Blister pack

Bye bye high mileage week, hello just as high mileage week. It's 4 weeks until the marathon and my knees are wondering when they can start to taper. I am so looking forward to doing 20 miles. I'm sure it won't hurt in the slightest.

Admittedly, today's 18 miles were a vast improvement on last week's 16 miler. I didn't suffer from any 'walls' today although last week's blister has now quadrupled in size in all directions. But I managed to get to the last mile before I really started to feel homesick, so I think that's a step in the right direction.
True, I was so hungry when I got home I nearly ate some of the stair carpet but I did manage to make it to the kitchen eventually so very chuffed with the self-discipline there.

Yet again, Mother Nature was an angel, giving me sunshine, mild temperatures and a light breeze. I can only hope she's as magnanimous on November 1st, and remembers which side of the Atlantic I'm on.

If it is possible for muscles to get bored, then mine definitely do. Today's route definitely helped. I'm such a difficult individual - I need novelty, I need a change of scenery, I need excitement. Obviously running round the London Borough of Ealing rules out option 3, but at least I managed to cover some streets that I wouldn't normally run round, so mentally I couldn't tell how far I was from home, or how long I had left to cover.  With hindsight, I might have included too many hills (5) but what goes up, must come down and in general I was sufficiently distracted by my surroundings (RIP DIY shop on Bilton Road...) that I didn't really notice how long I'd been running. On that basis, I should be onto a winner with NYC as by the time I get to Queens I'll be totally lost!

Last night I had my first marathon-related nightmare - I didn't get my number in time, so couldn't get on the ferry to the start and everyone was being really evil to me, in a shouty New York  airport immigration officer sort-of way, but all with a 'have a nice day' at the end of it. I even missed the Barilla pasta dinner and fireworks the night before, which obviously is the main reason for doing the race in the first place. Talk about waking up in a cold sweat!
I've made a mental note to get myself organised this week and find out my ferry time etc so that's all cleared up and there's room to have nightmares about another aspect of the race.

Bad dreams aside, this week's biggest challenge will be to try and get rid of this monster blister before I set off next weekend otherwise at this rate it's, literally, going to be the size of another, separate, foot!

LON