After my second 21K, I have set my sights on The Marathon.
As usual, my first task was to research. I'd like to share the different training plans that I have come across.
Of course, Galloway's run-walk-run marathon training. He claims to have polished his training plan after successfully training hundreds of thousands of runners.
Author of the book "Lore of Running" - Tim Noakes' marathon plan. He said this plan has been field tested and had good results.
Renowned podiatrist and writer, Dr. Pribut's "Two Steps Forward, One Step Back" approach.
Pat Carroll's Training Diaries for the 2011 Gold Coast Marathon. He has won the Gold Coast Marathon four times and is now a coach.
Runner's World UK's Marathon Schedules for Garmin Users
Champion marathoner Hal Higdon's Novice Program
I narrowed down my choices to three - Galloway's, Noakes' and Carroll's.
Of course, Galloway's was my first choice because I had success with his half-marathon training. But the long runs were getting longer time-wise. His plan calls for 32, 37 and up to a 42K long run. These would be 5 to 7 hour long runs for me. The 3.5 to 4 hour long runs that I have been doing were starting to become a chore - having to wake up at 3am and not being able to do much the rest of the day because of both being tired and sleepy.
So, I looked for alternatives which were Noakes' and Carroll's. Both are time-based. Noakes' longest run is only for 2.5 hours, while Carroll's is for 3 hours. My problem with Noakes' is that it calls for runs of at least 5 times a week and some of the weekday runs are for around 1.5 hours. I don't think I can commit to that schedule.
So I settled for Carroll's. His plan calls for 4 runs a week with recovery weeks with only 3 easy runs. His plan also comes with a neat downloadable and editable training diary in PDF format. You can track your progress by regularly updating this training diary. Although, the calendar is set for the Gold Coast Marathon, I just use the week numbers. Something that I also wanted to try in his plan are the speed sessions. His speed sessions don't look intimidating, e.g. 6 x 1 minute with 1 minute standing recovery. I'm now in week "14 weeks to go" and is the first week in the plan with speed sessions, so I'll see this week if I can handle it.
"14 weeks to go" means I'm targeting the 35th Milo Manila Eliminations on July 31. My real target marathon is CamSur on Sept. 25. I'm doing this as sort of an experiment with this training plan so if it doesn't go well, I'm reverting to Galloway's program.
I've set a checkpoint for myself. Scheduled on "5 weeks to go" is the longest run of 3 hours. I decided to replace that with a 37K run-walk-run. I also decided that I will still do a 2:1 run-walk-run on the marathon itself. I think the result of that 37K long run will tell me if I can finish the marathon and will give me an indication of my finish time - Milo has a 6-hour cutoff. Worst case, I'll just see how far 6 hours will take me. Then hopefully I'll be better prepared for CamSur.
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