training questions for the Marathon

Eliptical training is fun so far! To mimic my training plan I did 80 minutes today- it wasn't as bad as I would have to thought! It's been near a 100 here since this whole week, but it's turned much cooler and I am feeling the urge to run! Ankle feels great and instability is gone. Will give it a few more days to be sure. For strengthening exercises, do you all have any advice? Been doing stair heel drops and also using a towel to push my feet in all directions.

The ankle is feeling better, but I have continued with the 6 day per week elliptical regime, mimicking the cardio part of the marathon plan. I mixed in about ten minutes easy jogging yesterday. Annoyingly, I feel a bit of a tweak on the other foot, between the ankle and heal. While running, it felt like a kind of a gentle clicking in and out of place, so I stopped running immediately. I now remember feeling this sometimes in runs months ago, but I kind of ignored it at the time as one does. If my research is correct, it appears to be the peroneal tendon, possibly subluxuation. It is not swollen, but feels warm every now and again and when I walk on uneven ground (I live in a hill third word city, so most everything is uneven),I it feels a bit tired/unstable. My calves are a bit tight, so from researching older posts, deep massage for the calves should help. What else? Internet says surgery is sometimes in order...That would suck as I am in a third world country.

Thanks for this key advice, Gordon and others. For some reason of pride, I had it in my head that I never needed to run slower than 730-800 min pace. Over the last three weeks, I have transitioned back to running 6 days a week. In the past I would run harder, but only 4-5 days a week and only 25-30 miles per week max, but in building weekly mileage as well as transitioning to 6 days per week, forcing my self to slow down to 830-9 pace has been key in recovering between runs, doing more weekly mileage, and being able to do one run per week at roughly marathon pace (745-755 range for now) as well as doing one workout per week that is either a tempo run (where I do 4-5 miles, building to about 7 min pace) or hill/800 meter repeats. My ankles are feeling fine now-the tendonitis or whatever it was coming on a month ago seems to have been body telling me to slow down as I increased my mileage and days per week. I also got a hand held foam roller which helps loosen up all my leg muscles. I am in week of 6/18 of the HH advanced program, but depending how I feel as the miles build, might drop down to the intermediate program that doesn't have the weekly tempo/interval run.

Good work! way to be disciplined.

Things are going well with the mileage build up and running 6 days/week. I am at week 8/18 and will hit 46 miles this week. My plan has some speed work every Thursday-it alternates between hill repeats, 800 meter repeats, and tempo runs (that increase in distance over the program). MANY threads have discussed the proper tempo/LT pace as well as given variations on how to structure the run. To determine the pace, some say go by feel, some say base it off your 5 K race pace( 10-15 seconds slower or so). Problem is, I haven't done a 5 K race any time recently, nor any race for that matter.

Today I did a tempo run on a gently rolling 1 mile circular road around my house. 1 mile warm up at 855 pace, second mile 7:22, third mile 7:07, fourth mile 7:02, fifth mile 7:13, with a half mile cool down. I guess it felt comfortably hard.

I don't have a HR monitor which would eliminate the guess work. In lieu of that, would it make sense to do a 5 K time trial next Thursday, when my program calls for 6 800 meter repeats? That would give some kind of fitness check and help work backwards to establish LT pace and possibly marathon pace for that matter. Another fitness check option would be to do a 10 K time trial as part of my Saturday or Sunday longer runs. Thoughts?

Yes that makes sense particularly if you are not sure where you stand. You are far enough out that it probably doesn't make much of a difference whether you go a 5 or 10K. If you were less than a month out I'd definitely say go with the 10k or a half as longer distances will translate better to the full. At this point I'd probably go with a 5K simply because time trialing a 10K solo is miserable in my experience.

Great-two weeks ago, I was doing 800 meter repeats at between 620 and 640 pace on the same gently rolling road and it didn't feel too tough. Next, thursday, instead of the 6 800 meter repeats, I will just do a damn solo 5K time trial! It will be fun to know where I am. Would guess around 20 min for the 5 K, but lets see. I did 17:03 5K in high school XC on much less miles, but I was about 30 pounds less and 20 years younger!