Harlow Running Club

One of the areas that I am currently working on for the website is a training section. This will have on it all the routes for common training runs, speedwork and races.

In addition to this, given that spring marathon training is almost upon us and there are many club members about to do their first marathon, I was wondering if we could use the wealth of experience in our club to help.

Please post below the type of schedule that you followed (e.g. Runners World, FIRST, one given to you by coach, one you made up yourself  etc). I would like to know what your goal time was and what time you actually did. As well as a basic break down of what the training involved, it would also be useful to have some personal opinions on what you thought worked well/would do better next time.

I have put mine down below as an example:

Target Time: 3:30

Actual Time: 3:41.42

Plan Followed: Essentially the Runners World 3:15 schedule. I follow the faster plan to the one I am targeting. e.g if I wanted a 3:30 marathon, I would follow the 3:15 plan. I adjust their advised paces slightly to those given by the Macmillan site.

The basic format of the schedule is:

Monday: 3-4M Recovery run but I sometimes cross train instead. I do some weight training and lots of stretches

Tuesday: Speedwork - done at club. We normally follow the FIRST schedule at club. This differs from the session in the RW plan, but does not matter as they are essentially the same interval sessions, but done on different weeks, if you know what I mean.

Wednesday: Easy run of 5-12 miles

Thursday: Fast tempo of 3-5 miles or a longer endurance tempo of 8-12 miles. We do not usually attend club for this as the club run does not quite fit in to this.

Friday: REST

Saturday: 4M Recovery run, but sometimes skip it

Sunday: Long run done typically at 1-2 minutes per mile slower than target marathon pace. Longest runs are 4 x 20miles and a 22 miler.

This is a lot of running, however the training paces for the Wednesday and Sunday runs are slower than you might expect (30 seconds - 1 min slow for Wednesday, 1 - 2 minutes for Sunday), but if there were not you would not be able to do the speedwork/tempo runs properly or burn out. There is also a scientific reason for running the long runs slowly - you train your body to burn fat.

Hello

Aim: (in order of importance..) get round in one piece; do it in 4 hours; do it in under 4 hours

Actual: 3:40:24

Runnerworld first programme - 3 running days a week.

The idea behind this programme was that you run less miles - reducing risk of injury- but you run harder. the days inbetween are for recovery. It was ideal for me for I dont like to run everyday - Im prone to calf problems and running consecetively seemed to make it worse! and i just done have the time to try and run 60 miles +  week. The most this schedule does is 35 miles per week.

The gym workout lengths remained the same but their intensity differed depending on how tired i was.

I did not stick to this exactly - and did less tempo runs than i probuably should have, and my faster long runs resulted in a heart rate that was not far off what you would expect from a tempo run!. If i was tired i missed a session or rearranged the week.

I was used to longer runs when i started the schedule - i was regualry doing 13-16 miles on a sunday. Im not sure if that base made much difference or not!

Schedule

Monday

Gym: 30mins x trainer; 30 mins weird running like cross trainer; 30 mins bike;

15 x 3 reps lateral pull down thing; 10x2 sholder press; 100 x plank leg raise; 20 leg raise/bike

15x3 reps glute machine; 15x3 reps hamstring machine

Stretches

Tuesday: Speed work either hills or intervals

Wednesday: Gym (as like monday) or track training

Thursday: Tempo run (although this became more of an easy run day)

Friday: Gym (as per monday)

Sat: day off 4 mile walk

Sunday: Long run (alternating slow run one week and fast the other). Including one 22 mile run and one 20.