The Sub 4 strong finish

"the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people." - Randy Pausch

I got to read this on Ram's blog the other day.

I have three more weeks for the race and I don't seem to be adequately prepared for the sub 4:00 finish. I need to work on my Lactacte Treshold and VO2 max. Yesterday, I adapted another training program for a quick re-cap of my learnings over the last six months. The program involves focus on strength and distance in the first week, strength and intensity for the second week and tapering down in the third week. The program involves 7 days of training and 1 day of rest before the big run. It concerns a lot of people that the tapering down process may not be adequate in this program. However, starting the second week, the program takes that into consideration and the maximum distance covered will not be more than 40 k per week.

The next five days are going to be extremely difficult with more than 40kms + several strengths planned before I get my rest day on tuesday.

I consider this week as the brick wall for me. I really want to do this marathon in less than 4 hours and I have hurt several feelings and lost tons of friends along the way (I made new friends also during the training process). It will be nice to see a logical closure to this entire exercise.