Marathon Training Plans

Last night while working some emails in my inbox, an email arrived from Aaron, President of the Charlotte Running Club. For those of you that don't know Aaron just ran a smoking good time of 2:41 at GrandMas Marathon on only 6 weeks of training.

You might also not know that Aaron is big on keeping track of the details. We should all have this same attribute. But any way, attached to Aaron's email was a break down from his GrandMas Marathon as well as his previous marathons. He included much of his training plans, training strategies, and thoughts from each of his experiences.

There was so much information that I probably sent more than an hour just reading through it. Like Aaron, my goal is to dip under the 2:40 barrier. To date, I have gone under a couple of times, but for some reason, I spend more time knocking on the door than I actually do walking through it.

As I was reading through his spread sheet, something popped out to me. Aaron tracked how much sleep that was getting each night.

This is something that I also do.

Of all the different parts and pieces that we put together in our marathon training plans, maybe the most critical component of the entire plan is sleep. Sleep is the time when the body has a chance to rebuild itself to become stronger. Remarkably, this is the easiest part of our training plan. For we have nothing to do but rest and let the body recover.

I suspect with the busy lives that we all lead, sleep maybe the most underutilized part of any of our training plans.

I encourage everyone to start tracking their sleep hours. Then, try to increase it even if it is only by a ½ hour. This could be the one thing that helps you cross that huddle and achieve your goal.

 

 

Thoughts from the Cool Down Runner