After the disappointment of not getting a place at the London Marathon for 2020 I decided to look for another. The winter training that I did last year in preparation for the marathon had led to me having a really good year so I wanted to see if another training block like it could help even more.
I didn’t like the idea of doing a small marathon as I had enjoyed the crowds at London so I started looking for another big city.
Some of the members of the club had previously mentioned how good Manchester was so I decided that would be the one for 2020.
I have set myself what could prove to be a rather ambitious target for the race. I am hoping that I can go under 3 hours.
This would involve going around 30 seconds per mile quicker than I did in London. Hopefully with a good training block this will be possible.
To be able to achieve this goal I looked for a plan that involved doing a bit more than my London one did.
I downloaded a few and picked what looked like the best bits from each of them.
The plan that I have put together involves running 5 times a week most weeks with a couple a smaller weeks with only 4 runs to allow some recovery.
I have also tailored the plan to allow me to take part in as many of the clubs cross country and road races as possible. Only missing one race due to it being in the week that I need to do the most miles.
Something else that I am doing differently to last time is trying to make it a little more social.
To do this I am incorporating the clubs training session on a Tuesday and occasionally joining the social runs on Thursdays and Sundays if they fit the distance I am looking to do.
Also during my London training, work meant that I could not make parkrun and I had to run at 5am on a Saturday. This time I should be able to get along to some.
Training started on the 23rd December. I edited the first couple of weeks to make sure I could get some good miles but also enjoy some rest around Christmas.
I am now 4 weeks into my training and it seems to be going well so far.
It has included 4 parkruns, 2 club training sessions, a cross country race and a social long run amongst lots of other runs.
Also I substituted one of my planned runs with a ride on the exercise bike. This was as part of me trying to listen to my body. After running on the Tuesday and Wednesday the plan said to run for 45 minutes but I had some pain in my lower right leg that I didn’t want to make any worse.
I didn’t want to do nothing so thought that the bike was a good option that could give me an aerobic workout without worrying about what the impact of running was doing to my leg.
Next week has me down for a reduced mileage week to allow for some recover before lots more miles.
Distance covered in first 4 weeks – 222km / 138miles.
markrepton26.2 