How do I train for a Marathon?

In a blog from August 2018, we covered the warm-up and strength training required to stay away from injury and build strength for your sport or health and fitness challenge.

Read August Blog on Warm Ups & Strength Training for Sports

That takes care of making sure you have the structure in place to get around the course – Let’s call that the body of the car.

That structure of the car needs to stay in one piece, and not start falling apart during training and during the event if you are to finish. The car needs to be made from carbon fibre, not folded paper.

You get that with strength training.

How sturdy are you? No wobbling, aching immobile joints.

The oil, how flexible and mobile are you to repeat the movements over and over again for your event. This is the warm-up and cooldown.

Here, let’s look at the conditioning needed to make it around. The engine!

You have 3 engines that you can train in a single training session.

 

Engine 1 – The Steady Engine

So named as you can go at this pace for a long period of time, 10 mins +

Engine 2 – The Surge Engine

So named because you may put pace surges in of a few minutes at a time 3-5 minutes

Engine 3  – The Sting Engine

The sting in the tail, or short burst that you use to get up a short steep hill

 

 

 

When you first start training and are new to this all 3 engines blend into one short uncomfortable rise to fatigue. You start running in engine one and before you know it you are in the red (physiology talk for knackered) out of puff and you need to stop and walk.

This is why when you start doing short steady intervals of good form is a great idea. Running/walking between lamp posts concentrating on good running form naturally uses your 3 engines giving you recovery time to ensure you don’t feel like your Sunday morning run resembles a scene from the Walking Dead (with the facial expression to match).

Before we cover the engines it is worth making clear that if you are in your first 3-6 months starting to train for an event such as a 5k run then you don’t need to worry about the 3 engines at all. 2-3 runs per week of lamp post style running for 20-30 minutes is running fitness perfection.

Joe Friel is an experienced Triathlete and Author and explains in his book, The Triathlete’s Training Bible the 3 phases of training for beginners

For the first year track, only frequency – 2-3 times per week for just 20 minutes will build your 1st engine.

For the second year go for longer amounts of time  – 2-3 times per week for 30-60 minutes will improve how long engine 1 can go for and start to develop engine 2.

For the third year starting to add in harder intervals during your training builds engine 3.

 

For the following examples, we will use running.

 

Engine 1 – The Steady Engine

Pace – The same speed you would run a Marathon

Distance – 1 mile

Rest – 2 minutes (walk or slow jog)

Duration – 30 minutes

Remember, if the engine 1 workout is too hard to start with go out for the same amount of time 20-30 minutes and run lamp posts for 1-2 months or until you feel you can run a steady mile with good running form. Then go for the engine 1 workout.

 

Engine 2 – The Surge Engine

Pace – The same speed you would run a 10K

Distance – 800m (3-31/2 min depending on your fitness)

Rest – 90 seconds (full rest)

Duration – 40 minutes

 

Engine 3  – The Sting Engine

Pace – Run the 400m lap at 80% your max speed

Distance – 400m (80-90 second target)

Rest – double your run time

Duration – 30 minutes

The Experienced

Putting this into a week could go as follows.

Engine 1 – Sunday Long Run – Trail

Engine 2 – Tuesday Medium-Long Interval Road Run

Engine 3 – Friday – Short/Track Intervals

 

That way you hit each engine weekly and your running improves all around, throughout the year.