Tuesday - 10km Easy

My first scheduled run this training plan was a 10km easy run.

I usually judge my easy runs based on two metrics: perceived effort and heart rate. This run did not go as planned. I felt off from the start. My legs were sore from yesterday's gym session, and I felt fatigued. For the effort I was putting in (5-6/10), my heart rate was much higher than it usually is.

I still ran to schedule, plus an extra 500m because I wanted to shorten the walk home.

This is all part of marathon prep anyway. There will be many runs throughout this journey where I will not feel 100%. Today was one of those days.

Thursday - 8km Tempo

1km warm up, 6km tempo (4:15/km or faster), 1km cool down.

Went out too hard in the first kilometre of tempo, but still felt comfortable doing 4:05/km. However I knew this would not be sustainable so I tried to ease up a little bit. During the second and third kilometres of tempo I was still comfortably pushing myself, hitting 4:08 and 4:09, respectively.

I still had not slowed down enough to a sustainable pace. Luckily, the fourth kilometre was quite flat, so I did recover my heart rate a little bit and maintained a good pace (4:05).

The struggle started with two kilometres of tempo left, where I felt out of breath and noticed my heart rate quite high. I was already sitting around 4:10 so I couldn't slow down too much or I'd miss the pace for that kilometre. Saved by a slight downhill, I hit 4:12.

Part of me really wanted to stop the tempo here at 5km, and just do an extra kilometre of cool down. That would have been easy to do.

I kept pushing for one final km, with effort being my metric now. Sitting around 9/10 effort. Pace dropped to 4:30 briefly.

One final push helped me scrape by with 4:14 before my cool down.

This was a tough workout. It was my first time running at that pace since me last race over a month ago, but I still have a lot to improve on.

For my next tempo run, I don't think I'll be aiming for a fast pace like 4:15/km. I think something closer to 4:20 is more reasonable for now, and then I will work my way down to marathon pace (4:00/km) on my tempo runs.

Friday - 10km Easy

For today’s easy run I took some lessons from my mistakes on Tuesday and started much slower this time. It unsurprisingly helped a lot. This run was also much easier overall because it was on flat ground the whole way through so I eventually settled into a rhythm and was able to keep a much more consistent heart rate.

Sunday - 14km Long

My first "long" run of my marathon training.

Similar to Friday's run, I kept the start of this run very slow to not spike my heart rate and allow myself to settle into a rhythm. I settled around 5:15/km, and comfortable kept this pace for most of the run.

One thing I am trying to work on for these long runs is my fuelling strategy. Despite not needing any fuel for this run considering my effort, at 7.5km I slowly ate one Maurten Gel 100 just to get my body used to consuming fuel while running.

After I had warmed up and was feeling comfortable, I decided to add a fast section at 12.5km in, so I picked up to about 4:20/km pace and maintained this for 1500 meters before slowing down for my final km cool down.

My overall effort for this run was 6/10 (7/10 for the fast segment).

That's a wrap for Week 1 of my marathon training program. Time to recover and prepare for Week 2.

Total Weekly Distance: 42.5 km

26 Weeks out.