Melbourne Marathon training week 7 and State team selection

Earlier this week I received an email notifying me that I had been selected in the WA State team for the Australian Marathon Championships being held in conjunction with the Melbourne Marathon.  I am really excited to have been selected and it will definitely provide me with any extra motivation I might need to get out for a second run after work.

Here is the team from the email I received:

Men:

Chris O’Neil
Adam Martin
Gerard Hill

Simon Ward
Kevin Matthews
Tim Oborne

Women:

Lauren Shelley

Tina Major
Nera Jareb
Visnja Jareb
Jodie Oborne
Rochelle Youngson 

The first three finishers "count" for the purposes of determining the placings of the teams in the Championship so it would take one of our very good top three to have a bad day and for me to have a very good day to see me count.


I had a really good week training-wise last week.  143km for the week with medium long runs of 24km and 21km on Tuesday and Thursday.  On Monday I ran 17km with 9km a tempo effort.  I started with a 5km warmup then into what was planned to be an 8km tempo.


For some reason, after about 6km my Garmin stopped autolapping and would go to a different screen at the end of each km.  As a result, I intially thought it had reset to 0 and had re-started.  Decided to run to the next full km and it turned out it hadn't reset and that the km took me to 9km @ tempo.  3km jog home.


Average pace for the 9km was 3:40/km and I felt very comfortable aerobically and overall pace of the run was 4:07/km (ie inc warmup and cooldown) compared to 4:11 last time.


Good session.


Double runs on Monday and Tuesday but missed one on Wednesday.  Singles on Thursday and Friday as I rested up a bit for a hard marathon specific long run on Saturday, although I did do some strides on Friday morning.


On Saturday, I ran 13km @ 4:30/km then 19km @ 3:50/km before a 2km jog home.


Pretty cold at the start and I was regretting not wearing gloves as my hands were freezing, especially my left thumb which I broke about 20 yrs ago so maybe the circulation is not as good as it was really painful.  Took until about 7km before they started to thaw out.


First 13km felt very comfortable and I held myself back a bit.  I had a stop for a gel and a drink then ran about 600m to start the MP section at the start of a km.


MP workout was very similar to the 16km one I did a couple of weeks ago except it did not feel hard early.  Had to focus and concentrate to maintain pace in the middle and then work hard over the last couple especially as they were back into the wind.  I had another gel 40mins into the 19km


Pulled up really well from this run which was a real confidence booster.  I am at a stage where I am getting confident in my fitness and in my training program.  My pacing and my marathon specific work is very much based on Renato Canova's training philosophies.  One of the hard MP runs I have planned is 4 x 6km @ MP with 1km @ 4:15 between each rep but after watching this video I may change it to 4 x 5km + 3km.


This week will be another pretty high mileage week with some speedwork on Friday and maybe a hilly long run on Saturday with half an eye on City to Surf at the end of August.