6th-12th April

Taper time, but we only ease back a little and we’ve got plenty of marathon pace miles in there and that little bit of speed too. Just the 1 S&C needed this week to hit the target. If we are changing anything this week it should be more recovery. Any problems let me know, but keep up the great work Phil.

116 Points Achieved

MONDAY

10pts | Gym Legs/Core L1

10 POINTS

A good all round session to work the legs and core. You should have built up to this fairly gradually, so don’t dive in head first as you want to take your time building your strength. Be sensible with the weights to begin with.

If short on time combine 2 exercises together (superset) them to save on the recoveries. Ideally one leg exercises and one core exercise where possible. Eg squats and planks.

10 Points

All done

Great work Phil

TUESDAY

15 Points

All done. Kept it on the slower side as recovery deficit and stiffness etc. I may shorten the easy run tomorrow to 40m to do more recovery before Friday & Sunday. Note – tomorrow is a 24 h fast and bowel prep so I’m expecting to lose some energy

Well done Phil. Slowing down can be a good thing and probably too many on my team are doing their easy runs a bit too quick from a HR point of view. A discussion for another day. Yeah if you need to tweak things slightly because of the fast then that is fine. Might take a while to get your energy back up as well, so something to bear in mind at this stage of the plan, we don’t want to be taking too many risks.

WEDNESDAY

15 Points

50m elliptical @130 BPM 15m S&C for shoulder rehab. Note – I need to do this 3 x per week now so can I build this into the programme? Re the two runs, the 3 x 5k looks the more difficult so I may opt to move it to the Sunday, I’ll see on Friday. The last 5k (I’ll do 3.1 miles) is at 10k pace – just checking you meant to do 10k not HM

Yes if you send over the shoulder rehab I can add a session which can be added to the dashboard. Upper body work has very little effect on our running though, so it won’t be that beneficial in terms of pts. 4 upper body exercises with 3 sets = 1 pt now. Well done on the elliptical. Yeah the 10k pace is just to make sure we engage some of the fast twitch fibres ahead of the big day. We want them ready for action when you need them along the embankment. If the pace is a little off 10k that’s fine, but under HM pace is what we are looking for.

thursday

FRIDAY

I’ve rescheduled the Sat & Sun runs and taken the rest day today. I’ve done 20m shoulder work – FYI

Good idea Phil. The shoulder stuff is only going to be worth a few pts max to be honest, so for now I’ll leave it off. Going forward it’s something we can factor in if need be. Hope you feel well rested for the weekend.

SATURDAY

40 Points

So, came down with a cold yesterday and the weather was rubbish today, BUT, the run was pretty good! 5k easy completed (splits were poor and too fast) 5k MP completed (splits were 8:53 ish) 5k 10k completed (splits were 7:34 ish) 2k CD @10:00 Heart rate 141, cadence 177 Total mileage 10.72 miles at 8:55 /m ave

Oh no, so many of the team have a cold right now, it’s crazy, including me, but doesn’t seem to be impacting anyones running which is good. The HR is noticeable low given that session which is very pleasing, so lots of positives to take and now we can really enter the taper and start to ease back ahead of London. Awesome work Phil, hope you feel better by the end of the weekend.

SUNDAY

36pts | 60 Mins @ MP

36 POINTS

A chance to get some important marathon paced miles in. Should feel relatively comfortable, but also like you are running with good form. If conditions are tough or hills are involved, focus on RPE rather than pace.

36 Points

Decent run today. Completed as planned. MP splits were pretty near the target of 8:50 being 8:52, 8:49, 8:50, 8:43, 8:46, 8:50, 8:52. Sore calf though on the cool down, so I will be pleased to have a good 2nd taper week. This last week has been harder with the med procedure and the cold, so next week should give me more recovery time to help me feel pretty good about the final week. I’ve got some thoughts on the race (plan A strategy), so I’ll msg you separately.

Love those splits. Great work Phil and as you mentioned the next 13 days in the build up will be a lot lighter. Yes please do drop me a message, I think it’s important we both agree on the plan A strategy.