Back to Marathon Training: Week 5 of 22

Monday the 22nd arrived and there was a big storm in Campinas, the city where I was working from, so my plans to run the 9 miles got literally washed away.

I then decided to skip one week on my program and consider now 21 weeks.

But week 5 was very complicated for me. On the 23rd, after doing my sprint training, I got food poisoning after having a sandwich at the hotel. I switched the hotel, but suffered the entire week, barely being able to eat. I got better on Friday and did the tempo run, but on Saturday I had gastritis and wasn't able to run my long run on Sunday either.

The final result to my training of my trip to Brazil is: I kinda lost two weeks.

It is common sense but I was able to confirm some facts:

• If you change your diet dramatically, your performance reduces dramatically
• Temperature plays a major role on performance. It's silly to try to keep the same pace you were being able to keep on much cooler temperatures. There is a rule of thumb to reduce x miles per second per each F in temperature change, but I think there's no way to make this precisely: if it's warmer, just slow down a bit
• I tried to keep my pacing despite the fact I wasn't training in Manhattan. Going fast on hills demands a lot more of your muscles and my legs felt that

I am back to Manhattan, still recovering from the gastritis, but I guess I am back to my normal training this week, let's see.