Marathon training #1

Trainers

Following several years of trying and failing to get into the London Marathon and getting injured before the New Forest marathon I’m now down to compete in the Edinburgh Marathon on 31 May 2009.

Contrary to intuition, the Edinburgh Marathon is in fact one of the flattest and therefore fastest in the UK. The course starts in the city centre but quickly makes its way to the firth of forth and then goes up and down the coast and ends at Musselborough.

Training plans
I’ve been greatly confused by the many training plans for marathons that seem to be out there. I’m confused as many have them starting a 20 weeks schedule with a ten mile run in the first week. For myself, I’ll just gradually build on greater distances each week with a fairly steady graduation.

Last week I managed three runs totaling 20km and i’m hoping to increase that this week. On the 15th March I have a half marathon race in Hastings which should really give me an idea where my training is.

At the moment I’m struggling to find enough time in my week to do more than three runs, but I know I’ll need to increase this somehow.

Hills
One big training issue I have is the fact that I live in an area covered in reasonably sized hills and all of my routes involve at least one and sometimes two or three climbs. In a way, I’m sure this is good training, but I do sometimes wish that I could have the odd long flat run without a lung-bursting climb in the middle of it.

My half-marathon race report should be the next milestone in the training plan and I’ll get a good measure of how I’m set then. I’m not panicing yet.