Marathon Training

How much time in your training plan should you set a side to be adequately trained for a marathon? Some people say 3 months. Others say 4 months. I have seen some plans that say 6 months. I even read an article about a runner who only did 7 days of prep for his marathon.

The real answer is it is all depended on the person and where they are in their physical conditioning.

For someone like my self who already has a good running base and runs a lot miles two months provides a sufficient marathon build up.

Let me explain why.

Marathon training is extremely stressful both mentally and physically.

Physically, you are adding more miles mostly through long runs. This tends to beat body down – especially the legs. Then, you are probably adding long repeats of one or two miles on tired muscles, ligaments, and tendons. This raises the risk that the body will break down and result in an injury.

Mentally, marathon is tougher than your normal training. Your long runs grow to beyond 20 miles. For most of us this means runs of two to three hours or more. And, if you are like most of us, you are getting up early to get in these runs. You can only do this training so long before mentally it starts to take its toll. At some point, mentally it just starts to wear you down.

Then there is the fact that marathon training tends to take over your life. You are trying to get extra sleep. You degree of fatigue is much higher. You are watching your diet so that you are taking the right foods for recovery and the right foods so your long runs are uneventful if you know what I mean.

After reflecting on my marathon races from last year, I came to this conclusion. In the spring, I keep the training plan to 8 weeks. But for the fall marathon, I used a 12 week plan. I found that by the 8-10 week point, I was ready to race. Those final 2-3 weeks, I was just trying to not fall apart.

I didn’t get to run a spring marathon so I didn’t get a chance to test my theory this spring. However, I am planning to use an 8 week plan this fall. This will include 3 hard days per week. One of the days will be a long run which builds up about 27 miles. The other two days will be a combination of speed work and tempos. One week my speed work will be dedicated to long intervals and then the following week the focus will be on shorter intervals. The last 2 weeks of the 8 week plan will be part of the taper. Here, the miles will be reduced but the intensity will remain the same.

That’s it. Get in, race, and get out fast. For the week or two after the marathon take it easy. Running is okay but no hard running. It is too easy to injury your self during this period of time.

-just a thought for more highly trained runners.