  This was much more like a session I would expect to have than those from last week. I think that is a good sign that I am recovering!

Wednesday:

I should have swum before work, but I wanted to sleep (I didn’t sleep well). I had a nap after work, which was stupid because I then couldn’t fall asleep at night.. Rest day

Thursday:

6km T, I just did 6x1km as I wasn’t feeling great. All were about 3:40/km but felt far harder than they should have.

Friday:

Off

Saturday:

After hearing that Sebi and Peter were looking for a 3rd person to swim, I decided to go along and try a longer work out. I wanted to do a 90 minute swim, but they wanted to leave after about 60mins so I did what I could until then.  I think it was 3400m, a lot for me. I slightly extended my cycling home so that it was 20km or so, I would have liked a bit more actually, but it was fine for the day.

Sunday:

off

Monday:

I went for little 7km run just as a leg shake out. Now I will admit that I probably ran faster than I should have, but my heart rate was sky high from the start. Against the wind I was in the mid 150s when doing an easy pace.  It came back down a little with the wind behind me, but my piriformis hurt, the whole back of my right leg ached, and my heart rate was high. I started to consider not starting in Paris.

I cycled to the pool later anyway as it was Easter Monday and I could swim at 5pm instead of 8pm. It was a decent session, if only 1h again. The lane was pretty empty, but when Konrad is there it always shows me how much slower I am than I need to be!

Tuesday:

I had planned on doing some M paced intervals, but after the nightmare of yesterday, I rested. I feel like I am allergic to something, or have a long lingering cold. (I got my German B2 test results – I got 90.5 from 100 for a very good grade, quite happy with that!)

Wednesday:

Because of the French trains striking, one of our connections wasn’t available, so we had to get to Karlsruhe in a different way. We managed it but then saw that our train to Paris was cancelled. We scuried to try to get a slow train to Strasbourg, but missed it s were stuck in Karlsruhe. Or so we thought, because suddenly they announced that a replacement train would go instead. It was said to be on time, but actually was 1h40 late!  So we didn’t get to Paris until fairly late on Wednesday evening.

Thursday:

Tourist day in Paris – up the Eiffel Tower

Friday:

Another walking day around Paris

Saturday:

I ran for 15 minutes on the treadmill in the hotel, I did some slightly up paced stuff and felt ok, maybe I had recovered in time??

Sunday:

Marathon