5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Interval Training - 20 minutes
1 minute at effort 3, followed by 1 minute jog recovery at effort 1, followed by 3 minutes at effort 2, repeat x 4

I have invested in a new piece of running kit. Yes, I know it’s late in the day, but I think it will be valuable on the day of the marathon and also in future running sessions.

It is a Nike Triax Speed 50 sports watch and it cost £50 from Niketown at Oxford Circus. I have been running using a £6.99 stopwatch from Argos for months and I thought I deserved a treat for sticking with my training to the very end. Unlike my current stopwatch, it has big friendly buttons, a light which illuminates the face so that you can actually read it (instead of one which lights up the bottom right hand corner, allowing you to read nothing at all) and boasts the facility to time beyond 59mins 59secs, which is helpful because I would need to break the world record by over an hour in order to finish in a time that my current stopwatch could accurately record.

It also has an interval training feature – which means I can preset a programme of fast/slow repeats and the watch will beep when it is time to change between them – and, crucially, a pace feature which will tell me during the marathon how far ahead/behind I am of my target finishing time, with appropriate splits at each of the miles. Cool huh?

I gave it a road test today during a relatively short interval session. It wasn’t long enough to be genuinely tiring, but the quick intervals got my heart racing and my legs working. I am pleased to say that I came through it in relatively good form and without any knee problems. In fact, the old knee is feeling pretty good at the moment. It's great to be walking normally again!

After today, I have just 5 training sessions left. They are (to be read in the style of the opening credits to the Thunderbirds):

Five! 4.5 mile easy run, with last 10 mins at level 3 on Thursday;
Four! 5 mile weekend run on Sunday;
Three! 20 minute easy run on Tuesday next week;
Two! 20 minute easy run on Thursday next week;
One! 20 minute easy run on Saturday next week;

London Marathon is go!