 What can I say, for some reason I find it easier to eat cereal out of a cup. Yes I do. I hear the Bobo Bar is ready. Notice a little difference in the shot. This is my teeny tiny camera. It's like the size of a quarter, basically. And this is the camera that I used to film a little bit in the New York City Marathon last fall. I'm going a little faster now in my training, alright. Today's a tempo day for sure. So I need to cut down on the weight, not carrying the big old GoPro. Alright, let's take off. Come on now. Okay, about to hit mile three. Three mile warm-up in the books, averaging about 745 a mile for the warm-up. And now we're dropping down to six minutes a mile for the tempo. And I said yesterday I would hold the tempo for six miles. I have a feeling I'm going to feel good enough that I will hold it for longer, actually. The legs really recovered well over the weekend, just absorbing that training. Okay, making it to mile six. It's really easy. It's feeling easy to run 550 pace. So I'm going to keep going with the tempo because I just feel very in control. So this is a good sign. Okay, uphill section. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. Okay, my other camera that I was carrying on my run, the battery died. And I just realized the GoPro battery is pretty low right now. So I don't know how much filming I'll be able to do inside the choose fitness but bottom line, everyone, how to build confidence in your marathon training. That run today was a confidence builder. I'll break it down for you in detail in the studio. Unbelievable. Oh yes, I can still run. Oh, it's just so, so nice when you hit a workout well. Okay, come on. Then upward, here we go. All right, quick feet, butt kickers and toe taps. Quick feet, butt kickers and toe taps. I'll talk to you about my cadence on the 20 mile run here in a minute. First, I'm going to run you through the week of training. Marathon training week nine has begun. It's amazing. It's crazy, everyone. Two weeks from now, wow, maybe two to three weeks. We're starting to talk about the taper. It's already happening. So we'll come back to that in a minute. Okay, here we go. Today was 20 miles. Again, I'll come back to that. Tomorrow will be eight in the morning, seven in the evening. Pretty easy running, probably 730 to eight minute pace. Approximately Wednesday will be my 23 mile long run. Thursday will be a 15 mile middle distance run. Friday will be 12 in the morning. And I'll come back to that as well and 13 in the afternoon with a threshold mixed in Saturday, 12, 12 easy and Sunday, 10 easy. So capping off. Yes, I just can't believe it. Here's my dilapidated piece of poster board. So we are at the top of our training, everyone. This is the big time. This is high volume and beginning to introduce speed training as well in week nine. So we are at the top of, I'm not going to go above 120 miles a week. Just so you know, I feel very good about where I'm at. The body feels good. And frankly, now's the time to really start bringing speed into the mix. So if I was going to go higher than 120 miles a week, I would have wanted to already do that probably two to three weeks ago because mixing even higher volume plus high intensity, I don't approach my training in that way. Okay, today's run 20 miles. I was going to do a six mile tempo in the middle, ended up doing a 10 mile tempo. Why? Because I think I mentioned it on the camera, although I don't know if the camera actually caught it, but I felt easy at 550 a mile. In fact, I went back and looked at the splits. I was hitting like 545, 550. And throughout the 10 miles, I probably looked at my watch about five times and there was at least a handful of times where the watch said 530 a mile, 525 a mile. What does that tell me? That for me, everyone is starting to approach threshold training. Okay, for me, my threshold training at elevation usually hovers right around that 520 a mile mark, which because of today, and this connects to the title of the vlog, how do I build my confidence in my training? I like to build baby steps in my training. I don't dive right into interval training. I like to build slowly. Okay, so that's why I've got the pyramid. That's why I put at least six weeks of base training, building that aerobic engine at the base of the pyramid and then two to three weeks of tempo work. But remember, I was sick and so I missed the first week of tempo work. But I said, that's okay. I'll make up for it. And sure enough, today felt easy. Like 550 a miles for 10 miles felt really, really easy. So that's a really good sign because you know what that means? Because I missed, excuse me, because I missed the first week of tempo work. Now, now I feel confident enough because I was able to hit 550 a mile for 10 miles at elevation. Now I'm like, okay, I'm going to toss in a baby. All right, all about that baby steps, moving up the pyramid, baby steps all the way up to the race. Now I feel confident enough to mix in a threshold run, a baby threshold run this Friday. So five days from now. So this week I'll be mixing in these two layers of the pyramid into one as I introduce. It'll probably be a three mile threshold. So 515 to 520 a mile approximately. I don't think, I don't know if I'll go over three miles, maybe four, definitely no more than five. Probably three to four mile threshold run on Friday. Okay, two more points real quick as far as confidence and I'm going to talk about my watch in a second is that I think coaches just have to be careful with runners because basketball, you're working as a team. Baseball, it's a team. Football, it's a team. Running, it's you. Now I know there's relay races and there's cross-country teams. I get it, it is a team sport. But at the end of the day, there's no ball to pass and it really does fall onto the runner. And I think coaches have to watch, running coaches have to walk the line and make sure that the workouts that they're assigning to their athletes are not overly daunting and are able, basically you're giving athletes workouts that they can achieve and accomplish. Why? So that they can walk up the pyramid successfully. If you miss a workout or if you fail at a workout, it's hard as a runner because guess what? You can't blame it on anyone else except for yourself. Now, unless the coach is just assigning workouts that are absolutely insane. So anyway, I just wanted to make that point that if you're looking for a coach, make sure the coach understands you as an athlete and that is why I don't feel comfortable coaching at this time because I wouldn't want to be assigning workouts through the internet and just sending workouts around the world without understanding you, the athlete and what your strengths are, what maybe a few of your weaknesses are and that's why I assigned myself this workout today because now it builds so much confidence moving into the Irving Half Marathon in three weeks and then hopefully Hamburg in April. Okay, last but not least, today's cadence said I was at 188, which seems a little high. It felt more like 184, 185 maybe. I was wearing the Polar Vantage V. I love this watch. It's amazing. It does do a little wacky stuff if you follow me on Strava. The elevation gain was off today, but I fixed it on Strava in the back end. Bottom line, that quick feet, toe taps, butt kickers. I'm like, I'm just doing them, doing them, doing them all the time in this training block as I transition from the trails to faster road racing and I'm very, you know, how accurate. I don't wear a foot pod. You all know that. It's not for me, but if that 188 is at least in the ballpark, I'm very, very pleased with that 188. So I hope that cadence vlog from about two days ago helped plant some seeds for everyone. Maybe it wasn't something that I said, but what you read down in the comments for ideas on how to increase your steps per minute. All right, question of the day. Here we go. How do you build? I think this is a critic. I don't want to do my horn, but a great question of the day and a critical one and an important one in case you're struggling a little bit in your training or you're new to running, but it is how do you build your confidence in your training blocks? Huh? Yeah, there it is. How do you build your confidence in your training blocks? What strategies do you use? What maybe little tips and tricks that I'm not thinking about and not communicating with all of you right now in this block. I love you. I wish I could keep filming today. I could, but believe it or not, I'm going to call it there. Yeah, I'm going to call it there. Family's almost home. All right. That's all for today. You all are the best. All right. Of course, we're going to toss it back right here to the Cadence blog from a couple of days ago. A lot of folks are enjoying that one, hopefully learning something as well. All right. Cadence right there. Thanks for being here. Thanks for watching. See beauty, work hard and love each other, everybody. Here we go. See you tomorrow.