Marching Onwards
A smart approach to marathon training and recovery can take you through the hard yards in March
Training for an April marathon? Here’s how to make it through the madness of March
Marathon training is a journey with many twists and turns, and it is physically and emotionally demanding. For those training for an April marathon, March is when your training begins to reach its peak. The groundwork in the winter has set you up for your key marathon-specific sessions and those crucial long runs, which will take place over the next four to five weeks. Here I look at how to pull marathon training together to ensure you arrive at the taper with the key work in the bank.
• Too much of a good thing The fear of the marathon can lead to many runners trying to prove to themselves they are ready by going too far in their longest long run, leaving themselves tired on race day.
TRY THIS In March, aim for 2-3 long runs of between 2:30 and 3:15, the majority of each to be run a bit slower than your goal race pace.
• Easy means easy Runners often blame tiredness or niggles on long runs or harder, faster sessions. The reality is it’s often not these sessions that cause your body to break down, but going too hard on your easy runs.
TRY THIS Aim to keep easy runs at a conversational, relaxed effort. If you struggle to control this, run to heart rate, working at no more than 70 per cent of your maximum heart rate.
• Face the elements Are you one of those runners who tends to wait for ideal conditions before you get out and train? Bad news: race day won’t wait for calm winds and cool weather.
TRY THIS See windy conditions or rain as an opportunity to practise in the conditions you may face on race day. Forget the GPS and run to effort in these conditions, but don’t hide from them.
• Race There is nothing quite like racing to prepare you for a marathon. The nerves, the organisation required, the schedule dictated by someone else. Racing is great to include in your plan, but do so wisely and keep the bigger goal in mind; don’t sacrifice your marathon performance to get a PB in a half marathon or over 20 miles.
TRY THIS If you want to run a 20-mile race, that’s fine, but doing so faster than your marathon pace could jeopardise your best marathon performance. Keep it at marathon pace, or even try running the race as a negative split, with the first half 40-50 seconds a mile slower than race pace and the second half at goal race pace.
• Mental preparation The goal of training is not to make the marathon feel easy – it’s to run it better. The marathon is tough; you can expect to find it hard. Prepare for the mental
challenge, accept that at some point on race day you will need to ask yourself some tough questions and train for this eventuality.
TRY THIS Use March to work on your self-talk strategies to get you focused and centred on the moment you are in, not the miles still to come. ‘Rhythm and relax’ written on my wrist when I raced was far more important to me than my splits.
• Don’t over-analyse Training sessions are there to get you fit and prepared. Some will go exactly as planned, some won’t; but try not to view every training session as a judgment on how ready you are.
TRY THIS Set yourself some process goals for training that go beyond just splits and paces. How did you feel? Did you execute your fuelling strategy? How relaxed were you when trying to run your goal pace?
• Recover, recover, recover Your body is capable of high volumes of training. For most runners it’s not the volume of training that leads to your body breaking down, it’s not balancing it with adequate recovery.
TRY THIS Improve your sleep. This will help you adapt better to the hard miles. No smartphone viewing in the final 60 minutes before bed is a key part of this.
Adapt to succeed. Be ready to change your plan if you feel you are struggling to recover or if you are having an extra stressful period at work or at home.
Fuel your sessions and recovery.
I recommend Training Food by Renee McGregor as an excellent overview of effective nutrition for runners.
Create some space. Just because your mate or club does hard sessions Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday does not mean you have to. Create some easy space between your harder sessions and long runs; you may need two or three days of easy running and recovery before your next hard session, so don’t be constrained by a seven-day week.
Bin the ego. Going all out on every hard session and chasing overly ambitious paces on every long run will ensure your body begins to struggle in March. Work hard in your fast sessions but only once in a while should you really go to the max. Check your heart-rate variability
(HRV). This can be a useful bit of data for runners to check how well they are recovering and adapting to training in the big-mileage months. There are lots of apps that can give you this data and help you decide if you need to cut back a little.
RACING IS GREAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR MARATHON PLAN, BUT DO SO WISELY AND KEEP THE BIGGER GOAL IN MIND