Marathon Dreams — Week 1

I’ve never been a runner but over the last few years have been running on and off for general fitness but never really going anywhere with it. I drifted out of the habit over the pandemic but when the opportunity for a free 5k race entry presented itself, I decided I might as well get back into it and do a little something about my fitness.

So a couple of months ago, I resolved to start running once or twice a week so that I’d be able to finish the 5k without stopping and in an not totally disgraceful time. I’ve been doing that and have gone from only being able to run about 3km to getting my 5k time down to around 32–33 minutes. With this race now a couple of weeks away, thoughts naturally progressed to what next. I did a 10 mile run a few years back so that’s probably the next logical phase but thoughts progressed towards maybe doing a half marathon in the spring.

But with a couple of colleagues having run in the Dublin Marathon, I thought what the hell — why not go for the big one. So I’ve set my target on a race nearly 6 months out — on the day after my 52nd Birthday and started out on a 16 week training plan for a 5 hour marathon finish. I’ve got about 8 weeks to spare to allow for missed runs, injury and general lack of fitness to get myself from being able to run 6km at a 6:30 pace to being able to complete around 7 times this distance at a similar pace. This was week one.

My plan started out with a rest day on Monday. Not so bad I guess so I just did my usual daily walks of around 8km. Tuesday was an easy 25 minute run — not so bad along with a 4km walk. Wednesday was another rest day with a suggestion of 30 minutes easy cross training. I decided to make that 30 minutes of Yoga fo strength and conditioning. That was not so much fun — not having done Yoga for over a year but I grunted and groaned through the poses and felt better for it.

Thursday was an interval day with 3 x 5 minutes full-pace running uphill with 2 minute recovery. Ok, that one was a bit challenging an my feet were killing me after that with my rubbish 3 year old trainers. Friday was another rest day but I started the day with 15 minute Yoga session and did about 6km of walks. Saturday was another cross training session, so I went out of the bike for an hour which was a bit challenging in some fairly nasty weather. I also bought myself a more sensible pair of running shoes. Sunday was the big one for me. 3 x 20 minute easy runs with 5 minutes recovery between them. I probably went a bit harder on this than I should have but I ended up covering 10km in the session so that I was please with that. Legs were a bit rubbery after that but it’s to be expected

Next week will be a bit tougher and it’s probably time to start paying a little more attention to my diet. I’m guessing today’s run would have been a little easier if I hadn’t had a Chinese takeaway for dinner last night.