In exactly 8 days after today, i will be toeing the line at the Tokyo Marathon for the second time in as many years. Its a race in which only half the race experience is through your feet, the other half is through your eyes ...what with such fantastic crowd support, runners of all ages, a general feeling of bonhomie in the air, freshly made piping hot food from complete strangers ... its difficult to ignore all this and stay completely focused on just how you are running.
My training has been kinda here and there and everywhere. I decided that i would try and mimic last year's training block and see where it would get me this year (last year, i had a non-existent Nov-Dec 2010, started training in Jan 2011 and got in about 7 weeks of training before running the race, to a 4:26:57 finish). I found myself in a similar situation at the start of December (with an abysmal three month hiatus just before and having put on 4kgs in the three weeks of leave i had taken to visit India for Diwali). I came back to run my 7km bit at the Ekiden and was hoping to run atleast at a 6 min pace but somehow managed to run 5:04 pace. That kinda ignited the fire and i started training in December to just shed the 4 kgs i put on and then think about giving Tokyo a decent short.
165kms in Dec, 245kms in Jan and possibly 150kms in Feb (before the race) should make this on paper, a better trained race relative to last year's prep but i somehow still dont feel too confident about matching last year. I hope to run this race as strongly as i can to get a good idea of my current fitness level so that i can make an appropriate training plan for a marathon in July/Aug.
Let the cards fall as they may ..
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