On 12th April 2015 I took part in Brighton Marathon, my first ever marathon event. In this series of four posts I will be talking about my marathon build-up, training, performance and what I learnt along the way.
In this first post I'm going to look at how I selected Brighton Marathon and other build-up races and how I selected and customised my training plan.
Race Selection
After a successful Reading Half Marathon in 2014 I decided that I wanted to attempt a marathon in 2015. Looking around for a spring event of a decent size and convenient date I narrowed down the choice to either London or Brighton. Not wanting to chance my marathon debut on a ballot, and the fact that we like visiting Brighton, made it a fairly easy decision.
Also, based on my 2014 Reading Half time of 1:30:01 I was also fairly confident to predict a marathon time of about 3:10:00 which, if achieved, would get me a good-for-age entry into London for 2016 anyway.
So, at the end of May 2014 I booked my place for Brighton. At the same time I also booked a hotel for a family long-weekend holiday (Friday to Monday). My logic at the time was that I didn't want to chance travelling down on the Saturday and missing the race number collection and I wasn't sure what state I would be in on the Sunday afternoon to drive home again. As it was, I would have been fine on both counts, but it was nice to have a family weekend away!
Build-Up Races
With my main race for 2015 booked, I then decided to look around for a half marathon in the weeks before. The aim being to use this race to test my fitness and practice race strategy. My default selection was to do Reading as this is my local race and a race I've always enjoyed previously.
However, when the date for Reading was released I discovered that it was only three weeks before Brighton. A few questions on some forums and the suggestion was that this wasn't my best option, the main reasons being:
- With the race being right before the taper there would be little time to adjust training or strategy before the marathon date.
- If I was carrying any niggles and aggravated them during the race, three weeks might not be long enough to allow them to heal.
I then looked around for something a bit earlier in the season and came across Bath Half. This was six weeks before Brighton and marked as a fast, fairly flat course. I therefore signed up for Bath as well. The aim being to do Bath as a full-on effort, aiming for a new PB for a half marathon. Reading would be a marathon pace training run and race practice, with the option of running it as a full race effort if things were going well with my training.
My race calendar for the start of 2015 was now complete. I then went away to focus on triathlon for the summer.
Training Plan Selection
For my first half marathon I followed a basic plan straight out of the pages of Runners World. As I started to read and learn more about running I then switched to building my own custom plans using various books and online sources as inspiration. However, for my first marathon I decided that it was important to follow a proper structured plan. I wanted one with a sound scientific background and a proven track record.
Finding a plan
Listening to the Marathon Talk podcast I had heard quite a bit about the Pfitzinger and Douglas plans and their book Advanced Marathoning. I purchased a copy, read it cover-to-cover and was very impressed by their approach.
I have a strong belief that a training plan will only be really effective if you believe in it. As someone with a scientific and highly logical background I was far more comfortable knowing the full reasoning behind the plan structure and recommended sessions. I just can't see myself ever being confident with plans that just tell you what sessions you need to do and when without giving you the full understanding of why.
With an understanding of and confidence in their approach to marathoning, I decided to select the Pfitzinger & Douglas 18-week 'up-to 55 miles per week' training plan. This felt compatible with my limited running history, my current mileage and the number of hours that I could dedicate to training each week.
Customising the plan
The first step was then to customise the plan to fit into my slightly unusual circumstances. I had the following constraints to meet:
- No training runs at weekends, except short sessions on a Sunday evening (part of my agreement to enter the marathon would be that training shouldn't impact on family time).
- Avoid training in the evenings during the week (for the same family time reasons and because my wife uses evenings for exercise classes and activities).
- Maintain one swimming session each week, which has to be on a Wednesday or Friday morning as that's the only time when the pool has convenient adult lane sessions. This was necessary as I was planning on some triathlons later in 2015.
With the above constraints in mind, I re-jigged the P&D plan so that it roughly fit the following pattern:
- Monday morning – general aerobic run
- Tuesday morning – long run
- Wednesday morning – swimming
- Thursday morning – medium-long run
- Friday morning – session (e.g. lactate threshold, intervals)
- Saturday – rest day or slow recovery run with the kids (working up to Parkrun)
- Sunday evening – easy recovery run
This would mean doing some 3 hour runs on a Tuesday morning before work, but the plan fit my schedule nicely and getting up early has never really been much of a problem for me.
I also planned on making the runs on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday morning end at work so that I could do a 3.5km (2 mile) recovery run home each evening.
In addition to the running, I also scheduled in a core strength session every Tuesday evening and a leg and hip strength session on a Friday or Saturday evening. Also there were short sessions of stretching and rolling pretty much every night as well.
Ready to Go
With a plan in place it was time to start my build-up and then move on to the training plan proper. These will be the subject of my next post in this series.
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