This week's stats:

Box step up+down (18 inches high bench): Wednesday - no extra weight, just body weight - 15 minutes

Runs: Tuesday - 10km - 5:23/km pace - 79m elevation gain Friday - 5km - 5:02/km pace - 23m elevation gain Sunday - 21.1km - 5:26/km pace - 155m elevation gain Total: 36.1km - 257m elevation gain

Alcohol consumption: None

How it felt this week: It's just awesome to not run in the rain/snow or near freezing weather. I felt rested after the short 3 days 2 nights vacation and started to work on my speed on my runs this week. Wearing shorts helped quite a bit in the speed department. Of course, going faster means I felt slightly more out of breath at the end of my runs, but all the runs felt pretty good post run. Maybe with the exception that my lower back pain came back after the Sunday long run. Need to strengthen my core muscles more and also stretch my back more. The Sunday long run this morning felt really good though. Started the run with a brisk 4 degrees C weather, eventually warming up to 6C at the end, but the sun was shining and was warming up my face and legs, it felt great. I originally planned to only run 17km or so at around 5:30/km pace, but felt good and decided on the fly to lengthen it to a half marathon. Doubt I can maintain that pacing on the back half of a full marathon, but I'm working on it. Planning on doing a very long one next week, maybe 38km or so. Then I'll start to taper after that long one. Hopefully the weather will be nice again next week. It feels that I'm finally making some progress, but there's also not much time left to train. Still hoping for that sub 4hr finish, haven't given up yet.

Weeks before race day: 5 weeks