In 2013 I set out to complete the Melbourne Marathon. I failed. I didn't even make it to the start line. In my attempt to achieve my marathon goal in 2014 I've tweaked my training considerably. In a mini-series, "Anatomy of Training" I will talk about my failings and what I have done to try and address those failings.
Coming from more of a cycling background, I'd never run any sort of distance - in fact 10km was my longest run - before deciding to attempt a marathon. I knew I had to make a plan of sorts, so I did a bit of googling around beginner marathon training plans and I threw something together based loosely on Hal Higdon training plans.
Mistake 1 : I didn't actually follow my training plan. After hours of work devising a plan, I decided it was too complicated, and simply didn't bother with it. I just ran what I felt like, only knowing I had to increase distances over time. This led to a, to be brutally honest, a completely shambolic looking training log. Some weeks I was doing 30 odd kilometres, while the next I did 60+. There was absolutely no consistency in my training.
Just looking back over a sample of my Strava data during my training, it's not very pretty:
41.3, 58.6, 63.7, 34.7, 51.1, 23.3, 0, 39.7, 37.1, 45.5, 36.3, 65, 19, 35.1, 35.5, 38.6, 15.2, 60.3
It doesn't take a genius to figure out a multitude of problems here. The most glaringly obvious ones to me are:
1. The training "plan" was simply too long.
2. I went too hard too early. As I got closer to "marathon day" my distances continuously fell, until I realised the marathon was just around the corner and I upped it to 60km, and bang, injured!
3. Although not visible here, I didn't care how or when my long runs occurred. One week it might be Saturday, then I'd knock out another 24 on Wednesday, then not run a 20+ for another 3 weeks.
Mistake 2: As if I had any chance of completing a marathon off the above, I compounded the problems by doing absolutely ZERO maintenance work.
I had no time in my plan to do even the lightest strength work. I didn't even know what a foam roller was and my pre run warm up consisted of a couple of hamstring stretches - static ones!
Oh how naive I was!
Mistake 3 : Since I was running regularly, and running longer distances, I thought naturally I could eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I never once paused to think about how I was fuelling my body and what effect nutrition and hydration has in the grand scheme of things.
I started having ITB problems around 5 weeks out from the Marathon, and pulled the pin on training 4 weeks out. I was bitterly disappointed and thought "why me? I've trained!". Looking back now it's pretty obvious why it was me, and although I trained, I didn't train smart.
During my time off running I saw a couple physios and took their advice on board. I also wanted to know why they were giving me this advice and so I did an awful lot of reading on the topics of body maintenance and nutrition.
All this has led me to a new training plan, which so far involves much more consistent running, more strength work and a much better diet.
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