My Forum

Hi,

My training for London had been going really well up to my final long last run - at which point I have now developed a pain around my achilles/heel. I tried a gentle 5k yesterday but was in a lot of discomfort shortly afterwards. My plan now is to not run at all for the next two weeks. Maybe try some cross training - either bike or swim - but definitely no running.

Has anyone previous experience of absolutely no running as part of a taper. I know people say this will have minimal impact on performance....but really is that true?

I am not a novice marathon runner but never had a taper that consisted of no running whatsoever.

Well that was a bit of a mud fest. The walk to the start seemed a bit odd too whereby the entire field was expected to shuffle down a very narrow path to get to their starting point.

Big thanks though to all the marshalls out there on a fairly awful wet and windy day. Thanks all...

A real shame that this falls on the same day as the Richmond half-marathon. I'm sure there are quite a few others like myself that would have liked to have done both (as per the previous two years). Oh well, fingers crossed for next year that there is no clash.

You have picked quite a challenging marathon to do as your first one. It is hilly and will get quite tough towards the end. Having said that - I did it last year and would definitely recommend doing it.

If you had an idea as to what your race pace would be for a 3:45 (for a nice flat marathon) then I would start off about 10% slower than that as this will be harder in the second half than the second half of a flat one. If you can leave something in the tank for the second half then all's the better.

You will enjoy it though....maybe not all at the time....but you will.

Well done on the time at Fleet too.