Return to marathon training 2024: Weeks 1 to 5

I’ve recently started training for Newport Wales marathon 2024 (which I’ll generally just call Newport marathon). For my previous three marathons, I followed a simple training plan from the Newport marathon website, which I was happy with. When I went to look for it this time, it had disappeared from the website. Instead, I could pay for a personalised online training plan. No, thank you! Luckily, I’ve blogged about marathon training enough in the past to be able to piece my old training plan together. It is now saved as a Word document on my computer, just in case I decide to run another marathon!

One thing I don’t really remember is which runs were supposed to be ‘easy’ etc. But, talking to people who’ve run more marathons than me, a lot of people just focus on the distances, rather than running a particular way on a particular day. And that certainly works for me! I need a plan that just asks for five miles on Tuesday and seven miles on Friday, not one that has five different types of running per session. That will just confuse me. Realistically, my Friday run will be an easy one, just because I’m tired from the speed endurance session on a Thursday evening.

The plan I’ve always followed only reached greater distances than I do in a normal week on week 4. So weeks 1 to 3 for me were more about getting into the mindset of thinking I’m now marathon training, rather than actually doing anything different.

In fact, in weeks 1 and 2 I actually ran slightly less than I would on a normal week. Luckily, I remember enough of the plan to know that is still more distance than I needed to do.

In week 1, I did two four-mile runs and a 10 mile run, which included a parkrun in the middle. I also did the speed session with the running club. These vary in distance between four and seven miles. This was a fairly big one, at six miles. So that was a total of 24 miles for the week.

Week 2 didn’t go entirely to plan. I had a five-mile race on the Sunday, which meant I didn’t get a proper long run. I remembered the original plan had 10k for the long run on week 2, so I wasn’t overly worried about that. But I also got an uncomfortable twinge in my right leg, so decided it wouldn’t be sensible to do my speed endurance session. I ended up just doing four runs, totalling 17 miles – a parkrun, a four-mile run and two five-mile runs.

Week 3 was actually a decent week of running, with a total of 29 miles. I ran four miles on Tuesday and Friday, and a fast parkrun on Saturday. I didn’t have a car on Thursday, so I ran to get to my speed endurance session, meaning the whole session added up to eight miles – with four of them very fast miles. I rounded the week off with 10 miles on Sunday.

Week 4 I finally felt like I was really marathon training, as the distances increased a bit. The speed endurance session was a shorter one, at four miles. I also ran five miles on Tuesday and six miles on Friday. I ran a steady parkrun on Saturday, as I was volunteering as pacer. I rounded the week off with 11 miles on Sunday – a total of 29 miles again.

Week 5 was when I started feeling stronger and happier about my decision to run another marathon. I must admit there were times in the early weeks when I questioned why I was putting myself through it again. It was also the week when my legs started aching and wouldn’t stop, thanks to a tough speed endurance session with the club. Speed endurance is on Thursday, then I run Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so there is no chance to recover. Being able to run on tired legs is a part of marathon training, though. The week started with my longest midweek run to date – seven miles. The speed session with the club was five miles, then I did four miles on Friday. I added three miles to parkrun on Saturday and finished the week with 13 miles – a total of 35 miles for the week.