Hey there team, it's James here from Kinetic Revolution
and it's my job to help you run strong and run injury free.
Today I want to talk about how to train
for your first marathon.
Going to talk specifically about five key points
which will help you really get the most
out of your marathon training plan.
And in fact if you're looking
for a first marathon training plan,
I'll leave a link to the free plan
that I have on the Kinetic Revolution website,
down in the description.
So the first point I want to make,
is about probably the biggest,
most daunting part of marathon training,
the part that scares a lot of people off
and that's the idea of those long runs.
Those long runs are super important,
hit long training runs building up from you know,
ideally if you were coming into a marathon training plan,
you'll be comfortable around about
the kind of eight mile mark ten mile mark,
doesn't have to be you know,
an easy thing for you to do right now
but you should be confident
that you CAN go run an eight or a ten mile long easy run.
That's a good jumping-in point for a marathon program
but from there we need to step that up
over a series of weeks, over a series of months,
to a point where
you've got some long marathon training runs in
where you're hitting those kind of big figures,
let's say 18 miles, for example,
as kind of a great benchmark
for a long marathon training run.
I generally get people again kind of peaking around about
those 18 mile marks but it depends from runner to runner.
Because some people,
depending on how slowly you're running those long easy runs,
will be running at a pace where
in three and a half hours you don't get to that 18 mile mark
and I find that about that three and a half hour mark,
again for some people slightly more,
for some people slightly less,
but around that three and a half hour mark
is a point of diminishing returns,
a point where you go from
the benefits of building time on your feet,
building strength in your legs
and most importantly building that underlying aerobic engine
really building your stamina,
to a point where you're just making yourself tired
and in just making yourself tired,
not only are you making yourself tired physiologically,
so you're going to take longer to recover,
but more so you're actually starting to run in a state
where you're more likely to pick up an injury.
Again so many common injuries we see
when it comes to marathon training,
we see people with things like runner's knee,
ITB Syndrome, in particular.
Those generally tend to really start
to make themselves known
when we're getting to those bigger mileage weeks
and those longer, long run durations.
So whether you're getting up to a point
whether it's your 18 mile long run
or you're capping that at three and a half hours,
I don't see any benefit in going beyond that.
I understand the conversation,
I understand the willingness
or almost a kind of feel that you need
to go beyond that if you've got a marathon to run.
And let's say, you know if it's not your first marathon
and you're trying to PB,
of course there's conversation around doing 20 milers,
multiple 20 milers in a training block,
maybe even stepping up and doing 22 miler,
depends on you, depends on your running history
and your goals.
But the whole idea,
and I hear this so often with new marathon runners
or people who are stepping up from 10K
and half marathon distance to the marathon,
the idea that you've got to run the full distance
in training,
is bonkers, you absolutely don't need to.
I get that it will give you
a certain psychological confidence
and that is a thing definitely, the confidence is important.
But the confidence you gain,
versus how long it will take you to recover
from running 26 miles in training,
let alone the injury risk,
it's just not a good trade-off at all.
What's more important is your weekly mileage.
Okay so from a point where we're starting out
and your long run should be comfortably,
or at least doably eight to ten miles,
over time we'll build that, build that, build that
to a point where those are sort of 18 mile
or three and a half hour long runs.
But even in that period,
where we're building those long runs,
let's say long Sunday runs,
we're also building your weekly mileage.
Okay, we're also building the amount of running you're doing
in the week itself.
Because that, in itself, is probably an even bigger factor
or determining factor for success
when it comes to marathon day,
than whether you have actually managed
to get those 18 mile, those three and a half hour runs
in the bank.
Okay, life happens, things happen, illness, injury,
fingers crossed not,
but also work, family, travel, all those sorts of things
you may feel like
"oh I wish I had another one or two
of those 18 milers in the bank",
but actually if you've been consistent,
and consistency is absolutely the key,
if you've been consistent at notching up that weekly mileage
then that will carry you a long, long way.
I'd much rather see a runner
who's prioritized increasing weekly mileage
consistently over the weeks,
than someone who's been a hero for a couple of weekends
and now they've skipped a few,
perhaps they've skipped a few midweek runs
but they've gone out
and they've got long run, after long run,
after long run done.
I would much rather see someone who has been consistent
and has built the overall weekly mileage.
It has that more chronic effect
in terms of building the endurance, building the stamina,
building that time on the feet
to again build the strength in the legs.
Really, really important.
The second point I want to make
is about learning to pace yourself.
What so many runners do is they set out on their long runs
that little bit too fast,
and in fact they get to a point
where they are pushing themselves
perhaps that little bit beyond
what would be typically
or what are referred to as Zone Two
if we're talking about heart rate.
Oh Charlie, are you joining me? Come up here buddy! Up!
Yes!
Yeah, pushing them beyond their aerobic training zone,
their kind of Zone Two heart rate,
to a point where they're in this kind of middle ground,
where you're not really getting quite so much
of the aerobic development benefits,
but you're also not really doing speed work,
you're really again just kind of making yourself tired
more so than anything else.
You'd be surprised, looking at elite runners,
you know those who are out running two hours and change
for a marathon,
they're still, when it comes to running easy in the week,
they're still running nine minutes,
ten minutes something per mile,
it's very, very, very easy.
But equally, when they're doing their speed sessions,
it is all go.
It is fast, it is quality, quality running.
Where a lot of us runners, us kind of recreational runners,
fall into a middle ground,
is that we don't run our easy runs easy enough
and we don't therefore,
because we're fatigued
off the back of those excessively difficult paced easy runs
or long runs,
we find ourselves fatigued
so we can't get the quality out of our speed sessions.
So make your easy runs easy and your hard runs hard.
And a great way of gauging
what kind of pace you should be running at at the moment,
is looking at recent race performances.
So let's say you've got a 10K recently in the bank,
or perhaps a ten mile race or even a 5K
but to be honest 5K is less representative of a marathon
because it is so short in relative terms,
but if you've got a 10K, ten miler, even half marathon
in the bank,
then you can run that through Jack Daniel's VDOT Calculator
again I'll leave a link down in the description
it's also linked from within the free marathon plan
which I've got on the website,
it will give you specific training zones
that you can then go and work with.
Specific training zones so you can say,
"Right this is my easy run pace, this is my tempo pace,
this is what I should be thinking
in terms of target marathon pace."
Really, really handy, otherwise it's just guesswork.
Okay and with guesswork,
that's where you're probably going to find yourself
falling into that trap
where it's this kind of mid-pace mediocrity.
I'd instead have you run your easy runs easy, hard runs hard
Okay the third thing I want to talk about specifically,
is making sure that we don't just view marathon training
as being a linear process.
Okay it's not start here, end here on marathon day
and just increase, increase, increase as we go.
That again is a path to injury,
if you just think about it in that respect.
I would much rather, much much rather,
have you take it down into smaller phases.
So let's say you're doing a 16 week program,
as is the program that I've again linked
down in the description,
I would have you working increasingly hard for three weeks,
then backing off, have an adaptation week,
have an easier week.
Doesn't mean you're running
a fewer number of times necessarily per week,
it might mean in fact
if do you want to run a fewer number of times per week,
you could throw in a cross training session, by all means.
On the bike, on the rower, on the elliptical trainer,
in the pool, any of those things absolutely fine.
But it does mean that
we're just taking a backwards step in terms of volume.
Your body's tired
after three weeks of increasingly hard training,
increasingly increasing the volume.
Back off for a week,
that's when the fitness really starts to develop.
Your body only gets fitter, you only develop as an athlete
when you take the time to rest and recover.
That's why we call it an adaptation week,
that's when the body adapts, when you give it a chance.
Then, we push again.
Three weeks again, push, push, push.
Bump it up, bump it up, bump it up in terms of weekly volume
increasing those long runs as well.
And then we take another easy week.
And then we go again, push, push, push.
So we're looking at taking it in waves
and taking it in waves like that,
giving yourself regular adaptation weeks,
will allow you to actually manage your body
a little bit better,
deload for a week, give yourself a chance to you know,
give your body a chance
to nurse some of those little niggles that might be going on
little areas of tightness, little aches and pains.
It'll have time on that lower load week
so that you can then push on as you go forwards
through the next weeks.
Getting that kind of balance right is absolutely crucial
to avoiding a number of the common running injuries
that we see.
These injuries all, the vast majority of them,
are overuse in nature
and if we can just start to get
to the right side of that very fine line
between pushing hard in training
and stepping into, not even physiological overtraining,
but just a point where you've targeted a certain tissue
to a point where it starts to break down,
then we're going to do very, very well.
On the same note making sure you make time
for strength and mobility workouts, is huge.
Us runners, we just want to run.
That's fine, there's so many reasons why that's true as well
it's not just the allure of a big goal
or thinking about that finisher's medal
or in my case thinking about
what I'm going to eat after the marathon,
mmm, yeah be that a milkshake or a burger or whatever it is,
what I'm going to eat after the marathon,
it's more so a case of for many of us, mental health.
For many of us it's a case of running
being our time to kind of relax, check out a little bit
and just kind of have that head space.
But you've got to find a balance between getting out there,
putting the miles in,
versus the exercises that kind of build the strength
and, for want of a better term, hold your body together
and keep you in a state
that allows you to be able
to keep on absorbing that training load,
so you're building strength, you're building mobility,
stability, all of those different physical characteristics
that build us as better runners,
we've got to make time for that.
So if you're running three, four times a week,
I would far rather, instead of having you head to the gym
and do 90 minutes two times a week
and fit that into, let's face it,
what's probably a really busy schedule already,
if it's anything like the majority of runners I work with,
I'd much rather have you do 15 minutes here 15 minutes there
and try and build up to a point
where you're doing three or four 15 minute workouts a week.
Again in the program that I've linked to
down in the description,
there are links through to free programs
and free links to strength and conditioning workouts
that you can do as part of that particular marathon program.
It's all spelt out,
but please, please, please, don't neglect this kind of work.
Because it's this kind of work that keeps you injury free
and keeps you running and building that consistency,
which we mentioned in the first bullet point if you like
of this list.
Okay, and the last thing I want to talk about
is target marathon pace.
Which is really tough when it's your first marathon.
You know how do you pace a race that you've never run,
a distance you've never run before?
How do you specifically know what to expect
when you're beyond 20 miles for example?
Well, the Jack Daniel VDOT Calculator
that I mentioned earlier on,
that's going to give you a good kind of basis to work from
for sure, you can use 10K, ten miles, half marathon,
recent race times, as an idea for that.
But you can also practice during marathon training itself.
Now, your long easy run should be slower
than target marathon pace on the whole.
But during the latter few weeks of your training,
I'm a big fan of putting little blocks
of target marathon pace within your long runs.
Usually, if we're about six weeks out, seven weeks out,
I'll do it so that within a long run
you'll have a couple of two or three mile blocks
in the middle of that run
where you're just going from easy run pace,
ramping it up to target marathon pace.
As we get closer though, I like fast finish long runs.
So let's say I've been doing one of my last long runs
before taper, so I'm doing an 18 miler,
that will look along the lines of run for ten miles
at my really easy long run pace,
and then that last eight miles,
that's where I ramp it up to marathon pace
and I run that last eight miles in at target marathon pace.
You can also do that the other way round,
you could do eight miles easy, ten miles marathon pace,
or go nine and nine,
there are so many different ways to do this.
But it allows you to get used to
what target marathon pace feels like,
gets you used to pacing that accurately,
whether you're using a Garmin,
whatever you're using as your means of pacing
but gets you used to running at that pace on tired legs,
which is so, so important.
Not least it gets you used to also
factoring pacing into your nutrition strategy,
your hydration strategy, taking fuel on,
whilst you're also being focused on pace like that,
there are so many different things to think about.
But practicing it during training is absolutely huge.
Now the last thing,
I said there were five but this is part of the fifth one,
the last thing I want to mention
is that because of the cumulative effect of your training,
and the fact that we're in the last few weeks before taper
again we're building up those long runs,
the weekly volume is the highest it's been,
you're going to find that marathon pace, that target pace,
you're going to find that really hard.
It shouldn't be really hard like a tempo run,
but you should certainly be thinking
"Wow this is, I'm having to concentrate
on maintaining this pace,
this is going to be a challenge
to maintain for 26.2 miles."
And sure, that's kind of how it should feel at that point.
Because at that point,
you're going to be carrying a lot of residual fatigue,
a lot of cumulative fatigue
from the relentless weeks of marathon training
going into it.
That's what your taper's for.
Your taper's there just to work on backing off the volume,
keeping a bit of intensity there,
but doing enough so that you can turn up on race day,
after a couple of weeks of taper,
to allow yourself to recover sufficiently,
so you can turn up on race day and feel fresh.
And trust me,
marathon pace will feel very different when you're tapered
to what it felt like during those big, big training weeks
where you were going into your long runs with tired legs.
So trust in the process, make sure you've got a good program
whether it's the free program
I've linked down in the description,
or whether it's another program,
make sure it incorporates adaptation weeks,
make sure it incorporates strength and mobility work,
make sure you're very much on top of
knowing what your pacing should look like,
and again I've mentioned resources
that you can go to use that,
and don't feel like you need
to run the full distance in training,
you really, really, really, really don't.
Okay? It's all about weekly volume
more so than anything else.
Okay, best of luck,
like I said let me know down in the comments
which marathon your first marathon's going to be
or in fact if you've run multiple marathons,
let me know which marathon your first marathon was.
I'd love to find out.
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and I hope this helps.
Speak to you soon, bye now.