With now less than a week to go before the Paris Marathon, my training has pretty much come to a stop. Common training techniques for marathon running suggest a period of about 10 days to cease all training and let the body recover for the real thing. The problem with running any long distance event (over about 20 miles) is that it is not good for the body. This is also why when training to run the 26.2 miles it is suggested that you don't run that length until the actual race, instead build up to it over the previous weeks...

Obvioulsy I have been doing a lot more training than getting miles under the belt, but I have been tracking all my running over the last 4 months or so preparing for this weekend (disregarding my training in the hypoxic on the treadmill) . According to my trusty calculations, training has had me cover 81.73 miles with a total time of just under 11 hours and burning in the region of 12300 calories. That gives me and average speed of about 8 minute miles which if I can sustain for the whole race would set me up perfectly for what I am aiming for. My aim was to cover 100 miles in training before the race and with all the running i was doing in the gym I reckon i have easily surpassed that which is a great feeling, especially as I have had very few niggles to complain about!

the funny thing is that per day on the row, I am going to be burning about 10000 calories. This is quite a wake up call for the weight i will then need to gain for it as it is almost impossible to eat that many calories per day! With all this training I have been doing I am now at about 88kg, which I was last at when I was about 17! it's also about 6kg lighter than where i was about November last year so it just shows that something in the training is working!

I met up with a guy called Andrew Brown at the weekend who is also going to be partaking in the race as a solo entrant. He has secured the use of the boat 'JJ', Charlie Pitcher's awesome boat from the 2009 race which did the crossing in just over 52 days which was at least 3 weeks quicker than any other solo boat any beat all pairs and fours entries...so a pretty magnificent boat! It was great to talk to Andre though as he is going through the same things I am with regards to sponsorship and exposure for his project and charities. We are going to get out for a row in the next couple of weeks which will I am really excited about, it will be my first time on the water in what I am going to be living for up to 4 months!

Tommy