How to run a marathon part 3

Hey everyone,

Week three of training is complete so here I am again to tell you how it went, but first.

Do you ever suffer from a stitch when running?: No, I'm careful to make sure that I eat around two hours before I run to avoid getting a stitch as it can make running a miserable experience.

If you do get a stitch the best advice I can give is to slow down your pace, take deep slow breathes and stretch the affected side of your body until it subsides.

What do you think about whilst out on a run?: It depends really, running is great 'me time' and a great opportunity for headspace and mindfulness. Listening to music usually helps keep my mind occupied but I also think about the day, week or month ahead regarding work, training or family life. Today for example I was mostly thinking about what I would include in this blog.

What's your favourite movie running moment?: I can think of a few to be honest. The opening scene of Chariots of fire is pretty inspiring with the team running along the beach to the iconic music. Forrest Gump has a brilliant  segment where he runs every day for two years simply because he "just felt like running" and the training montages in the Rocky movies never fail to get the blood pumping.

So, if you've been reading my blogs you will know that I am supposed to run four times a week. You will also know that I have struggled to achieve this so far and that I have only been completing the long runs on Sundays. To give myself a kick up the backside, as well as some extra accountability, I made a promise last week that I would get at least one more run done between Monday and Saturday.

'Well?' I hear you ask, 'Did you?', the answer is yes I did. I managed a 45 minute run Tuesday lunchtime and going forward I will be doing the same every week, it feels good to be able to tell you this but I also can't rest on my laurels. I now need to figure out a way of adding another run into the week so that I will be running three times. I'll stop short of promising to do it at this point as I need a little more time to think about how I can make this happen, more on this next week.

My Sunday long runs are now starting to steadily increase in distance in time. The training plan I'm working with adds ten minutes to the long run every week, any more than that and you risk minimising your gains or worse, injuring yourself. Last week was 1 hour 10 minutes, this week was 1 hour 20 minutes, next week is 1 hour 30 minutes and so on. The mid-week runs however rarely go above 45 minutes, the focus is much more on interval training and running at different paces for shorter times/distances. This allows your body to recover from the long weekend runs yet still get the conditioning required for the 26.2 mile distance on race day.

This week my training consisted of:

Tuesday 45 minutes steady run... I did manage!

Thursday 10 minutes easy run, 2 x (5 minutes threshold run, 2 minutes easy run), 10 minutes steady run, 10 minutes easy run... I did not manage

Saturday 10 minutes easy run, 25 minutes hill run, 10 minutes easy run... I did not manage

Sunday 1 hour 20 minutes long run... I did manage!

So two out of four runs completed this week, an improvement for sure but I still need to do more. Tuesdays run was a good one, I ran with my training partner Heather Grimes which was nice because usually I run alone. Having someone to talk to makes the time fly by and before we knew it the run was over and we had completed 5 miles at a very pleasing pace of 8 minutes 18 seconds per mile.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1405518028/shareable_images/map_based?hl=en-US&v=1518528427

Sundays run was tougher, I had to leave for London at 9am in the morning which is usually the time I would start running. I had two options (three if you include not training... but that's not going to happen), go beforehand or go afterwards, going before meant getting up at 5am (on a Sunday!) to eat breakfast so that I could start running at 7am. Going afterwards meant that it would be later on in the day and in my experience that meant my motivation would be particularly low. I elected to go beforehand for this reason, to me it's a lot easier to get up early and get a training session done, because then IT'S DONE! and you don't have to worry about it for the rest of the day. I managed 8.3 miles in 1 hour 20 minutes but struggled with pace towards then end because my calf muscles were tightening up and I had to stop a couple of times to stretch them out. This meant I averaged at 8 minutes 51 seconds per mile which isn't as good as I have managed in recent weeks, I'm not too worried though as I have plenty of time left to improve.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1413119569/shareable_images/map_based?hl=en-US&v=1518942592

Next weekend I am away but I am not going to let that get in the way of training. I have already looked at google maps and planned a route so I will tell you all about it in my next blog.

Until then

Scott