Marathon Training - Week 4

After three weeks of marathon training aiming towards Canberra Marathon in April I’m starting to feel good about my progress. As I’ve documented in previous posts I’m incorporating triathlon training into the program aimed at Ironman Australia 70.3 in May three weeks after Canberra.

This week I started with a sore foot and decided to take a couple of days off on Monday and Tuesday to rest it. This did the trick and the foot was fine from these two rest days. Wednesday I returned to my normal hill repeat location for strength building hill repeats. Thursday I made a rookie mistake and forgot that I’d planned swimming and went cycling. With a public holiday on Friday and the pool not open to 9am on weekends I wasn’t able to get a swim in this week. On my weekends with my family I like to get my training completed early so we can spend the rest of the day together. Friday running was intervals and 8 x 3 min at 3:30 min/km felt good, tough during the last couple of efforts but mostly a good, confidence building run.

The weekend I was up early on both days for 2 hours on the bike on Saturday and a 2 hour long run on Sunday. Felt a bit sore in my calves on Sunday so I decided to not run my long run at goal pace and keep it aerobic to get through the time required. I will schedule this again next week and see how the week plans out, if I’m feeling good will run at goal pace but otherwise keep it aerobic. Each of these sessions went well and I go into week 4 with a confidence that I’m ready for what is ahead. Really happy with my run at the moment, bike is feeling good also and behind schedule in the pool for obvious reasons.

Important to be able to change the plan if things don’t go to plan. After feeling a bit sore after my Friday intervals in my calves they felt worse after Saturdays bike. Changing the plan from a goal pace long run to an aerobic long run allowed me to get through the time and build endurance rather then cut the run short due to soreness and miss valuable time building endurance.

Weather has been hot and extremely humid for most of the week and training in these conditions has been tough. Hopefully a bit of respite from the heat this week.

Week 4

Monday – Rest

Tuesday – Running – Hills (1 Hour)

Wednesday – Swim – Aerobic (40 min)

Thursday – Bike – Aerobic (1 Hour)

Friday – Running – Aerobic (2 Hour 15 min or 1 hour 45 min @ goal marathon pace)

Saturday – Bike – Aerobic (1 Hour 30 min)

Sunday – Running – Intervals (9 x 3 min with 45 sec recovery)

Looking forward to challenging myself again this week.

How is your training going? What races do you have coming up?