On the edge.

  I feel I'm on the verge of injury. My left ankle niggle is there today, and now my right shin is threatening to turn into shin splits and I have a pain in my right foot in one of my metatarsals that's threatening to become a stress fracture if I push it more. I have a recovery jog planned for today, though some cycle crosstraining may be the better part of wisdom. I know the best training, from what I've read, is one where you are pushing your training to the edge, where you are providing stimulus and on the edge of recovering, the maximum stimulus without overtraining. This is new territory for me as I've trained conservatively for the last 5 years and am now pushing the intensity. This modification of the 4 months to a 4 hour marathon plan has not been a good one, but you live and learn. It's all good to add to my collective running wisdom. Lots of easy running with a little harder running thrown in seems to be the winning prescription from what I've read so far. How to do that incrementally, increasing the intensity and volume incrementally that allows the body to adapt, seems to be the tricky part. Glad this is going to be a recovery week. Only a 15 miler tomorrow. Hope it goes well.
   Bit discouraged as I went to McMillan's running calculator and plugged in my 10 miler from the other day and got 4:04 for the marathon distance. That 10 miler trashed me, maybe a 85-90% max effort, and it was only :30/mile faster than marathon pace. It should have felt easier. Granted, it had some incline and hills and strong headwinds on part and wasn't run on a treadmill or track, but it is still discouraging. Makes me scared going into the marathon. I will have to work on my mental game, go into each run forgetting the past, and stay in the moment, trusting my body and taper to absorb the training.