Marathon Blog Week 4!

Four very different athletes take on a marathon this Autumn all with completely different goals under the guidance of Coach Tune. Each week we will provide you with an athlete summary of their training week and their personal thoughts on how the week went and compare this is to Coach Tune’s account of their week. Both sides of the story are anonymous.

Here is Keri Pearson’s view on how here training has gone over the last 7 days as she prepares for the Frankfurt marathon in 10 weeks time:

Monday - AM 4.5 miles in 30 mins

Very different Monday, instead of the usual very easy run, 30 mins in zone 1. No expectations as quite hilly, extremely happy with the pace.

Tuesday - AM 9 miles in 72 mins

Nice and relaxed with plenty of hills and elevation, there is a theme this summer!

PM A significant amount of time playing in the sea! Great recovery.

Wednesday - AM 10 x 30 secs hill reps/ walk recovery followed by 20 mins marathon effort.

Dave sent me instructions to absolute deplete myself on the hill reps even if that meant I really struggled on the 20 mins, after the third hill rep I did worry I may not complete all 10 and after the 10, my legs were like jelly, it felt difficult starting the 20 min effort, but really pleased with 3.1 miles in 20 mins.

PM 4 miles in 32 mins. Very easy on the hills.

Thursday - AM 6.6 miles in 52 mins, legs know about the hills yesterday, kept run really easy to try and flush them out! I’ve doubled/ tripled my usual weekly elevation for the past 4 weeks - hoping I feel the benefit from it!

PM Drive home

Friday - AM 8.4 miles in 66 mins off road.

Favourite home trail run and my best stats on that run & felt good! Signs of improved fitness creeping in!

Saturday - AM 8.2 miles in 64 mins - usually road route. Windy but nice run. Followed by strides. Legs feeling fresher. 5 x 30 secs

Sunday - AM 10 miles easy, 10 miles marathon effort, 2 miles easy. Absolutely over the moon with this run, ran on a flat course and it feels like the hills really do pay the bills!!

Another really good week, feeling quite strong. Sundays run a real confidence boost. Massive thanks to Dave for running with me on Sunday and putting together a plan at the moment that feels like we’ve made a big leap in my fitness.

Next is Lee view of his training while away on holiday and he is aiming for the Yorkshire marathon:

Not much to report this week except for giving the body some respite whilst away on holiday. Still ran everyday to keep the body ticking over but no doubles or sessions. I still did my weekly 30mins top of recovery run. A change of route which wasn’t flat mixed with holiday foods 🍦🍟 🍺 made it feel harder than usual but still ran @5.29 which I was happy with. Be back in full training on Saturday for the 2nd half of my training block. Started reading the book Dave recommended: Inside a marathon this week which has only inspired me more to make my training count come race day.

Berlin bound athlete Matt is next to comment on his week of training:

Going into this week was going to be a challenge as I was away working at festivals.

Factoring in lack of sleep, poor nutrition, and the demands of the role itself does not lend itself to good consistent training.

Nevertheless, like Dave said last week, given how training has gone so far the goal is to be realistic with expectations going into Berlin.

With that in mind, I found a short steep hill on site and did 3x30mins sessions over the course of the week. Generally consisting of a 10min warm up, 10mins of hill sprints and 10mins cool down. I ran the efforts up the hill hard, spiking at 172bpm to try to maximise the time spent.

Whilst brief, I was very happy with this, as typically I never manage to run on site at festivals and end up taking the week off. And it served its purpose to keep things ticking until normal training can resume.

Finally we have our very own Jenny Blizard who is aiming at the Yorkshire marathon and doing her first marathon for over a decade:

This week the focus was on trying to still maintain a decent volume but also have a good blowout over 3000m on the track on Saturday and then do my longest run in a very long time.  Not ideal in marathon preparation but I had already committed to doing the race for my club (Rotherham Harriers) before a marathon was even mentioned.

My Tuesday mini marathon paced session went well again. The time is slowly coming down to my target pace over the weeks. I run this session around 11.30AM straight after my morning shift at work. This means my energy is generally low as I am ready for a mental break, it is also 30 mins before I am usually having lunch and over 5&3/4 hours after breakfast so it is never going to be the best session I do each week. This is where I need to be realistic in my expectations of the pace I will hit on this session and know come race day the build up won't be as above! Also my paces are gradually coming down each week and I don't do this run in a carbon shoe. Move forward 30 hours and you can see the difference 4m @6.48 min miles at the very bottom of my marathon heart rate zone in carbon shoes.

Wednesday I wanted to just run a bit faster as my heart rate hasn't been much above 158 and minimal times I have hit 170 in the last few weeks and the track race was going to be reaching 190bpm 😱. Also wanted to balance this with being able to get to sleep(If I run hard late at night I am wired and tired). Session went well and the faster pace came relatively easy without having to push which felt good.

Did the race, bit like a fartlek as really windy, came third, time was slow but pleased with how I fared compared to the others. The faster paced strides with Adrian "Pat" Ennis on Wednesday night helped with the pace changes from fast straight to slow straight with the wind. Afterwards it was all about recovery and hoping I would get a good night's sleep before the main session of the week on Sunday.

Sunday was 22 miles with 10 miles @ marathon heart rate. This was on two laps around Gilberdyke which is flat and quiet but it was very windy! We drove around first to hide bottles/gels in the hedges. The four of us were David, Keri Pearson, Tracey Fearn. The session went really well, I was just 7 seconds a mile off target pace and kept my HR exactly where it needed to be. I also drank plenty and the gels(GU) settled easily with no heart rate spikes like the Maurten's. I was more delighted however that Tracey made the trip across to train with us and managed the 22 miles having had some niggles and lost training time recently. It was a real confidence boost for her to be able to see that the Frankfurt marathon was still on.

The niggle in my right knee has disappeared from plenty of off road and no camber so being adaptable with the plan last week worked.

Overall another good week of training, still feeling motivated and relatively fresh to train, feeling I could do more and it doesn't feel too much of a stretch. The main aim at Yorkshire Marathon is to complete a consistent block of training feeling comfortable and then have a positive run. I want to then follow this up with another progressive block of training for a faster spring marathon. This block is seeing what it feels like to train for a marathon again, see how my body responds, practice the fuelling. My last marathon was 2011 racing for England in Denmark. I ran 2:45 with a stress fracture in my right foot, osteitis pubis in the left hip and achilles tendinopathy on both ankles. I was broken, but 10+ years ago we were in very flat "racing flats", strength training wasn't really well researched, nutrition research for the marathon was poor and it was expected that if you run a marathon you're gonna have niggles. You can see now why I am actually enjoying my current training, I can't actually believe I wake up after a 22 mile run and feel normal.

MON Strength Session. Rest day from running gives me 48 hrs to recover.

TUES 7 miles @6:57 at marathon HR 153-158.

WED Group Session (adapted) 4miles @6:48 HR ave 153, then 3 x 3 mins progressive off 2 mins (last 3mins hit 5:18min/mile) then 6 x 30 sec strides. Strength Session

THUR 10m off road @7:58 HR ave 134

FRI 4m @7:32 HR ave 138 then 6 strides. Strength

SAT AM 5m @7:52 HR ave 135 (watched training group do Rother Valley Park run) PM North of England Track Race 3000m 10:29 HR ave 179, 6.5m in total

SUN 22m @7;27 HR 142 (10m easy and then 10m at marathon HR @6.52 ave, 2m cool down)

Weekly Totals 69 miles. 1 x longest run in 12 years 😀, 1 x faster session, 1 x short marathon HR session. 1 x strides, 1 x 3000m race. 30 mins yoga, 135 mins S&C. One blowing into a brown paper bag after our 20+ year old Gaggia Classic stopped working.

Now the views from Coach Tune on each athlete compared to what the athlete sees!

First up is Keri Pearson who is aiming for a new PB in the Frankfurt marathon late October:

“I am  very impressed with how Keri is currently training and this was confirmed when I ran the marathon paced long run with her on Sunday where we covered 22 miles in total with the last 10 miles changing into racing shoes and lifting the pace.

I had to keep tell her to back off as she wanted to keep pushing and we still have plenty of long runs and races to nail before Frankfurt and I don’t want her to go over the top before we get to the race startline”

Next up is Matt’s training and he is working towards the first athlete to race in the Berlin marathon in September:

“Matt has now got his head around the fact that Berlin is just going to be a fun race and with that I can see he has relaxed his attitude a little which is a good thing during times of stress.

If we can keep ticking over then Matt will be fine as he has an excellent base endurance level”

Coach Tune next explains Lee Milburn’s week of training who is looking to be competitive in the Yorkshire marathon:

“A week away with Lee is just want he needed to allow his body to adapt to the hard training he has been doing over the last few weeks and knocking in over 100 miles per week. For that reason I was not too bothered what he did or did not do while away and the main thing to get out of the week was to allow he to refresh a little before our final push towards the Yorkshire marathon”

Final thoughts are on Jenny’s training, who like Lee is doing the Yorkshire marathon:

“Jenny has had another great week of training and as always the focus for her does not need to be on training harder but remembering to look after the edges in terms of nutrition/hydration which after 14 years of coaching her you think she would have mastered by now”

All in all a great week from the Team as they progress perfectly towards their individual targets. 

Enjoy the read!