When does marathon training begin? Perhaps the very first day you start running. But when do you start running? Before you’re born?
This isn’t a helpful line of enquiry.
Adopting a more prosaic perspective, I suppose the usual answer would be “When the training schedule says you begin”, and that could be anything: 16 or 18 or 20 or 26 weeks. The plan I’m using says 16 or 18 weeks, depending on which version is cooing more seductively at any given moment. But I’m still 20 weeks out from Boston, and I’m impatient. I’ve done 9 weeks of base training; lost twenty pounds; pushed my long run into double figures; sorted out my approach to training, and even cleared a little spot in the fridge (just behind the jar of goose fat if you must know) to store my gels. I’m good to go.
That’s what I told myself today as I lifted anchor, slipped the mooring, and set sail into the grey, frosty afternoon. I was like a kid impatiently waiting for Christmas. Which is odd, as marathon training is supposed to be such a bind. Something is different about this time. To hell with the waiting, I thought, and decided to make the rather low key announcement, discernible only to myself and any passing mindreaders, that this is now officially a 20 week programme, and this was Day 1. I was pleased with myself, and sensed the faintest hint of involuntary acceleration radiating from my gluteus maximus.
So what difference did it make? Something quite notable for me: I decided to run some intervals, for the first time since… medieval times. Or thereabouts. The task was pretty modest fare by the standards of most, but a big enough deal for me at this greenest of green shoot stages. All it amounted to was 6 x 1 minutes of speedier-than-usual running, separated by 3 minutes of heavy panting.
The 20 minute warm-up was long enough to deposit me in a stretch of desolate parkland within which no other human witnesses made themselves known. Good news all round. My 6 bursts of activity came out an average of 8:30 minute miles. Scoff away, you whippets. In my book, this is the velocity of well-lubricated lightning. It wasn’t exactly sprinting, but it was, I imagine, the stuff of threshold pace. At least I now have some idea of what it feels like to run a 1:50-ish half or a 3:45-ish marathon. For the marathon, I would simply have to multiply one of those lung-busting minutes by… 225. [Gulp. Thud.]
But at least I felt kinda holy for the rest of the day, so it was all worth it. 4½ miles banked, and a light sprinkle of intervals to decorate the statistic.
Today the postman arrived with the book that will guide me through the next 20 weeks: Run Less, Run Faster. It’s the volume that sets out the rationale behind the Furman F.I.R.S.T. 3-runs-a-week marathon schedule. Now that Danny Baker is over for another week, it’s time I went to bed and had a peek at the first chapter. Nothing like a good horror story last thing at night…
