One week to the Gold Coast Marathon: Stick or Twist?

Just a week to go until the Gold Coast marathon and although I'm really looking forward to racing again I'm not sure what to expect.

The last two months has seen some of my most consistent quality running in a couple of years, in fact since my marathon PB in Barcelona in 2009 (2:44:44), but I feel I might be missing some top end.  I've not been doing the regular speed session which have been a significant factor in all my previous good spells of running so it'll be interesting to see what decent volume and tempo running will generate.

Over the previous 3 weeks I've done two 10k time trials to try and gauge fitness and have been pretty disappointed to be struggling to get under 37mins. Yet during my long runs I've been comfortably doing multiple sets of 5k's at a marathon race pace only slightly slower than that 10k speed.  I'm happy the strength endurance is there, so next week will highlight what the lack of top end means.

I'm not confident to make a prediction.  Sub 2:50 and something towards the PB would be great as a confidence boost heading into my pre-Hawaii block, but of course you always want to break the PB and Gold Coast should be a quick course.

Maybe it's time to take a risk and dice with a melt down!?...

more this time next week