It's been a funny two weeks following my marathon victory, I felt great after the race and sorely tempted to run the Wilmslow Half Marathon but common sense prevailed and I've eased my way back into training, running just 38 miles the week after the marathon and steering clear of sessions. I always follow the british athletes on twitter and their blogs, my favourite for training insight is Andi Jones, he doesn't elabotate anything scienctic, just good old miles and sessions. I'd never try emulate someone as great as Andi's regime but his taper and subsequent recovery plan following marathons have been really valuable, especially the recovery.

Because I was feeling good I was kinda hoping that the likes of Andi would get back on the training horse, validating my own feelings to get back to sessions, doing maybe 70% of the session but he had a really sensible approach following his marathin at Edinburgh. I was also advised by Glen Groves that although I felt good, my legs would be battered so I stuck to 5 or so miles easy, all obvious advise but I guess you need to hear it. After London in 2012 I was beat up mentally and physically and it took me until July to race well again.

I waited for 12 days then ran a four mile tempo/progression with Russ in work. The intenion was to start at 6.20's and if I felt good progress the pace. I thought this was pretty reasonable, I wasn't feeling tired and the only jip I had after the marathon was in my feet and that was gone by the weekend. After a wobbly 1st mile my legs and lungs adjusetd and after 2 miles I started to wind it up a bit, really pushinig the last mile in under 5.20 which actually felt great. Sure my lungs were burning but I wasn't flat out and it was nice to have that feeling again as the marathon doesn't really tax the lungs.

I'll ran another tempo Sunday over the Sefton Park 5 mile which was promising, 5:54 min miles average. My first race back is the Chester Spring 5 in April, a fast race on a Wednesday night. I'll probably stick to tempo's and maybe do an 800 session just before the race to get that speedy feeling in the legs.