Treated myself to a rare rest day today (unless you can count 20 minutes of grass cutting as a workout of course). My goal for Frederick has been a conservative taper and I’m determined not to “test myself one last time” before Sunday’s race as I’ve been prone to do in the past — right Bill?
After last nights calf icing and stretching, my legs are feeling pretty good today. I’ve been thinking more and more about the race and enjoyed searching through my old marathon results looking for inspiration. My plan is to run negative splits (i.e. run the first half slower than the second) and hopefully come on strong in the closing miles.
Speaking of inspiration, I’ve also been watching old footage of one of my favorite runners – Welshman Steve Jones. Jones broke the marathon world record at Chicago back in 1984 (see video below) and followed up with a career best marathon time of 2:07:13 in winning the same race in 1985.
Another of my favorite Jones performances is from a 10,000m track race on the European Grand Prix circuit – again back in the early 80’s. See if you can predict the finish with 150m to go….
I track my yard work as workouts. Granted, shoveling 2 feet of snow is more work than planting my vegetable garden, but I still track it.
Thanks for posting these vids. I was a HUGE Steve Jones fan back in the 80s. That 10,000 finish is AMAZING! Not sure where he dug for that extra bit at the end.
WOW, never seen that Steve Jones race before. Shehanga? really closed the gap on his lead, so must have been saving for a final push. When Jones looked back Shehanga saw the weakness and took off! Never let them see you look back 🙂