This weeks training was the last of the hard stuff before I start to back off a bit in the run up to London. Energy levels certainly fluctuated throughout the week as I hit the hard workouts and tried to recover well from them. It all went pretty well apart from my tempo run on Saturday but I couldn't have changed anything. I did a real speed session of 24 times 200m with 200m jog on Monday and although I didn't feel very fast, I still managed to run them all in 30 seconds. It felt more like I was grinding through the workout but that was ok as I have hardly touched on this kind of speed throughout this marathon build-up.

Wednesday's workout was 4 times 2 mile down in Sedona (4,500ft) and as always the workout sounded a lot longer than it seemed. 32 laps of the track is a lot but I have done this workout 3 times now and it is never as long as I build it up in my mind to be. I was running it on my own so it was going to be a great mental workout for me. I ran the first 2 reps very controlled and always at a pace that seemed very easy (9.45, 9.41). I then started to pick the pace up a little over the last 2 reps so that I could feel like I had worked hard after I was done (9.32, 9.23). The fact that I could pick the pace up pretty easily was a great sign that the strength levels are good right now.

The next 2 days were about recovery although I still ran 39 miles in those days. My hamstring also tightened up quite a bit so when I was doing my strides after the runs, it took me about 8 strides before I could get up to a full range of motion. Luckily its just tightness and nothing too much to worry about and with a couple of weeks of reduced mileage and a few days easy coming up, I'm sure it will disappear soon.

Julie and I drove down to Phoenix on Friday night so I could do my last tempo run down there before I headed onto the plane to the UK. I woke up on Saturday not feeling great but ignored the feeling as I was going to have to get the workout done however I felt. At 8am we headed out the door and it was already hot. I knew it was going to be tough. The plan was to start slightly slower and pick the pace up as I went through the workout. 15 miles of tempo running in heat is not easy at the best of times but when you feel like you are dragging on the warm up you know its going to be a long day. I started out at 5.07 pace and brought it down gradually until I was at 4.56 pace on the 8^th mile (40.04 for the 8 miles). Then I stopped. I could have kept going but I knew I was going to dig myself into a hole if I kept pushing through the tiredness in the heat. In hindsight I should have done the workout the next day but then I would have had to deal with the strong winds that were blowing then. The strange thing is that I felt good in the evening and was fine clipping off miles at a decent pace. In the past, not getting through the workout would have really thrown my head for a loop but I know now that this is just part of marathon training and I'm learning to listen to my body a lot better and know that one off day won't make a huge difference.

We had a nice night with all of Julie's family that night and we headed to bed pretty early as we were all tired from the heat.

Julie was going to run for 2 hours on Sunday morning and I had initially thought I would join her for part of the run as my legs would be hurting from the day before. Not doing 15 miles hard meant that my legs were fine and I left her to get on with the run by herself. I still ran very slowly and got onto the trails that run along side of South Mountain. I completely forgot how long these trails go on for and I ended up running for much longer than I wanted as I popped out the other end of the trails after an hour of running and still had 4 miles to go. It felt so good to get back and dip my legs in the pool afterwards but I will forever remember not to go on those trails on my recovery days again.

I was pretty sad to be leaving Julie and Finley for 2 weeks when she dropped me off at the airport but these trips always go by quickly. I managed to get an exit row seat on the plane with no seat in front of me so I had plenty of room to stretch out and try to actually sleep on the plane for once.

I'm now back in the UK and have started the peaking weeks with a forced rest day because of travel. Fine by me! I'm looking forward to concentrating on recovering and getting some snappy little sessions done to make my legs feel good. The hard part is getting through the days that feel horrible as my blood changes from coming down from altitude. Its usually on days 4 through 7 so this first week will be tough but I know that after that I will feel good and ready to go.