The Final Countdown

So it's a little over 6 months ago that I first started this blog after submitting my entry to the 2011 Tokyo Marathon, you can read my first entry here. Now with precisely 12 days to go or 266 hours 33 minutes and 14 seconds as my counter is reminding me. We are in to the final run down to the marathon. (No pun intended there.) I have to say training this year has gone better than my training towards the latter part of last year. My running this year has been easier and just more fun and the distances have slowly come to me and my pace has stayed consistent over those distances.

With a longest run of 32km's under my belt I'm really feeling quite good about the marathon. My target time is still 5hrs and I'm hoping I can make this and maybe even improve on it but I don't want to be over confident and tire myself out short on the distance. So I'm sticking with the 5hr target. My 32k run (20 miles), by the way, was done in a time of 3hrs 21mins which I was very pleased with. I did have a few more aches and pains though after it but nothing that I couldn't cope with.

With training really now complete and some 230km's done to date this year alone, I'm now just leaving myself a few short 10k runs and maybe one last 20k run this weekend before the marathon. This evening I put in a short 9k run which felt great despite the snow on the ground, I'm hoping for a little warmer temps on the day but you never know with snow falling at the starting line last year! Really, there is now little else to do apart from prepare myself mentally and not go out and get drunk. I also have a wedding the day before the marathon to attend. Not the best preps for a marathon, but perhaps I can dig out on the buffet at this wedding without feeling guilty; I will most definitely have to lay off the booze though.

All the best for now and I will update more later. Don't forget to check back.