Cough and wife... stopping me from my 40k

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Ok, thats a lousy excuse... but I have been coughing and not feeling 100% to go out for a 40k run. My wife has been threatening me with a divorse if I went out and did the run anyway! I figured it is better for me to take a short break and maybe do it next weekend. I wanted to do some research on distance that can be run as part of the training for the marathon:

1. Here is what Patric McCrann, author of the Irondistance Run Training eBook and a seven-time Ironman finisher and avid endurance runner had to say: 3 hour is the limit if you run for more than 3 hours then you are doing more damage to your body than train it.

2. Marathon Training says DO NOT run the whole marathon distance! I wonder why... the longest they recommend is 23 miles!

3. Greg McMillan has a very interesting strategy about long runs, he splits the goal of the long run into two

a) Long, Slow Distance Long run with the following objectives

1. Burn fat
2. Strengthen legs
3. Deal with mental and physical fatigue

b) Fast finish, Long run

1. Practise marathon goal pace
2. Practise equipment, nutrition, pre-race routine
3. Learn to run fast when tired

I like the second set of goals and here are the guidelines

1. Start easy but finish with last 30-90 minutes averaging marathon goal pace
2. Run last 1 to 3 miles as fast as you can
3. Complete 3 to 5 times before the actual race

Longest training run yet: 36.07 km in 3hr 16min

Started running at 7:22 am on Sunday, the goal was to run 36 km but I did not have time goal... coming to think of it I should have. I ran the first 15km at an average pace of 4 min 54 sec, which I presumed was good enough to keep my overall average around 5:15 but I ended up doing 11 seconds slower. The average pace was 5 min 26 sec not terrible but still slower than I thought I would do.

Another thing I noticed was that I was much more tired during the run than I was in my previous long runs, I think the reason is due to lack of proper sleep. We just got a 8 week old black labradore puppy and she has been keeping us up in the night.