The first really big race of the year is only 6 days away now, and I am nervous, but quietly confident too!
I have run 2 marathons before, the first was in Istanbul only 16 weeks or so after I started running for the first time. I thought everything went well in training and I aimed for a 3:30, but I blew in completely and ended up limping in a painful 3:57. My second marathon was Frankfurt in October 2014. Training was more consistent, but plagued by my iron problems leading to low haemoglobin in the late summer. I never really got on track to reach my original goal of sub3, on race day I was aiming for 3:15 and I ran in a not dreadful 3:18:xx. It was definitely better than Istanbul, but still not ideal.
I think that my under-performance in my marathons is down to my tapering. I had done long runs that were faster than my marathon pace last year, and with a much lower heart rate, but come race day I couldn't do any more. That's why I have decided to keep Bonn as close to being the end of a normal running week as possible. I'm not going to be stupid, but I am going to train fairly normally thins week up until Thursday. I don't want to have heavy legs on Sunday, but unless I go crazy or do short intervals on Thursday (I won't), I expect my legs will have recovered by Sunday.
The weather is looking a bit warm and sunny for my liking, though 15 is better than the 22 they were predicting last week. If it clouds over then 15 would be pretty much perfect. I start at 10:30am, which is a bit late for my liking, it means that I will be running until 13:30 or so, which will be the warmest part of the day. I can't do anything about it though, so I will just run and see what happens.
I plan to run with the 3h pace group, and this time I will forget my HR and just run with them (I ran to HR in Frankfurt). It is a "do it or go out in a ball of flames" tactic, so if my HR is 170 after 15km, it could be a painful day, but that shouldn't be the case. The way I see it, I have 23s/km spare from my HM pace to my marathon goal pace, that's quite a lot! Hopefully I can cruise the first half, then after 30km or so start to move ahead of the pace group. My prediction is a 2:57:30. I'll write a race report, hopefully titled Bonn Marathon – Sub3 – Goal Achieved!
