The marathon….

I’ve got a marathon coming up in 9 days time. Now the plan was to approach this marathon casually, like it doesn’t really matter. What? A marathon? Oh okay, bring it on. I was going to do it slowly at my zone 2 training pace, just for time on my feet, you see. No big deal, blah blah blah…. Who am I kidding?! A marathon! Suddenly I’m super-excited…Should I try and go a bit faster? What about trying for negative splits? I know there will be pain but I’m going to do my best to embrace it and then beat it down!   Fear and self-doubt are my biggest enemies. My new plan is to do the first half at an average pace of 8 minutes per kilometre and the second half at 7:30 minutes per kilometre.  If I manage that and still feel relatively good the following day, I will be very proud.   That gives me an overall time of 5:27 – my original plan was to take 6 hours or even more. I plan to do at least 4 or 5 of these slow marathons before the end of the year – I’m hoping that by next year the marathon distance will not be such a scary thing.   Let’s see……