Tag: marathon running

Marathon training starts here!

It’s one month since thousands of lucky runners found out they’d landed a place in the London marathon. I’d wager that most of them haven’t started training yet. Too early? Well, it depends where you are to begin with. I believe a lot of runners make the mistake of waiting until January to start their official training. If you’re a seasoned runner, with a relatively high weekly mileage and, perhaps, other marathons under your belt, you may be fine delaying your official ‘build-up’ because you’ll be able to hit the ground running (pun intended). But if you’re less experienced, or not running much at the moment, or haven’t done a long race in a while, what are you waiting for?! I have had recent enquiries from potential coaching clients who despite knowing they are running London/Brighton/Paris, are currently only running 8-12 miles PER WEEK!

As a coach, I like people to be comfortable running 13 miles for their long run in week 1 of their plan (assuming we’re starting 16 weeks out from race day). If you can only start at, say 10 miles, you will waste valuable weeks building up to the point where you can run 13 miles – and that makes it a race against time to achieve a decent peak mileage and longest long run. The last thing you want is to run your longest-ever run (say, the holy grail of 20 miles) just once, three weeks before your longest-ever run (the marathon). It’s all too bunched up towards the end of the plan and it doesn’t give you sufficient time to recover from the peak long run. Having to squash in weekly consecutive long runs, just to ensure you can make it to a 20-miler also risks injury. There are far better ways to plan your training!

If you are doing a spring marathon, and you haven’t run 13 miles recently (or ever) – start working towards that now and you’ll be in a much stronger position come December or January when you embark on your ‘official’ plan.

One of the reasons I use 13 miles as a base measure is because it’s half the distance you’ll be racing (psychologically, you’re halfway there straight from the off). It’s also because I believe that anyone who has signed up to run  a marathon in the spring should be able to cover the marathon distance over the course of a week right from the off. Think about it: you’re going to be doing this distance in a DAY, so it seems reasonable to be able to accumulate it over a week.! And I don’t like the ‘long run’ to comprise more than 50% of a runner’s total weekly mileage. Say you start with a weekly mileage of 26 miles – that allows you to include three shorter runs (one at faster-than-marathon-pace, such as a speed or tempo session of some kind, I’d advise) along with a long run. Then, as your weekly mileage gradually increases, so does your long-run distance.

Our Master Your Marathon workshop takes place in January 2020 and offers the perfect opportunity to get some expert insights into how to set a realistic marathon goal, how to train effectively and how to prepare for the big day. It includes a guided, supported long run tailored to the needs of every participant. Find out more or book a place here.

 

Brighton rocked

Thanks, Brighton Marathon. I came, I’m sore and I conquered!

Well thanks, Brighton Marathon. I came, I’m sore and I sort-of conquered. Not the time I was hoping to run when I mounted my marathon comeback in December, but given the lost month of training, I think that my finish time – 3.45.17 – was pretty much what I was capable of on the day. It places me comfortably inside the Good for Age category for London, should I consider putting myself through all this again, for marathon number 19!

So, Brighton, what did you have for us? A glorious morning of blue sky with air lightly chilled. A well-organised start. An interesting, lively course with enough runners to make it feel like a big race without congestion and bottlenecks. You had friendly marshals and fantastic crowds, with high fives, jelly babies and orange segments at the ready. Oh, and some great race signs! (Is that a gel in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?) You had rousing drumming bands and storming DJs. And you didn’t have plastic bottles – all credit to you.

But, oh, you also gave us a stiff breeze along that seafront! Manageable on the initial eastward stretch, but by the time it came to those last four miles, I was practically weeping. And, I have to say, you dished out quite a few hills, too. I logged 665 feet of ascent! Barely worth mentioning in a gnarly trail race, but you certainly feel them in a marathon.

The overall verdict? You did yourself proud. I almost – but not quite – did the same.

 

The marathon taper caper

Doing next-to-nothing is harder than it looks…

It’s less than 72 hours until race morning! The trepidation has been building steadily, in the face of the great unknown that awaits on Sunday. Will I be able to sustain my goal pace? Will the wind on the Brighton seafront scupper my plans? Will my stomach behave? Will an old injury rear its ugly head, or a new one emerge? Will I hit the wall? The weird thing about the marathon is that these questions are no more answerable on your 5th or 15th marathon than they were ahead of your first. When you’re out there for three hours or more, elements of chance and luck come into play…

Following a race build-up with more ups and downs than a Garmin heart rate profile, I’ve adjusted my finish time goal by 10 minutes – and shortened my taper to two weeks. (The less you’ve done, the less you need to recover from.)  But it’s harder than it looks, this taper caper. As a coach, I know that it takes around 14 days for the adaptations resulting from a specific workout to assimilate. Therefore, there’s little point doing anything beyond then to try to ‘get fitter’ for marathon day. But that doesn’t stop many runners trying (to the detriment of their race-day performance).

The aim is to hold on to what you’ve got – not just in terms of aerobic fitness but ‘neuromuscular’ fitness too: this refers to the efficiency of the communication pathways between the nervous system and the muscles, which plays a role in important things like running economy, muscle recruitment and sense of effort. Most experts recommend that you drop volume significantly during the taper, but maintain a degree of intensity. For example, if you were doing a speed session, you wouldn’t skip it altogether, but you might only do a half or a quarter of what you were doing pre-taper.

Less volume means more time on your hands. More time to stress over whether you’ve done enough mileage, whether that’s a cold you’ve got coming, or whether your knee is feeling slightly niggly… No wonder so many of us fall into the trap of doing things we don’t normally do to fill in the spare hours. Take Tuesday. I was having a rest day, but I found myself thinking ‘I know, I’ll do half an hour of drills, to keep my neuromuscular pathways firing.’ I almost did, but remembered the golden rule of marathon week just in time. DON’T TRY ANYTHING NEW OR UNFAMILIAR! That goes for shoes, stretches, gels, massage tools and yes, drills. And then today, when wheeling the just-emptied garden bin round to the back garden, I almost got to work chopping up the pile of branches we cut down the other weekend. Step inside, Sam Murphy, I ordered myself.

How to fill taper time, then? Well, there’s your feet to sort out. Cut toenails short and straight across, file away any hard ridges of skin and moisturise. Check – and recheck – your race instructions. Pack – and repack – your bag. (My book Marathon and Half Marathon From Start to Finish has a handy packing checklist.) Tell your supporters and spectators where you want them to be around the course and roughly what time to expect you. And, if you haven’t already done so, write your name on the front of your top in thick, black marker pen. Then it’s just a matter of putting your feet up and working your way through all those lovely carbs…

7661GE Marathon Course map 2019