Not Doing Long Runs

I’ve read the marathon posts on a few forums and one of the main themes seems to be the long runs. Apparently the regular – and successful - marathon runners reckon you need to do a minimum of 4 runs of over 20 miles to be ready for the distance at race pace on the day.

I’ve got 5 weeks before the marathon and assuming that I’m going to have the last 2 weeks as taper weeks, I’m going to run out of time. I’ve got no problem knocking out 12 – 15 mile runs and I run this distance regularly, but I’ve only done 1 x 18 and one 29 miler (don’t ask).

I always used to scoff when people said they didn’t do their long runs and think, “Well how did they expect to do a marathon?” but now it’s my turn to look stupid. A cold a couple of weeks ago, then a bad knee this week and it’s knocked me completely off track. 

I’m pinning all my hopes on the physio tomorrow which is silly. The poor chap is a PHYSIO not a magician but I’m done so much training for this and I really don’t want to cock it all up with a last minute setback.

Well, who does?

If the worse comes to the worse and I’m not able to do the marathon, then I can defer it and look to enter another one later in the year (or hope that I made it through the London marathon ballot!) but we’ve all booked hotel rooms in Liverpool and rescheduled other things to be there. Sigh.