Since starting to log every run and pay attention to the effort levels through heart rate I've become concerned that I'm overreaching at marathon pace effort.
As the above chart illustrates Zone 4 is were tempo or race pace effort should be. During yesterdays run I spent almost 40% of the time about tempo which seems like writing cheques the body can't cash.
There are two possible answers for this:
1. I'm training at paces according to where I want to be rather than where I am.
2. The stress placed during the rest of the training week is building to a level which has me close to the red line.
3. Everything else.
I'm hoping its a combination of 2 & 3. This week the Hanson plan saw the Tuesday reps change from speed to strength which had the effect of dropping pace but doubling distance. The effect is a ramp in accumulative fatigue which of course is the MO of the Hanson method. I've done myself no favours either by opting to do a recovery 5 mile run instead of the prescribed rest day between Tuesday reps and tempo Thursday as well as bulking up milage on some other runs to match the weekly volume of previous plans I've followed. In truth that isn't really trusting the process of the plan, that needs to change.
I'm now on a run streak of 57 days and I probably shouldn't be. I need to take some of those rest days to allow the body to absorb the stresses of training and yet when I resolved myself to resting fully last Wednesday, pride or ego raised it's head and wouldn't allow me to break the streak: that is not running smart and has the potential to push me over the edge or towards injury/over-training. Breaking that streak by not running next Wednesday is one of my targets for week ahead.
The 'everything else' part covers recovery, nutrition and sleep as well as environmental factors such as weather. On the tempo run yesterday I was running into an 18mph headwind for the first 4 miles. This coupled with a net up hill profile had me overworking for the pace. A smarter runner would have dropped the effort to suit the conditions but again I let pride and ego make me push the pace. The reason was more to do with having the correct numbers on garmin and strava for my followers and friends to see. Again not smart training.
The other area where I'm falling down and potentially not optimising and absorbing training is sleep or lack of. I'm not the best sleeper at the best of times and have been struggling for a while now with badly broken sleep which rings some alarms as it is one of the major indicators of over training. Trying to deal with this is less straight forward. Things I do intend putting in place over the coming weeks are reducing screen time before bed and not eating after 8pm. On numerous occasions over the last week I've found myself mindlessly scrolling through the phone at 11pm. This is not conducive to quality, restorative sleep. The same can be said for putting your digestive system to work at a time when you're going to require your whole body to enter sleep mode.
If I am overreaching and my marathon pace is notional rather that achievable I think the next few weeks of peak training miles will tell a tale.
Having a broken Heart is bad. Giving the heart a break is good
Week T-7:
Monday 10th Feb: 8 miles easy @ 8:07 min/mi, HR 151bpm.
Tuesday 11th Feb: Hanson Strength session 6 x 1 mile @ 6:39 min/mi avg, HR 161bpm.
Wednesday 12th Feb: 5 miles recovery @ 8:53 min/mi, HR 141bpm.
Thursday 13th Feb: 8 miles Tempo w/wu & cd. Tempo pace: 6:50 min/mi, HR 176 bpm. Total miles 11.5 miles.
Weekend of 7 and 8 miles easy and then 16 mile LR on Sunday
Just as well I 
running!
running!
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