Relax, don't do it

The last couple of weeks have marked the inevitable ‘not enough hours in the week’ point of my marathon training.

Anyone who’s trained for a marathon knows the feeling. If you’re training for your first marathon, you’ll experience it soon enough. You might have a mental week at work. You might be visiting friends. Or, you might just have the perfect storm of training, work and an uncharacteristically busy social life hit in a week.

 
Sometimes, I’ll check Twitter at breakfast and see people have been out and done 10 miles or speedwork and it’s not even 7am. These people can always fit a run in. They are superhuman. I am not superhuman. I have to sleep. Otherwise I find when I run I trip over because I’m too tired to look where I’m going. I have learnt the hard way that tripping over and hurting yourself is bad for marathon training morale.

Marathons do not run themselves so somehow you have to fit in miles. That’s why marathon training is so much harder than the race itself. Sometimes, no amount of planning can help: the simple question is – when on earth am I going to fit in a run?

Here are some of my tricks for fitting in miles and staying sane when the diary gets full.

1.     Concede.

Depending on your race target, your plan will likely have you running between 4-6 times a week. Whatever the training schedule I have set myself, I am unlikely to be able to stick to it for 16-18 weeks in a row. My life will take over at some point. My work will have to take precedent at some point. My loved ones will have birthdays, emergencies or generally demand that at some point they come before the lycra. I will go on holiday or visit friends who think I'm crazy (or antisocial) for running every single day.

Don’t sweat it. So what if one week you only run two, three four times? The training police don’t come and arrest you. Just don’t make a habit of it. Hal Higdon reckons if you do approx. 85% of your training, you’ll be fine. This is a good rule of thumb which I use when I’m feeling stressed about the demands on my time.

If there genuinely isn’t any space to fit in a run, I just shrug it off and try to follow my schedule as normal the following week. Don’t try to squeeze in extra miles to make up for missed runs. That way injury lies.

2.     Quality not quantity.

If you must concede miles or runs for the week, focus on quality not quantity. I always aim to fit in speedwork and a long run, no matter what the week throws at me. For example, last week I knew my total mileage would suffer so I ran a tough testing intervals session on Tuesday evening with my club, Ealing Eagles. It took me a good couple of days to recover properly, but that was ok, because it was a good couple of days before I could fit in a run. I also ran a few miles later in the week at race pace, and did a long run on Sunday. So, although I didn’t tick off 100% of my mileage, I felt like I had achieved some quality sessions that would help my progress.

If I’m on holiday, I do a long run the day before I leave and the day after I come back, so I don’t have to do them while I’m away. Long runs on holiday are only acceptable if you holiday alone. Otherwise they might ensure that you end up holidaying alone.

 3.     Commute.

Ask yourself, can I commute to or from work? Note: not ‘can I be arsed to commute to or from work? That is a different question!

Many people can’t do the run commute because of distance or logistics. But many of you can. So, if you can, do it. It’s a simple way to kill two birds with one stone.

If you have office shower facilities but they get a bit hectic in the morning (which is the case at my work), take your stuff and run part or all of the way home. A couple of weeks ago I ran part way home on Tuesday and all the way home on Wednesday. It was the only way to fit my miles in, but it meant I avoided the stinky BO fest that is the Tube and was still able to attend a social event in the evening.

Run commutes are particularly useful for marathon training long runs, if you’ve got a busy weekend coming up. I’ve scheduled 19 miles for the Friday of the Bank holiday, as I have family christenings and birthdays for the rest of the weekend. By running home to start the weekend, I’ll bank the miles and have the rest of the weekend to recover.

Remember, if you can’t fit the miles in one week, it’s not the end of the world. If you can’t fit the miles in for two weeks, it’s not ideal but it’s fixable. If it gets to 3-4 weeks, and you’re not able to run even though you’re actually fit to do it, you might need to consider a different training plan or race target that fits better with your lifestyle. Running should be a pleasure, not a chore.