Merry Christmas guys,

Just wanted to make a comment about the response to my question on EndurancePlanet about knees and hips acting up half way through my first marathon. I mentioned knees and hips as opposed to say quads and glutes because I wasn’t feeling muscle fatigue as much as tightness at the ends of the muscle. This was my first marathon and I planned to go really slow and did, finishing in 5:16:xx . I hadn’t done a long run beyond 26 km since before the summer so when I got to that point my knees and hip flexors looked up and said “It’s time to go home, right?”. It was snowing lightly about 28-30F degrees and windy with more hills than I expected. 750m(2300 feet?) of ascent? Don’t know it thats much but i guess I need more downhill running practice. I don’t know if that is “cramping” or not but I ended up switching to a 2:1 run walk ratio for the rest of the race. I wore my Kinvara 3's by the way.

  

A shot of me at the Nara Marathon 2012

Untitled by k_brown at Garmin Connect - Details

Untitled by k_brown at Garmin Connect - Details

3 days to go

Three days to go before my first 1/2 marathon in Canada.  Have to get lots of rest on Friday and Saturday nights.  The low temperature here is working to my advantage these days.  18 to 20 deg. C instead of 30+ in Japan.
Todays training run was supposed to be a 20 min. tempo but I got lost and went a bit longer and slower and up and down some hills.
Might take the day off tomorrow and rest up well.

New training plan for Osaka