We’ve been this way before. Next week is the start of a new round of marathon training.
Hang on. Next week? Or this week? It depends whether you’re a runner or a normal person. A runner’s week begins on a Monday, not the usual Sunday. Let’s pretend to be normal for a minute. This week. Training begins this week.
Readers who keep abreast of current affairs will know that this is also Christmas week, which produces something of a conflict of interest. The recent trip to Spain netted two or three estupendo bottles of Rioja, and there’s a bottle or two of decent Champagne blowing kisses and winking at me every time I open the fridge to find another lettuce leaf. It’ll be tough.
I’m going to have another go at the Hal Higdon Intermediate schedule. This was my weapon of choice when I began the abortive programme for the Dublin marathon, back in June. Only three weeks into that schedule I managed to pull a calf muscle that kept me out for four weeks. I never regained the initiative, and had to surrender my autumn goals. (If you’re interested, you can read about the start of that brief campaign here.)
The start of a training programme is always a good time to shine the torch of good intentions into the past, remind yourself what you did wrong last time, and decide how you’ll do things differently this time around.
That catastrophic pulled muscle is the obvious place to start. Why did it happen? I’d started back to running only three weeks earlier, after a six week layoff. It was too much too soon. This time round I’ve been running pretty steadily for the last couple of months which I hope will give me some of the necessary base training. But I need to be careful, and avoid the temptation to skimp on stretching.
The Intermediate schedule starts off pretty gently, but soon heads into the hills for some savage punishment. Sorry to thrust this on you, because I know how dull other people’s training detail can be, but this is how it looks:
| Week No. | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
| 18 | rest | 3 | 5 | 3 | rest | 5 | 8 |
| 17 | rest | 3 | 5 | 3 | rest | 3 | 9 |
| 16 | rest | 3 | 5 | 3 | rest | 5 | 6 |
| 15 | rest | 3 | 6 | 3 | rest | 6 | 11 |
| 14 | rest | 3 | 6 | 3 | rest | 6 | 12 |
| 13 | rest | 3 | 5 | 3 | rest | 6 | 9 |
| 12 | rest | 4 | 7 | 4 | rest | 7 | 14 |
| 11 | rest | 4 | 7 | 4 | rest | 7 | 15 |
| 10 | rest | 4 | 5 | 4 | rest | 7 | 11 |
| 9 | rest | 4 | 8 | 4 | rest | 8 | 17 |
| 8 | rest | 5 | 8 | 5 | rest | 8 | 18 |
| 7 | rest | 5 | 5 | 5 | rest | 8 | 13 |
| 6 | rest | 5 | 8 | 5 | rest | 5 | 20 |
| 5 | rest | 5 | 5 | 5 | rest | 8 | 12 |
| 4 | rest | 5 | 8 | 5 | rest | 5 | 20 |
| 3 | rest | 5 | 6 | 5 | rest | 4 | 12 |
| 2 | rest | 4 | 5 | 4 | rest | 3 | 8 |
| 1 | rest | 3 | 4 | rest | rest | 2 | race |
(For full details see Hal Higdon’s website)
It’s those double weekend runs that look… interesting. One longish weekend run is the staple diet of the casual runner, not two. The other thing I’m accustomed to is a few beers after my fortnightly pilgrimage to Queens Park Rangers. This is going to get difficult. The trouble is, I go to the game with other people, and it seems inhumane to make them feel guilty about indulging in this ancient tradition. I may have to get some counselling on this one, not to mention legal advice.
Like all schedules, this one is designed to be bent and twisted (he said, reluctantly passing up the opportunity to make a very cheap joke…). I have a few races booked or planned, like the Bramley 20 on 29 Feb, and the Bath Half on 14 March. These, and other races, have to be squashed in somewhere and adjustments made.
So what marathon am I planning to do? And what is my target?
I don’t have firm answers to these questions yet. Or perhaps I do, but am just a bit too shy to say. What I can say is that my plan is to do a marathon on the last weekend of April, and the races available include Stratford and Lochaber in the UK, and Madrid (Spain), Padua (Italy), Leipzig (Germany), Lyon (France) and Wroclaw (Poland). I’m not ready to return to the USA for a race, but if I wanted to there are some well-known events taking place that weekend: the Country Music marathon in Nashville, Big Sur in California (Yosemite, I think), Cleveland, the New Jersey Shore marathon, and Oklahoma City.
It seems likely that I’ll do one of the European ones. That’s all I know.
Target? Well, anyone reading this website for the first time needs to be fully aware that I’m a crap runner. If I can power my way to a 5 hour marathon, I’ll be delighted. My first one (London 2002) took me 5 hours 51 minutes; the second (Chicago 2002) saw me swoop down to 5:15. So under five hours seems like a reasonable target for a fat old degenerate like me. But again, I need to see how my training progresses, and will arrive at a target in good time.
The dreadful aspect to all this is that I could get another injury tomorrow, and be out of [my version of] action for weeks. You never quite know what will happen in this business. And I suppose it’s that element of risk and uncertainty that provides half the excitement.
