Countdown to London!

I sit here tonight, believe it or not, just 4 weeks away from probably the biggest day of my running life yet.

In just 28 days from now I will know whether all the effort, time, training and dedication that I have put in to this experience will have paid off on the big stage.

Last time out at London, I targeted breaking 2 hours 45 minutes, and although I left it late I just about managed it in 2:44:55.

This time around I kept my intentions to run the marathon a bit quieter, not wanting to make it public until I was well underway with my training and knew that I was in the right shape to take it on again.

Te reason for this? Simple. I wanted to make sure I was able to perform better than last time around. I didn't see the point in going all the way to London just to repeat last years performance - as proud of that as I was. I make no secret of my desire to push myself to be the very best that I possibly can be in everything that I do.

So this year I set out with the ambition of running 2:40 in the marathon. The early stage of my training went better than expected and it quickly became apparent how far ahead of last year I was both in terms of training and performances. Running a fairly comfortable 72:36 at Inskip Half saw me move the boundaries and set myself a tougher goal of 2:37 for the marathon. This equates to 6 minute miling all the way around so would be a big achievement for me.

Although the training has continued to go well I have not moved my targets anymore from here. I am conscious of the fact that as the event is two weeks later in the year this time around it is going to be hot!

The marathon training kicked in a week earlier this time too, so along with the extra two weeks, brings it to a total of a 19 week training plan that I have worked off. I aimed to run a minimum of 1000 training miles in this time, but if I could I wanted to average 60 miles + each week, which so far I have managed.

I am currently 15 weeks into my plan and have ticked off 936 training miles, so approximately 62.5 a week on average - in comparison to last years 52 m/pw that I worked off over a 16 week training schedule last year.

So the 4 week countdown is on, and I honestly cannot wait now, I'm raring to go!