What a fine start to the week.  Swimming with little Mr. Noble in the morning and then a 50 minute run home at marathon pace – 8 minutes per mile.  And a massage planned for this afternoon.

Managed to do 7 minute 50 second average pace for the run and it felt good.  More runs needed at that pace for longer distance.  Want to get used to running at that speed, so I know what it feels like and it becomes almost second nature.

More reading last night and a new book on order from Amazon – Run Less Run Faster.  After reading an article in Runners World this month, where a guy around my age, subscribed to this new training plan and got his marathon time below what he’d done some 20 years or so ago.  Sure his times was around 2 hours 20 minutes (that’s a sprint for me) but the theory is the same.  4 or 5 runs a week and 2 sessions of hard cross training.  The runs being one long one (but never more than 16 miles), one a speed work, one at marathon pace and then one medium distance one.

The theory is to get used to running the last 16 miles – so you know what it feels like.  The first 10, you know you can do.  The last 16 will be hard (very hard if my memory serves me right from 2009), so need to train to be able to do those well.  And run slow to start with and then slow down some more.  This last bit is the biggest challenge, and even more so when there are 35,000 or so other people running and everyone’s raring to go at the start.  In the last half marathon I did in September, I started way way too fast and ran into problems at around 8 miles – crazy!

And if you’ve never the London Marathon this is what it looks like at the start …

And this is the official video of start for the 2011 London Marathon – courtesy of the BBC News website.