I’m writing this fresh (well, within reason) from the finish of the Edinburgh Marathon so I remember how I felt about the race. There’s bound to be a follow-up post looking at the splits, but I wanted to capture how I actually felt about the race before that starts to fade.

The race starts on London Road, pretty close to the city centre and under the lovely Regent’s Park. We have been staying in Edinburgh a few hundred metres from the start line, so the build-up to the race was much more leisurely and relaxed than normal. In fact, having sauntered over to put my bag on the luggage lorry, I popped back to the flat to use the loo rather than join the hideous queue for the portaloo.

The starting pens were fairly big, and fairly fluid. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t too close to the start to try to avoid going out too fast. However, after looking around and making a few judgments (not always easy with runners because it takes all sorts), I decided to move up a little closer to the start.

At the same time as the marathon, and in the same pens, a marathon relay is run. I assumed that the relay runners at the red start would be giving it some and I didn’t want to get caught with someone cracking out a fast 10km.

The race got underway (after a random robotic countdown) with the Black-eyed Peas. At first the start felt less congested than London, but with the twists of the first few miles and starting a bit further back, there were some familiar moments of slowing down and surging as gaps appeared. It wasn’t helped by the random appearance of a couple of waste skips (not skips so much, more industrial wheelie bins – do they have a name? – you know the ones I mean), which everyone had to weave around.

I missed the first mile marker and didn’t hear my Garmin clock off the first lap, so started worrying I was going a bit slow. I was picking people off, and the pace felt about right, but I could see 7:30 on my watch and no sign of the first mile. I upped the pace a little, trying to take it easy on the hills, and mile 2 passed in something like 6:23.

I could cool the pace, I thought. But then I had other thoughts. I’d put last year’s marathon woes to rest six weeks earlier in London, and this was meant to be just for fun. Yet that left me in a relatively pressure-free situation to see what I could do. And besides, two miles into a 26.2-mile run I was feeling fine…

The next few miles passed with a few uphills, followed by predominantly downhill stretches as we headed towards the coast. I was seeing a few 6:30s flash up on my Garmin, which was doing a considerably better job at staying in-sync with the mile markers than it had in London.

As we came out on the seafront I set in for the long slog feeling good and strong. I’d had a slightly tight calf in the morning because we’d done quite a bit of walking the previous day, seeing the sights of Edinburgh and Leith. However, it had nicely stretched itself out by the time we got a couple of miles in, and my pedometer was happily staying in place. (I’m doing the Global Corporate Challenge – which sounds dreadfully sinister – which involves logging the number of steps you take each day for 12 weeks or so.)

The six-mile marker passed, and I went over the 10km timing mat in something like 41 minutes. All good. Staying along the seafront, the seven-mile marker passed and it was time for my first gel. Rhubarb and custard, tasty and sat fairly well.

Water stations were every three miles and the bottles didn’t have sports tops. From the start the heat was noticeable, so I’d decided that I needed to take on water regularly and hang on to it. It’s easy to spill normal-topped bottled water everywhere when you’re running, so I jammed my thumb in the top of the bottle, which seemed to do the trick.

The coast around Edinburgh and Musselburgh is very pretty – and looked familiar from a previous year’s cycle tour. As we ran, there were pockets of support, making the atmosphere closer to Paris than London. The spectators we passed were great, though, and I found myself running with a guy who had his name on his shirt. Each time people shouted out ‘Go John’ he’d get a little bit faster. Note to spectators: cheering really does work.

The Edinburgh Marathon marketing makes a great deal of the fact that it’s largely downhill, and flat once you get out of the city. The coastal route certainly wasn’t flat – although it wasn’t especially hilly – it was just the kind of slight uphill that hits you in your quads.

I passed the 13.1-mile mat in 1:26 and a few seconds, feeling good and with the pack of runners thinning out substantially. At mile 14 I took my next gel – another rhubarb and custard – and pressed on. By this stage my splits were hovering around 6:40, but with the previous miles in the bank things were looking good.

Somewhere around the 17-mile point the route started climbing. You head up a slight (but noticeable) hill for a mile or so before hitting a turnaround point and running a stretch through a country estate. A mist was blowing off the sea, giving a bit of respite from the blazing sunshine. I was overtaking a lot of people on the uphills, but runners were starting to thin out into packs of between two and six with large gaps between them. Each time I found myself with a gap ahead I decided to close it down so I wasn’t running on my own.

Once out of the estate, which included a bit of a downhill stretch, we were back heading uphill. My quads were taking a pounding and the heat of the day was starting to tell. There’s very little shade on the course, so there’s nowhere to hide when the weather is hot.

I hit 19 miles and focused on the two miles that stood between me and my next gel. The constant gradients had taken their toll and my quads were starting to burn. Things were holding together, though, and I tried to remind myself that running seven miles is easy.

Eventually, the 21-mile marker rolled around and I took on the forest fruits gel a little faster than I should have. It eventually settled in my stomach, but it wasn’t feeling pretty for a little while.

Although my breathing was easy, my quads and feet were really starting to ache. I wasn’t overtaking, and wasn’t really getting overtaken, but I knew I was slowing. I clocked a couple of 7-minute miles and changed my focus to slogging it through.

Mile 23 is a tough one. Fatigued, 5km feels like a long way. I pulled alongside a guy who was having a hard time of it and called out some encouragement. ‘Come on, you can do this,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I can,’ he said, and then promptly kept pace with me and pulled a little in front.

The heat became oppressive; my quads were on fire. We passed runners who needed to stretch out cramps and the odd walker. Still, we kept pace, swapping the lead, working through the metres.

Eventually the 25-mile marker passed. The crowds alongside the road grew thicker and more vocal. There were bracingly cold showers to run through. I lost all sense of distance, and ran faster in the hope that the 26-mile marker would miraculously appear. It didn’t, I slowed. Then the chap I’d been running with caught me up and I dug deep to keep on with him.

Finally the 26-mile marker hoved into view. I was hurting, the other guy was hurting. ‘Just 0.2 of a mile left,’ I called to him. I dug deep as we hung a left and the finish line appeared. I pushed, I gurned, I shouted at myself, I pumped my arms doing a very shabby impression of the T2000. I passed the finish line as the commentator called out something about it being hot and perhaps don’t push it so hard.

The guy I’d been running with finished seconds behind me. We shook hands and had a sweaty manly hug. We thanked each other for the support along the way. ‘I ran this last year and got 3:01. I wanted to get sub-3 this year if it killed me, and it nearly did.’ He said.

I finished in 2:56:40 – so the other guy knocked out a convincingly sub-3 performance. Sure, I’m going to look at my splits at some point and fret over those slow final miles, but for today helping someone – and being helped myself – through to good sub-3 time is what it’s all about.

The support from the spectators was great, but the camaraderie of the runners pushing through in tough conditions and encouraging others to give it their all was outstanding.

• It’s going to be warm. Ironically, I chose Edinburgh as my B race because I was worried London might have another warm year mid-April. We’re looking at highs of 18C tomorrow, with probably 13C or 14C for most of the race. Not sweltering, but there’s potential for it to feel uncomfortable. Today I’m keeping my fluids up, and I’ll be taking on water every 5km.
• I’m going to fuel up in the morning on porridge and marmalade. A tried and tested breakfast from London, and washed down with a hearty volume of tea and water. All will be consumed a good couple of hours before the starting gun so it gets into my system rather than gets jiggled around in my stomach.
• The first six miles see the biggest drop in altitude, but are more undulating than the race collateral might have you expect. I’m going to take the uphills easy, make the most of the downhills, and come out of that stretch of the race with my quads fresh and intact. (Or at least that’s the plan…)
• There are gel stations after around 19 miles. I’m not planning on using these as I’ll be loaded up with four Torq gels. I’ll take one every 7 miles, which means taking three and having one for emergencies. I’m planning to go with rhubarb and custard and forest fruits – the key being a reward on passing each milestone.
• I’d like to manage (for once) a negative split. I’m going to try to hold back until the half-way point, aiming to pass in sub-90, and then have the energy left to push for the second half of the race.
• There will be wind. The course follows the coast, and this is Scotland, and while the forecast implies less wind than could be the case, it’ll definitely be there. In which case I’ll aim to use other runners, buildings, trees, and sheer bloody will power to minimise the impact of a headwind.
• After the race I’m having a beer in the beer tent. It will be well-deserved and will be the best beer for ages. This is a fact.

However, that’s not how it has worked out – which is probably for the best, because I’m not sure my girlfriend fancied a massive repeat of the taper madness. Since my last long run was tough and I’d felt the strain of a 60-mile week two weeks after the marathon, I’d curbed back on the mileage. In fact, I curbed it back to the point where I only had three runs, clocking up 26 and a smidge miles.

The finish of the Town & Gown 10k, moments away from a brand spanking new PB

Which doesn’t sound like the first week of a taper, but it was in the build up to a 10k race. You can read about the precise details of the race here, but in short I ran much faster than I’d expected and ripped myself a brand new PB. So, I took this as a sign that I was fully recovered. To answer my question of previous weeks about how long it would take me to recover fully: three weeks.

So, with the fourth week of Edinburgh Marathon training and the second week of my taper, I’ve been picking up again. By the time the week is out, I’ll have run about 45 miles, including a few fairly hard sessions. For example, on Friday I did a double run to and from work, with my rucksack. Back when I started these runs, I was typically running 7:30 miles, but I’ve now got that down to an average of about 7:07 – not taking account of waiting at traffic lights, getting stuck behind groups of tourists, etc.

In training you experience peaks and troughs. For each substantial improvement (i.e. a really hard session, so let’s say the London Marathon), you experience a dip in performance while your body recovers. But, once recovered, you should be fitter and stronger and able to manage an even harder session. Since I’ve managed to avoid a post-race illness and have managed to keep up decent mileage, I should be well-prepared for Edinburgh.

The big question, though, is what to try to achieve with the marathon next week? Is it going to be a case of taking it easy and enjoying the experience, or (provided the conditions are favourable) might I decide to hit the race hard and try to capitalise on my current form?

I had run my PB a few weeks after the Paris Marathon; with the endurance race out of the way, I’d worked on building my speed. This year I hadn’t put in the speed work (the closest I’ve come has been a relatively regular threshold run), but the marathon fitness was there (having run the Virgin London Marathon three weeks earlier, and due to run the Edinburgh Marathon in two weeks’ time). My post-marathon plan is to focus on shorter distances and put in a dedicated effort to build up my speed, so I decided to run this year’s race as a diagnostic.

Lining up at the start I got chatting to another runner trying to judge the pace. He was planning to run around his PB time of 37:50, and I kind of expected to finish in 38-something, so we decided we were around the right point. Once the race started and the surge of runners had started to steady I passed the bloke I’d been talking to.

In fact, since there are many runners who run the Town & Gown year on year, there were a few other faces that I recognised who I would normally have been running behind. I was feeling good, although aware I was running fast, so decided to keep at the pace and avoid looking at my watch. I didn’t want to see my time and start thinking that I couldn’t keep it up as that would stop me running on feel.

The kilometres ticked past and I kept on picking off other runners, tagging along behind a small pack. Coming back round past University Parks the course loops so that there is a two-way stream of runners, at which point I heard Dom yell ‘Lewis!’ in much the same way as he had the year before. (In fact, slightly earlier than the year before since Dom would go on to run a ‘retirement’ PB, swearing to hang up his trainers post-race. Of course it’s now my mission to convince him he wants to go race again… Oxford Half-marathon, perhaps?) And then I passed the 5km marker and chanced a look at my watch: 18:02ish.

I was starting to feel the pace, but determined to try to hang on as best I could. Others around me must have been feeling similar pressures because I was still largely overtaking, although I spent a couple of kilometres jostling for position with a guy in a green top.

The final 3km always drags out as you enter the park, snaking around with the finish line (and cheers of spectators) tantalisingly close. After the 9km mark the pack of runners thinned out a little and I was still holding on close to three or four guys running ahead. I didn’t have a sprint finish in me by the time I got to the final grass stretch to the finish line, but I might have managed to close a metre or so on those ahead of me.

I’d known I was on for a good time based on my half-way split, but in the vent I had knocked a hearty 90 seconds off my PB, finishing in 36:29.

Naturally, I’m very happy with that – it was definitely a nice surprise and a hearty confidence boost in the build-up to Edinburgh, and there’s the temptation to take it at face value and sit back on my shiny new PB. However, that’s not the point of this race, and this is now my foundation to build on for the summer and autumn.

Looking at the splits in the cold light of day, there’s definite room for improvement:

Not the most even of splits…

So, what can be learnt from this? The fact that each mile was progressively slower until mile 6 shows that the pacing has some significant room for improvement. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first three miles were faster than the run’s average, and the last three full miles were slower – a perfect positive split.

While my focus on distance hasn’t taken adversely affected my speed, I need to spend more time at my lactic threshold pushing hard in training in order to maintain an even pace. Now, here’s the interesting thing: if I manage to maintain the pace I achieved in the first half of the race through the second half of the race I’ll be looking at a 35-minute 10k. Food for thought…

I will be exploring the function of the post-race carve-up and how to identify areas for improvement in the Foot4ward weekly newsletter. If you want to find out more about this, sign up for the newsletter here.

When I ran the 2012 Virgin London Marathon two weeks ago I set myself the main target of running a new marathon PB. I toed the line feeling relatively calm, perhaps because I had a B race up my sleeve in case it all went wrong. In the event, the race went very right and I took about 4 minutes off my PB.

Which leaves me with Edinburgh, reputed to be one of the UK’s fastest marathons. On paper it sounds like an opportunity to build on my current levels of fitness and go for another PB. But then comes the weird and wonderful world of marathon recovery.

The oft-repeated rule around recovery is that you should have a day off for every mile you raced, which would leave me with 26 days of recovery from London. Personally, I think that rule is a bit arbitrary, but after the last two weeks I’m willing to concede that there’s something of merit in leaving a reasonable time for recovery.

So, in the first week after the marathon I managed two runs – two very slow runs – covering a total of 14.3 miles. I felt okay when running, but when I finished each run my legs seized up. (Well, perhaps “seized up” is a bit strong; got very stiff is more accurate.)

No pressure, I thought, and took the rest of the week off running. I decided to make a commuter run of the following Monday, which went well and I felt much more like myself. On the Tuesday I was trying out a new route for Home Run (Liverpool Street to Stratford, starting Tuesday 14 May, sign up here), which was easy going in pace, but I found running with my laptop harder than I had expected so caught the train home from Stratford. On Wednesday I decided to make up the miles I missed the previous day with a hard run around Oxford, which went well until I got to mile 7 and my legs started to tire. Then I was back to Home Run on Thursday, making a round trip of 14.2 miles. However, the final three miles of that run felt like a real slog.

Taking the message from my body on board, I had a couple of days off and then set out for a long run on Sunday. I wanted a steady-paced 20-miler, and it looked achievable for the first 9 miles which were all comfortably around or below 7-minute miling. But then – despite no pain or any of the other usual symptoms – I started slowing. I took a gel at 12 miles, and then another at 15 miles to try to get some energy into my system, but to no avail. I made my sluggish way back home to a hot bath and an easy evening on the sofa.

So, two weeks after the marathon and I’ve clocked a 62.5 mile week. It’s not been comfortable and it’s not been pretty, but its miles under the belt. Reflecting on the runs now, it at least seems that the crunch point has been hitting later and later, so my body’s recovery is making progress – just not as fast as I would like.

We’re now three weeks away from Edinburgh, so bizarrely enough I should be thinking about tapering. Since the taper is all about letting your legs recover from training, that’s probably no bad thing…

In a world of digital downloads it scarcely seems sane to pay around £70 to download a selection of photos – in many cases, this is more than the cost of entry to the race in the first place. The photos are well-taken, but they’re usually from the haggard last few miles. At the Virgin London Marathon I was lucky enough to have supporters with cameras around the Canary Wharf section, so I wanted to see how their photos compared with the premium options.

First off, the premium photos taken by the pros. This has been reduced to a description for safety’s sake (see comment thread below!). So, you’ve got the London Eye in the background, it’s taken on a corner so I’m leaning in, and it’s nicely framed.

However, at around mile 18 I spotted my mum, step dad and girlfriend and – since I was feeling good – offered up a hearty wave and smile for the cameras before getting back to the task at hand. Possibly cheesy, yes, but still a nice memento.

You wait for your runner for ages and then they’re there and gone in a matter of seconds – not great for side-line snappers.

And so this would seem to prove the value of that digital download, packed full of however many photos the cameras managed to take  of you during the race. I expect there are thousands of people with similar side-line photos because spectators can only really guess when their runner is likely to rush past in amongst the tens of thousands of other runners.

But if you look closer, it’s a pretty decent photo of Warwick Gooch (23748, who finished in 2:56:36) and John D Bigg (31141, who finished in 2:58:16). What looks like a castaway photo of me suddenly becomes a perfectly good race photo of them, two runners from the same club having a good day out.

Hang on a cotton-picking moment, the entrepreneurial side of my brain said… What if spectators could upload their photos to an online service that would scan and identify the bib numbers in each photo? Could you attach that to an ecommerce system, so runners can pay a small amount to download photos that feature them, spectators can get paid for their pictures and race directors can get a cut? This way everyone’s rewarded and costs are kept right down.

I ran the photo through some OCR software, which is designed to turn images into editable text. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the software wasn’t able to pull out the letters (there’s probably some super-accurate software used for number-plate recognition, which could do the job). However,  the numbers can be read by humans. This makes the recognition task the preserve of something like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, which was designed to outsource small and relatively simple tasks, precisely like this.

Which begs the question of how simple it would be to set up a crowd-sourced competitor to make race photos that much more affordable – which presumably would mean more runners would be likely to buy them. Do you have a load of photos of random strangers from races you’ve run? Would you be interested in seeing other people’s photos of you from big races?

On the way to the red start at the Virgin London Marathon, with Canary Wharf (aka Mile 18) in the background.

Despite an initially poor weather forecast and days of torrential rain and rumbling thunder, I woke up to find that the weather was gloriously sunny, but with a brisk breeze. In an echo of last year’s race, I was struck by how warm the sunlight was on my way to the tube.

Last year, of course, had been way too hot for my liking. I’d been coming down with a cold. Things hadn’t gone so well and I’d missed my target, knocking my racing confidence much more than I’d really wanted to admit. There was a further echo as, sitting in the  overground train listening to the same playlist as last year, the train had stopped for an age outside Blackheath station.

But this year felt different. Training had, for the most part, gone well. I was feeling quietly confident, and I also knew that it was important to stick to my hydration and fuel strategy (last year I’d decided to make do with energy drinks and ignore my carb gels). My plan was to take the pace easy until halfway, and to take a gel every 7 miles. Nothing radical, just sensible running.

So, once into the starting pen, I kept reminding myself not to go off too fast. Which was perhaps less of a concern than I feared it would be as the first mile was fairly congested. However, we started with a tail wind, on a predominantly downhill section, and by the time the red route joins the blue and green routes, I had started to build up a margin of safety.

Balloons at the start of the Virgin London Marathon

After about six miles or so I started to feel a bit of a twinge in my hip. This was the same discomfort that had hit me during training and I was determined that it wasn’t going to affect my race – especially because I was otherwise feeling so good. I focused on feeling good and running strong, adjusted my gait and got on with the race.

Running the race again, I had memories of different elements of the course. These largely revolved around other runners (a Spartan, a guy in an inflatable duck suit) or the crowd (two randoms running alongside the flow of runners until they got out of breath). But all the way round people in the crowds were holding out their hands for high fives, which – perhaps randomly – added to the atmosphere of the day and kept spirits high.

I had four gels with me for the race, each different flavours. At the seven mile mark I took on the banana and orange gel, which was probably my least favourite flavour. The miles passed smoothly. Having set myself the target of passing the half-way mark between 1:28 and 1:30, I was pleased to pass the marker at 1:27 and didn’t feel concerned that I’d run too fast.

At mile 14 I knocked back the next gel – fruits of the forest – took on some water and pushed on. Originally I’d envisaged myself speeding up once through the half-way point, but I kept to a steady pace to avoid a painful last few miles. Getting into the docklands, I recognised more of the route than last year from weekend long runs and making my way to Home Run.

The section of the course around Canary Wharf weaves around, and I knew that mum, my step dad and my girlfriend would be trying to spot me somewhere around this point. Unlike last year, I spotted them and waved happily (winding up as an arm at the edges of various photos) before getting back to the task at hand. I was 18 miles in and feeling strong.

At 21 miles I took the next gel – black cherry yoghurt – and some water. A little later, I picked up a bottle of Lucozade just to make sure I was fully tanked up. At that point it hit me: I had less than 10k left to run. My pace had felt steady, but I’d more or less completely lost track of my mile splits. My Garmin had become increasingly out of synch with the official mile markers – as had many other runners’, resulting in a few mid-race jokes.

Nothing says 'major marathon' quite like long queues for a portaloo. If you look closely, there's a guy in red dressed as the devil. I say 'dressed', but really I mean in red body paint and a pair of pants.

Tower Bridge passed to my left, and we started our descent through to Embankment. At 23 miles, with little more than 5k left to run, I shouted at myself something incoherent about eating 5ks for breakfast and pushed on. Around this stage, I started passing a lot of people. Some walkers, some runners slowing in the final stretch of the marathon. My quads were on fire, but that seemed to be the only physical problem I was having.

Embankment passed, and the much-anticipated headwind along the river never really amounted to anything. I occasionally had to  slow if I got trapped behind people I was going to overtake, but I wove wide and pushed on round. As the ’800m to go’ sign appeared on Birdcage Walk I upped the pace, managing to work up to a fairly satisfying speed (not a sprint, mind) for the final stretch before crossing the finish line.

The previous year I’d finished, feeling destroyed and on the cusp of vomiting the moment I passed the finish line. This year, I slowed, took a breather, and made my way to fetch my medal, pick up my bag and go meet my folks. Sure, my legs got stiff pretty quickly, and there’s every chance I’ll lose a toenail, but I’m relatively unscathed.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I ran the race in 2:55:31 and came 800th overall. That’s a PB of nearly 4 minutes, and certainly something to celebrate. Garmin splits are here (I took a few seconds to actually get round to stopping my watch at the end) and official VLM splits and timings are here.

There’s a difficult balance to be struck between hitting the right level of intensity of training – so your miles count for something – and avoiding over-exertion or injury. With my recent hip pain, this has been an opportunity to run as I feel like running depending on the day.

April showers have hit the UK. The summer-like warmth of the past week weeks has been replaced by intermittent sunshine, claps of thunder and sudden, fierce, cold showers. (Of course, we’re still in drought and a hose-pipe ban is in force in areas, but with some parts of the country on flood alert. Go figure.) So, on looking out the office window on Tuesday to see the apocalypse bearing down at the end of the day, I decided to wait until the rain had passed and cut my run short. I knocked out a bit under four miles along Embankment before cycling home in the chilly sunshine.

The next day I opted for a commuter run, determined to run comfortably rather than push any particular pace. After a couple of miles warming up, I felt good and hit my stride on the way into work. On the way home I adopted a similar style, always careful not to over-stretch my stride. In the relatively crossing- and pedestrian-free sections I was knocking out a few sub-7 splits, which marks a big improvement from when I started running with my rucksack.

On Friday I didn’t feel like running. I was a bit tired, and we’d had a guest over to stay the previous night and there had been some nice red wine… One of those days when when the excuses just pile up… However, it was sunny and I forced myself out for at least a few miles to make up for Tuesday’s run. After a mile I was feeling really good and the usual 8.5 miles around Regents Park was a pleasure, and the speed felt comfortable and consistent. I knew it was a good run when, on my way back to the office, a cyclist passed me and shouted some comment about having caught me. He then got stuck at some traffic lights and I never saw him again…

Since fixing my bike, I’ve been cycling about 12 miles most days (except when I’m commuter-running), so I’ve been supplementing my running with cross training. Since Marco, my brother, was spending some quality time in Victoria Station while he waited for his connecting coach between Paris and Shrewsbury I cycled a 20-mile round journey on Saturday to meet him for lunch.

Finally, on Sunday, having put up a flat-pack desk so my girlfriend has a basecamp for Lizzycorp, I set out for my last pre-marathon long run. It was sunny but windy, and my main objective was running comfortably for 13 miles. Now, last year I felt that I was marathon-ready when I managed a sub-40 10k in training. This was a pace that I’ve been hitting consistently each Friday for 8.5 miles, so I was already feeling well-prepared on that front. However, settling into the half-marathon training run I was hitting a decent pace and feeling comfortable and relaxed. At around mile 10 I noticed something a little surprising… Before I ran the Royal Parks Half-marathon last year, I’d had a long-standing PB of 1:24:17 from the Bath Half-marathon. I’d noticed that if I kept my pace, I’d be likely to hit around that time in training. I pushed on – making sure to add a miniature loop to add the all-important 0.1 to the distance – and covered 13.2 miles in 1:24:11. (That’s sub-40 10k pace for 21k.)

This week clocked in at 40 miles. Although those miles will mostly have maintained my levels of fitness, they’ve been psychologically important. I’ve run faster than marathon pace feeling consistently comfortable and strong. All I need now is to make it through the next seven days taking it easy, drinking plenty of water and eating plenty of tasty carbs. I’m ready for race day, and properly looking forward to it too.

So, to quickly run through my training for the week, I ended up having three training runs. The first was a fast 8.5 miles on Tuesday, then the usual Thursday 14.5-mile run home via Canary Wharf and Stratford, and finally a 17.5-mile run along the Lee Valley on Sunday.

It quickly became apparent on Tuesday that the pain is exacerbated by running fast – largely because it involves a longer gait – but I was able to put it out of my mind for most of the run. On Thursday things felt much better, and once I left Stratford I was able to put a decent pace into the run with relatively little discomfort. I felt a little sore from the run on Friday, so had an easy cycle and decided not to go for a short run so I could let my body recover properly.

On Sunday I wanted to run at around marathon pace. I decided to set off without water or gels, which was probably an error given the distance and speed. I kept up a good pace with little discomfort, passing 13 miles in 1:25:30ish. However, when I got to mile 15 I started to notice the hip pain and inevitably slowed a bit. The last few miles weren’t terribly comfortable, and to compound matters I was feeling thirsty and like I could probably have done with a carb gel. Still, I made it home with 17.5 miles at an average of 6:45 minute miles under my belt. Given water and a gel, I feel I could have kept up a faster pace.

If there’s one thing this week has highlighted it’s that I’m going to need to be mentally strong to keep up the pace I want come race day. It seems inevitable that I’ll have hip pain, but the pain doesn’t seem to be affecting my strength (it might be a trapped nerve, or a little-used muscle group, I just don’t know at the moment). I know I’m in good shape and that I can sustain a good pace for a substantial amount of time in less-than-ideal conditions. I just need to work out strategies that will stop me focusing on the pain.

Fortunately, distraction techniques are surely a core skill for distance runners. I don’t know about anyone else, but I often find that trying to mentally calculate split times and finish times seems to be what works for me. For example, I’ll try to work out what a mile split would work out as in kilometres (6:26 per mile is 4:00 per km), or what speed I’m running at, etc. While my body channels oxygen to my muscles I’ve got an excuse for my mental arithmetic skills, but I may need to come to the start line prepared with some more engrossing mathematical quandaries to act as true distractions…

With my bike fixed, I was able to avoid the tube and use my trip into work as a bit of cross training and take some of the pressure off the muscular pain. Monday was a rest day with an easy cycle, and Tuesday was due to be a fast 8.5 miles around Regent’s Park. I was all set to run, but just before I went to get changed at 6 the fire alarm went off. I grabbed my stuff and headed home – no one wants to stand around outside work at gone 6 waiting to be let back in – and cycled home. Once home, I got changed and headed out to Finsbury Park for a steady-paced few laps in the remainder of the evening sunshine.

To minimise the discomfort, I tried adjusting my stride. Over-striding seemed to cause pain, and trying to land mid-foot (or even heel-strike) felt more comfortable than landing on my forefoot. Despite a bit of discomfort, the run felt good and I finished feeling that things were easing out.

On Thursday I left the majority of my belongings at work for the 14.5-mile run home via the Canary Wharf to Stratford Home Run route. With light still in the sky for the whole evening, and little extra weight to carry, I was able to keep a fairly respectable pace on the way home without too much discomfort.

However, on Friday I was feeling stiffer. My tempo run at lunchtime was downgraded to steady to avoid antagonising the niggle, and felt okay – not spectacular, but miles in the bank.

Sunday’s long run fell on the day after a few beers and a veggie curry feast at Brick Lane. Not optimal nutrition by any means… It was a bright sunny day, and warm in the sunshine, but with a distinct chill to the wind. I was feeling a bit stiff, and not really in the right frame of mind for a long run, so I left the house about 1 having only had a couple of slices of toast and some fig rolls for breakfast. I’d decided I needed an extra boost to get me through, so stuck on my iPod loaded up with some motivationally cheesy hair metal and set off.

After 4 miles or so I fell into a comfortable rhythm, with a shorter-than-normal stride, and carried on until around 17 miles in I accidentally yanked my headphone cable out of my iPod. (Never mind the fact that I’d spent the last 17 miles constantly popping the earbuds back as they bounced out at least once a mile.) I then spent a good few minutes trying to thread cables back through my top, into my armband, wedging the headphones back into my ears and then set off again. Despite the break in the run, my legs didn’t stiffen.

Towards the end of the 22.5-mile run, I started to struggle a little with the heat. I’d seen the weather forecast’s promise of 13-degree highs, but hadn’t bargained on the heat in the sun, so had opted to wear my base layer. Sure, it was warm, but it wasn’t warm enough to justify the number of men running topless around Victoria Park.

I finished the run feeling fairly comfortable – if somewhat warm – and on Monday morning my legs were feeling fresher than they had been for weeks. There’s still some stiffness in my hip, but it’s much (much) improved. So, my last week before the taper clocked in at 52.5 miles in four runs. Not ideal preparation, but I’ve come out of the week feeling much better than I came into it. Now I get to enjoy the reduced mileage of the coming weeks, counting down the days as race day gets ever closer.