Planning my training

One of the most daunting things confronting any marathon runner is planning a training schedule. Many first time marathoners have never used a structured training program so the prospect of putting together a plan of up to sixteen weeks detailing every aspect of your race build up is quite intimidating. As I plan my own build up to April the 25^th I thought I would share some techniques I use to help me plan my own training timetable.

Start from the back

Ok, so I’ve got between three and four months to plan for my marathon, so how do I do it? Well first of all there are some certainties that I can immediately factor into my build up working backwards from the most obvious one; that race day itself. I know that I will taper my program three weeks before race day, tapering is when I’ll be reducing the intensity of my training by half each week for the last three weeks. I also know that four weeks before my race will be the peak of my schedule when I plan to run my longest training runs. So before I get in to any detail I already have a basic idea about what I will be doing for the last four weeks.

Run a half marathon.

It’s a good idea to include a half marathon into your race build up. By the time I get half way through my schedule I know that I will be running about two hours or more on my long slow distance run and so effectively, by the time I get half way through my training I will be running the equivalent of a half marathon once a week, every week anyway.

The advantage of running a half marathon is that it also gives me an opportunity to practice my race pace, breaks up the monotony of the training and prepares me mentally for the bigger challenge of the full marathon.

Planning a weekly schedule

Now I get down to the nitty gritty, what to do on a day to day basis for the next four months. Over my training week I will be running three or four main training sessions and recovery runs interspersed with rest days. There are loads of different types of training run, some focus on developing strength others endurance while some build up specific muscle type required for different stages in the race. I will go into more detail about these types of runs at a later date but as a guide it’s always good to include some of the following sessions into my training week.

A long slow distance run (LSDR) is the key stone, the core around which I’ll build the rest of my training where I run for increasingly long periods of time, building it up week by week. For example, if I start off with a long slow distance run of about an hour and a half in January, each week I will add 10% onto the length of the run so week two will be 9 minutes longer. I continue to add 10% each week until I peak at week 12. The LSDR becomes incredibly time consuming, during my previous training I was regularly running over three hours peaking at three hours forty minutes. For this reason I usually did my LSDR over the weekend, usually on a Sunday.

Mixed pace running is something everybody can do. If fact, if you’ve never run a single step in earnest some sort of mixed pace run is the perfect place to start. Mixing up your running is a good idea apart from anything else it keeps it interesting. One type of run I enjoy is called a Fartlek, a Scandinavian word that translates a “speed play”. All I do with these runs is run different paces over a course of about six miles, running easy, steady and hard for various lengths of time.

As I am training for an endurance event one training session I swear by is Kenyan hills. I read about this type of run in runners world magazine years ago and I thought I’d try it as part of my build up to my last London marathon. Basically what I do is find a long fairly steep hill (I used Shooters Hill in South East London last time) and jog up to the top I then recover as I jog back down the hill. I then repeat the run three or four times increasing the number of repetitions weekly. Usual hill work involves running up a short hill at a quick pace and while those sessions are good for strength, running up a longer hill at a steady pace helps with that late race strength I’ll need post mile 20 in the race.

Be Flexible

Running to a schedule looks like a massive commitment and while the whole schedule can seem daunting it is important to remain flexible. I aim to achieve certain targets at different stages in the race build up. Ideally I’d like to run a total for around 25 miles a week to start off with. That distance is quite achievable for me but for others 18 or 20 miles may be a more realistic goal. When adding distance to my runs I always stick to the 10% rule, never adding more than 10% to my total run.