Last attempt

Tonight was my last attempt at marathon pace, and despite an awful headwind in the last 1.5 miles, I averaged a 10.25 mile overall. Yet again, I got totally soaked in the pouring rain. I was most surprised to find today to be quite an energetic run. I deliberately had to keep slowing my pace down...although this has been the case ever since I started the 10.40 pace. I think I've mentioned previously that I've got so used to running faster if things feel too easy, so it feels totally weird to step it back a little, enough that the pace is "comfortable".
I'm under no illusions though, I know how all of a sudden you can become extremely tired during a marathon (or any race for that matter) and a 10.40 pace will seem really fast and hard to maintain.

I got a really nice email from Shaun at the weekend. I'd emailed and said that my run on Saturday hadn't exactly been great, and the answer was very motivational... full of mileage stats and figures (the sort of thing I like), and very positive about what had been achieved during the run.
There is something quite interesting about my motivation since the email... it's been very good, and I realised that my sudden lack of motivation during a taper is actually a sudden lack of confidence hitting me.

There is one thing I will definitely be thinking about on Sunday. He said in the email, there will come a time during the marathon that you may start to feel tired - but this may be mostly a psychological feeling that you can, with determination, overcome.
I think that's a great way of looking at it!