Marathon training 2026: Weeks 9 to 12

I am now three-quarters of the way through my training block for Newport marathon 2026. It will be my fifth marathon and my fourth time at Newport. You can read about my weeks 1 to 4 here and my weeks 5 to 8 here.

Some people love running marathons. I’m not one of them.

But I do really want to run London marathon. Getting a ballot place is virtually impossible. Whenever I tell fellow runners that I want to run London, they say ‘Well you can get Good for Age (GFA), can’t you?’.

That is what I’m trying to do!

GFA means running a marathon in the year (approximately) before London marathon and achieving a time considered ‘good for age’. I know I am good for age – my mile, 5k, 10k and half marathon times are all way ahead of what would be expected of someone of my age. For half marathons, good for age is generally considered to be 1 hour 50. My PB, achieved last year at the age of 51, is 1:41:11.

There are 6,000 London GFA places in total – 3,000 for men and 3,000 for women. So unfortunately just hitting the qualifying time isn’t good enough. You need to be even faster than that. I tried in 2024 for a 2025 place. I got the qualifying time and missed out on a place by just 17 seconds.

This time, I’ve got a coach – Fi Barnes from Run Cotswolds. She’s made me a completely bespoke training plan and I’m also thinking much more about nutrition, fuelling and hydration. I just need to knock a few minutes off my time and I’m using every tool I can to make that happen.

Weeks 7 and 8 were the ones where I started thinking, ‘What am I doing this for? I don’t even like marathons anyway!’.

I went into week 9 feeling much more positive. I liked the fact that my runs early in the week were longer than usual. So I ran a total of 40 miles, with a seven mile run before work on Tuesday and an extra mile added on to the weekly social club run. I ended the week with an 18 mile long run – 13 miles at easy pace followed by five miles of getting gradually faster until I couldn’t go any faster! It was brutal. My hardest run of the training block so far, but I got it done.

Week 10 was another welcome deload week. I had just two easy three-mile runs, followed by Lisbon half marathon. The plan for Lisbon was to put a shift in, without pushing for a PB, overdoing it and scuppering a big week of training in week 11. I think I managed it very well!

Week 11 was 44 miles of training, including the Fission 20 (mile) race. I was very happy to maintain marathon pace for the whole of the race. But the best part of week 11 was the coach concluding that she would no longer treat my husband as injured and he could have a normal training plan. He joined us for the club social run for the first time this year.

Week 12 was another deload week – my final one before the marathon – with a total of 31 miles, including a 16 mile long run. I’m pleased to say my husband was able to run 12 of those 16 miles with me.

Now I’m into my biggest weeks of the training block before tapering and the marathon on 19th April…