# running / London Marathon 2025: Week 8

02 Mar 2025

Goals for the week

• Nail the “day before” eating
• 20 mile race: Use this as a race rehearsal
• Calves: Focus on strength
• Marathon effort during medium-long run
• High-40s mileage
• Gym

Eating the day before

I wanted to treat my 20 mile race today as a rehearsal, including eating the day before. I think I got this mostly okay, with 2 lessons.

1. Avoid dairy. It’s not a big issue but made me feel full through the afternoon, and might disrupt eating.
2. Don’t snack late. I finished dinner at 7, and then my wife got some sushi and I snacked on it around 9. This was too late to be eating.

Will adapt to do better for the next race.

20 miler

This was a local club event, and for me it was a rehearsal of race prep, but the actual run was just a long run.

It was very cold when we set out, but the sun came out and I finished in a T-shirt. A lovely spring day.

I was lucky to find a small pack going at a comfortable pace for me, and I stuck with them. At halfway this dropped down to two of us, and we slowly wound it up to mid-6 pace, which felt strong and gave a massive confidence boost.

Encouraging to feel so strong at that speed. This is the first marathon-level effort I’ve done all block.

Running with people is so much easier.

Calves

Last week I was having niggling issues with my calves, so I made sure I did calf raises every day this week. The issue hasn’t reoccured, and I’ll continue with focusing on calf raises.

Mileage

51+ miles! The first time I’ve done 50 miles since Feb 2023, the last time I was training for London.

Cool to be back up here, and feeling pretty fresh and strong.

Thoughts

HALF WAY! If you want to see time fly, count the weeks.

In the first 8 weeks I’ve gradually built mileage from mid-30s up to a comfortable 50+ mile week.

Where next from here?

In 3 weeks I have another 20 mile race. I want to be ready to run at least a large part of that race at marathon effort.

Between now and then I want to hold mileage around the 50 mark, while introducing more marathon intensity. In particular, getting some strong long runs in over the next couple of weeks will be the main focus.

8 weeks to London – let’s g0!

Goals for next week

• Hold high-40s mileage
• Long run with sensible yet chunky workout
• Gym
• Continued calf focus