12 weeks to the Edinburgh Marathon

It's now 12 weeks to Edinburgh and a good time to start marathon training. Traditionally you do a 16 or 12-week program but that can be subject to fitness and current training.

A typical method is to slowly increase your mileage, for me, this would be a mixture of increasing my Long Slow Run (LSR) week by week and a longer mid-week run. As you get nearer the race you taper up the LSR to 22 Miles and back down i.e. 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 18, 16  13, 10.

Training should be a mixture and for me, this would be LSR, speedwork at the track, gym work and cycling, right now lockdown is making training options very limited.

I was still ill on Monday with a tight chest and dodgy stomach so I took another day off training, when you are not feeling great, try to rest as coming back to soon can set you back further and further. You will not lose that much fitness with a few days off so it pays to take it easy.

So on Tuesday, I went out intending to keep the HR down to 150bpm (it will go up with any hill of course!) The route I chose is my favorite when it's dark or wet, the Crompton loop is a steady climb from Royton to Shaw, up to Crompton and back to Royton.

As I come back through Royton there is a segment from the Junction Inn pub to the Middleton Road lights, I often like to give it a blast as I have only a mile to home.

There is one junction halfway, which on this occasion a car was attempting to turn into, thankfully they stopped and waved me across. I then kicked on and rewarded with a top ten result and now the 7th fastest!

As I saved my run on the watch it gave me a new max threshold Heart Rate (HR) of 180, this will now make my training runs automatically a little harder on TrainingPeaks as I set them on a percentage of Threshold HR.

This is a nice way to Segway into a question from a colleague at work this week about what HR to train at!

There are many formulas and theories about HR training, the core statement is that you should include HR in your plans and during races if you are intending to improve either your fitness or race times.
You can of course “feel” how fit you are, train at a pace and see how you feel after, but it is a bit “finger in the air” and not the best way to approach things.

As I mention there are many theories about HR training but they typically boil down to knowing your Maximum Threshold HR and then training in one of usually 5 zones:

Zone 1 = Warm up
Zone 2 = Comfortable
Zone 3 = Fitness
Zone 4 = Anerobic
Zone 5 = All out

If you train and race in Zone 5 for too long your body will tell you so!

In TrainingPeaks my zones are set like this:

If I change my Threshold HR then the zones will auto recalculate, I use the classic Timex 5 zone method!

So Wednesday I went for my 8 mile run (mid week longish run for marathon training) with an average HR of 153ish planned, as it turned out I went wrong in the route and add to do a lap of Royton to make up some distance and did 7.5 miles but the pace was comfortable and enjoyed some fast bits.

When I checked Strava I was surprised to see so many good segments with PR’s, I thought the pace was okay and low HR, when doing a session where HR is the main factor I tend to use a specific page with either 3 data fields Avg HR, HR, last lap HR... or this

So when running it was in the green zone aka Comfortable and this way I don’t get distracted by pace or distance... works a treat

On Thursday my new Garmin Cadence Sensor arrived and once the foul weather had died I went for a quick spin (after pairing, amending the data fields etc) to test it all out

The screen looks great, although I may swap Speed for Cadence as I want to see that more clearly (I did check for traffic before getting my phone out to take this photo)

I like to train with cadence, in times past the theory was for cycling get into the highest gear you can manage and push like hell. Then Lance Armstrong (like him or not) is accredited with pushing the theory that this is not the best thing for your muscles and finding (your own) sweet spot between 80 and 90 rpm will preserve your muscles for the final push. If you ever watch professional cycling races they seem to be slow in comparison to the last 200 metres when one breaks they go hell for leather.

Either way it works for me to train with cadence and HR when cycling, so future sessions will have this and TrainingPeaks allows you to set a target cadence as well as HR and speed.

Strava is a much better tool to show your cadence as it was originally a cyclists app, these days it is more heavily runners based so is more focused on that and its swimming section is just pants (use swim.com much better)

Friday and time for a bit of race training, yes all races are off for the time being but I need to see what my fast pace is like so I can start to work out my Marathon pace. There are apps and websites for getting a guesstimate, once you have an idea of a pace you can test it (normally in races), refine it, then practice it on some parts of your LSR’s.

My plan for the run was to go out comfortably fast on the flat and keep under 8 minute miles up the hill, to do this I switched to the “Lap” screen and monitored my average pace, once I got to the top of Rochdale Road and turned left, I switched back to the main screen and got the pace going again. It is a useful training technique to do a hill session and sprint on the flat, simulates race conditions!

 

So for my first pace estimation, I will take the 5K time of 21:12 double it and add 1 minute. So my 10k time should be 42:30. Unfortunately, the Rochdale 10K should have been my test event but thanks to  COVID-19 I will have to try and push myself on a track or something (hopefully they will open soon).

The 10k time should then give me an estimate half-marathon time and pace, then use that to estimate my marathon pace... simples. The next 12 weeks are about improving my fitness, going longer on my LSR’s to get used to being on my feet for long periods and finding my target marathon pace!

On Saturday I am going to do bike rides, a way of resting the running legs and still getting a workout. With parkrun being off, my usual marathon training puts a 5k pace test in on a Saturday or two in a month

Bike ride

So this week I tried out a route that was around 18 miles, went the wrong way believe it or not due to the navigation app on the edge computer, it so far struggles at the start (calculating) for the first mile. Then the Stakehill roundabout which it

A) tries to turn me left and onto the motorway

B) pronounces as Stack hill, I wish it would use English not US

Then it went loopy as I approached Broadway which it must have known was closed for roadworks, turn left, left then make u-turn, felt very much like being in a car!

Overall the ride was good and I am getting used to the roads once again, I am trying to get my Focus Cayo 105 repaired but the shop is shut for two weeks and they are struggling for spares due to huge demand and a lack of parts, thank you Covid again 🤬

My HR and Cadence spot on so all in all a good session

To finish off the week I had a good run up some hills, not so much an LSR but did slow down a bit for the big climbs. I took my running belt, water and a gel so got a bit of marathon training (fueling) thrown in for good measure.

The views at the top are spectacular however the haze over Manchester is testament to the return of cars to the the city and I felt it when breathing in the car fumes!

This session pushed me over my training allowance so I have to take it easy next week!

So a good week and Marathon training is fully underway 🏃🏻‍♂️👍

Have a happy running week everyone.

Mark