Marathon Training Plan

It’s taken a while.  But finally, 1.5 weeks into it, I’m ready to do a post on my ‘adventurous’ Marathon training plan.  It looks a tough one, hopefully I’ll cope and not curl up into a ball and cry half way through because it has gotten the better of me.

Define Adventurous

Last year I completed the Edinburgh Marathon, stumbling across the line with a time of 5:19.  While I’m glad I made it round when I should have (according to my physio) made an early exit, I wasn’t too happy with the time.

To you adventurous might and probably does mean something different to me.  Adventurous for yours truly means I’m embarking on a heavy training plan that will hopefully get me round the Edinburgh Marathon in a sub 4 hour time.

At the moment my personal best for a half marathon distance is 1:59:48 in training (Dec 09) and 2:02:19 in an official race (Sept 08).  So, you see right there that achieving a 4 hour or less Marathon time is going to require a bit of work.

The Plan

Firstly, I should mention where I got the training plan from.  You didn’t think I came up with it myself now did you?!

The training plan was taken from Runners World UK’s series of Ultimate Marathon Training Plans.  I think these plans are Subscriber content only, so if you hit the link you’ll have to log in to see them (if you have a subscription to RW that is).  The plans are provided in plain text format – I worked my magic and put it into a spreadsheet, colour coding to my hearts content.

Sub 4 Hour Marathon Training Plan:

As you can see from the image above it’s predominantly made up of slow and easy runs with midweek speed work, tempo and some Hill & Fartlek thrown in for good measure.

There are 3 races scheduled in the plan. Only thing is, I’m not signed up to do any races on those dates yet.  At the end of last year I did sign up to a Half Marathon, however, it falls on week 6 (13 mile slow run).  Should I still run it?  At the moment i’m thinking yes but just stick to running it at the planned pace but your thoughts would be appreciated.

As for the other race slots, if I can’t find any local races to enter, for Half Marathon distance anyway, I’ll run the Glasgow to Kilmarnock route I planned and ran a few months ago.  As for the 10K in week 4.  I’m still looking.

Feed Me

There is a lot of running to be done.  I already have a (kind of) healthy diet but I’m going to need a supplement to aid recovery.  Protein for muscle tissue repair and carbs to help top up my Glycine levels after a run.

Thanks to two awesome Twitter friends, supplement suggestions were quickly fired at me.

Firstly I looked at Lucozade Sport Recovery Powder.  It has decent levels of Protein & Carbs at £10 for a 10 serving tup.  A price I was willing to pay.  However, @leslie1976 suggested having a Frijj after every run.  If you don’t know what that is, it’s a fun packaged thick milkshake.  I would never have thought of it as a supplement but, as he kindly pointed out, it contains the same amount of protein and roughly the same amount of carbs (and only 3% fat) as the Lucozade recovery powder.

Next, @runningfairy suggested using Promax Diet.  A more technical approach than the Frijj but worth a look.  I had a look around their website and saw they offer a recovery powder called Recovermax.  A little pricier than those mention above but worth a try I think.

Just now, for easy acess, I bought some Frijj to take after this weeks runs.  Next week I’ll try the Lucozade recovery powder and after that I’ll try and get my hands on some Recovermax.

In addition to taking supplements to aid recovery I’ll also indulge in Ice Baths, well more like really cold baths.  I had one after a run the other day and felt the benefit the next day so it must be ok.  Plus, if it’s good enough for pro sports men and women then it’s good enough for me, lol.

Again though, thanks to @runningfairy and @leslie1976 for their advice.

That’s It

So there you have it.  Do you care?  At best, probably not.  That’s far from the reason I posted this though.  I posted it because if it’s up here, where people can see it, then I have to do it.

It’s a way to motivate me.  Pretty much what the blog as a whole is for to be honest, motivation.

If it does interest you and you decide to use this plan for yourself at some point, let me know how you get on with it.  I’d love to hear about your experiences.

Right, I’m off for a run…