Tweaking it.

I have been looking at my last year of training plans and trying to figure out how to close out my marathon training. I have 4 weeks of good training left before I taper for 2 to 2.5 weeks. The remainder of my training has to be more specific to my marathon pace. I took a gamble this year with how I prepared myself for this race. After my winter build up for the 25k I lowered my mileage and increased my intensity on the track. My goal of running a sub 40 minute 10k this summer got cut short by a non running related injury, but I was able to get in a good 7 weeks of speed / tempo work with a low volume of mileage. At the end of July I turned the mileage back up and began to build a stronger base, while maintaining a weekly marathon pace or tempo run. The last couple of weeks have been brutally hot and I have relied more on getting in the mileage than pushing myself to exhaustion. I get nervous when I go too long without a long hard marathon pace run. After taking into account my entire year of training I am going to lower my mileage volume for the remaining 4 weeks while upping the intensity to meet my current levels of exertion. It is my hope that if I take these next 4 weeks and focus on more marathon pace runs and less LSD running I will be able to peak with A. a shorter taper, and hopefully at the exact right moment. I am just 2 runs away from completing my first 70 plus week, and I am excited to know that I can train like this and stay healthy. The hay is almost in the barn, and I hope to get it all in there in the next 4 weeks. We will see. It a theory.