I have been running more or less regularly during the past ten years. Before that I used to go running, but I normally quit the running during the cold season which in Finland is pretty long. This is a thing I have regretted a lot – to waste the best years of a runner due to that I didn’t have a will tough enough to force myself to a run at least every now and then.
During the past five years I have mostly followed the training plans provided by the online platforms Endomondo and Strava. Both of them provide the premium users with customizable training plans, so if you are paying member it’s worth of giving a shot, in case you’re unsure which direction you want to take in your training. A training plan may also be a valid incentive for acquiring a paid membership. Some further good training plans can be obtained from Runner’s world or corresponding serious running magazines.
As recreational runner I usually run two to three marathons per year. This means I want to have a separate training plan for each marathon, and something else for the remaining time either for keeping my basis as solid or to improve my speed on shorter distances. After a marathon I usually want to train without a plan for a while and just concentrate on getting the joy back to the running training. In this post I will mainly write about the training plans for a marathon. Possibly I will write something about the training for other distances, if I get inspired at some point.
My basic training plan for a marathon takes 12 – 16 weeks to accomplish. A longer training plan would be too exhaustive (mainly mentally) so I choose to keep the training stints short enough. As a runner who aims at accomplishing a marathon at about 3:15 hours or more quickly if possible, I want to run 40 – 70 kilometres per week. I know this should probably be a bit higher, but there are other opinions to the theme, e.g. the book Run less, run faster by Runner’s World supports an alternative training philosophy – too much training with a high intensity may wear out the runner instead of leading to better results. According to the book there should be three or maximally four running workouts per week and in addition to those one should add cross-training workouts to the training schedule. The essential idea is that the key workouts are carried out flawlessly, with high intensity and that together with the time reserved for the recovery brings better results than a high mileage. I’m still aiming at trying out this method, but this hasn’t happened until now so I cannot really say, whether this suits me.
In the following I shall provide a glance at my marathon plan for Berlin last year. Typically I had three days off from running: Monday, Friday and Saturday, and during the remaining four days I attempted to trains as properly as possible. A typical week consists of a long run that I normally do at the end of the week (on Sunday), an easy run that’s done after the long run in order to enhance the recovery, plus either fartlek type of a run, a tempo run or interval training. In essence the load of the training increases gradually during the first three weeks in a row after which comes an easier week to enhance recovery. Then, a new cycle of four weeks is initiated.
The pace of the long run should be kept low enough so that the runner really gets accustomed to the marathon grind and does not exhaust himself due to the longer training. I usually run one or two long runs at marathon pace in order to get a real training of the race speed. Moreover, I mostly attempt to finish my long runs more quickly than at the pace I started with (at the marathon speed or maybe even quicker). My long runs are typically from the half marathon distance until 32 km, but the most usual variant is 24 – 26 km. I want to include one or two workouts exceeding 30 km, if possible. My typical tempo run is 10 km, but I suspect based on my experiences that it should be a bit longer when it comes to the distance. The interval trainings I usually do vary from 400 m until 1600 m with a varying number of repeats.
In order to find a suitable training plan, you should analyse your current shape, what target time at marathon do you have, how much are you willing to run etc. In most cases a good basis can be provided by a customizable training plan, like the one of Endomondo and Strava. Then it’s up to you how it goes on with the training. The main thing: don’t worry too much if you miss a training or two, but concentrate on the complete plan.