As a sequel to my marathon two years back, I'm doing three Antwerp one again. This time I'm training fit it though. Following a program and everything.
It's a 17 week program. Mondays are cross training. Tuesday interval.Wednesday easy lope (ostensibly marathon pace). Thursdays are a hard pace. Friday is a rest. Saturday is long. Sunday is rest. Gradually the distance/difficulty on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday increase. My last long run was 19.5km in 91:54 -which is more or less the peace I want for the marathon "simply a matter of" telescoping that out over the next few weeks to the longer distances.*
Tonight I did ladder intervals. I managed: 200, 400, 800, 400, 200, 400, 800, 400, 200, 400, 200m (I was done after the last 400, so just another 200 to cap it off).
200s in 35-37 s, 400s in 1:25-1:33, 800s were the same at 3:11.
The 200s were exhilarating, I felt like Kate Winslet when she was on the prow of the Titanic (you know, because she was in the company of one of the best actors of his generation).**
The 400s were kind of soothing; like prison institutionalisation.
The 800s were horrible.
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*The distances over the half marathon distance (21km) will tell [obviously]. But right now it's looking like 3:15-3:25 to finish.
**His performance in Wolf of Wallstreet was the best I have seen of him.