4/23/10

Friday’s Training – Am: 48 mins easy Pm: 20 mins easy

Mileage – 10 Miles

I had a nice easy day today. It was good that I had got all my duties out of the way yesterday as that would give me 2 days just to relax and unwind before the race. I woke up a little later at around 6.40am and headed downstairs to have a coffee and croissant. There were already some athletes in the restaurant, having done their morning runs. Once I was finished, I went back up to my room and relaxed for a bit until 7.30am when I headed out for my run. I kept being told that if you head along the river towards the east that there was some good running but I just found it to be twisty, cobbled roads. I got to a bridge and decided to head back along the road that is part of the course. I followed this all the way along to around the 24 mile mark on the course and turned around and headed back to the hotel. I had some fantastic weather for the run and it was really nice to see the sights as I ran along beside the Thames. I did all my drills and then headed up to the room so I could get on with some stretching. My room is pretty small so I had to go out into the area beside the elevator’s as that was the nearest place with enough room. I headed down to breakfast after this where I had some fried potatoes, beans, bacon, porridge with honey, banana and croissant. I knew all that food would get me sleepy so I headed up to my room, had a nice hot shower and then tucked myself in and had a nap.

Once I had woken up, I headed downstairs and met Pete Riley (elite athlete coordinator for the Great Run races and good athlete himself) in the bar. We sat and had some lunch and caught up on what’s been going on with each other. I expressed my interest in running the Great North Run as I still haven’t run it. After we had finished up, I walked downstairs and sat with Dan Robinson in the lounge for a while before Dave Monti (elite athlete coordinator for the New York Road Runners) joined us and told us a few stories about the Boston and Rotterdam marathons. I headed up to the athlete lounge for a little while to watch last years race but then remembered that I had to get back to the room so I could talk to Julie on Skype. It was good to see Julie again as I had missed her yesterday with how busy my day was. There has been no more movement on the house as it has snowed the past couple of days in Flagstaff. I then talked to Greg for a while and filled him on how I’ve been feeling. He was supposed to be here but with the flights being messed up, he wasn’t able to get here. He had sent me all my fuelling strategies for the final 3 days before the race and I have been following well. The rest of the day was spent mulling about and relaxing with my feet up.

I went for my second run at 5.30pm and felt good. This was just a shake out run to get my legs moving so it was pretty slow but I did some dynamic stretches afterwards so that my body was nice and loose. I quickly got changed and met Kim Smith and one of my agents, Valentijn in the lobby as we had to go to the welcome banquet on a boat that was moored outside the hotel. Kim and I headed onto the boat and tried to scoff down as much of the canapés and bread that was on offer as we were both pretty hungry. After a few speeches were made, we headed out and I went over to the Dickins Inn again to grab some dinner. All the other British guys had just been for dinner so I was on my own but that was fine as I usually eat pretty quickly and wanted to get back to my room as it was starting to get late. I had a lasagne and a sticky toffee pudding. I have spent much of my build up to the marathon with no desserts but now I get to use the marathon as an excuse to eat them! The meal was very average so I won’t be going there tomorrow. I don’t usually like to eat so late and then head to bed but as it was getting close to 10pm I just brushed my teeth and put my head down for the night.