Marathon Training

I ran a marathon once.

I was 29, and the notion of kicking off my third decade with a marathon appealed to me. Up until that point in time, I think I had run two half marathons and was in reasonable-ish shape; reasonable-ish because I have an aversion to running in the cold (even Alabama cold) and generally slack off during the winter months. The Rocket City Marathon, held in December, seemed ideal. I’d train during the summer/fall, and would be able to run the race when it is good and cold in North Alabama, but not have to train too long in below 40 temperatures. I gave myself what I thought was plenty of time, and like so many marathon newbies, I picked a Hal Higdon Beginner marathon plan and started training. I’m pretty sure I used the Beginner Two plan, as I recall having two 20 mile runs. On that fateful second 20 mile run, my knee twinged pretty badly and I ended up having a lot of pain after I completed the run. Concerned, I backed off on the training some, thinking that if I gave my knee some time, I’d be okay by race day. To test it, I went ahead and ran the Huntsville Half Marathon, doing fairly well with a 1:43:20. This was stupid on two fronts: first, running a race on a slightly bum knee is never a good plan. Second, I naively assumed that I could just sort of “double” that half marathon time and tack on another 10 minutes or so for my goal marathon time.

Not surprisingly, while I managed to finish, the marathon did not go super great.

This was on the old course of the Rocket City Marathon. At the time, the race had an infamous stretch along a straight, boring, four lane road (Bailey Cove Road) that went on for five or six miles. Once you were done with that transcendent experience, you had to come up another slightly inclined straightaway that is Chaney Thompson. I remember feeling pretty good when I started that stretch; by the time I was halfway up it, I remember not feeling very good. My knee twinge flared. That caused me to slow down. Then it flared - and stayed flared. Sharp, stabbing pain. By mile 18 I was hobbling. Hobbling very, very slowly. The notion of shuffle walking another 8 miles did not appeal to me, but because it was my first marathon and I did not want a DNF to grace my entrance into my 30s, I gutted it out.

Finishing was still an emotional experience, even if I crossed the finish line in 4:09:27 - a far worse result than my unrealistic 3:40. Worse than my miserable finish was what that marathon did to my running. I fell off the running bandwagon hard, and have never really managed to get back to that same level of effort.

I have tried a few times over the past six years. At least twice, I’ve started ramping up my mileage, with the thought in the back of my head that I would avenge my Rocket City Marathon debut. Both times, I’ve ended up hurting myself; usually, again, stabby knee pain that won’t go away. The last attempt at this was roughly three years ago. Since then, I have managed to finish a trail 25k (not without a hydration/electrolyte related mishap, but that’s another problem) as well as another decent half marathon finish. Even so, the allure of finishing a marathon strong has appealed to me. I don’t really care that much how long it takes, I just want to finish it strong.

(That being said, finishing under 4 hours would still be nice, if for no other reason than I don’t want to be out there pounding pavement that long.)

Earlier this year, I began to consider bookending the first half of my thirties with a marathon. I started to run again in April, and have since slowly built up my endurance running long, slow mileage. Longest run so far has been 15 miles, but I’ve been hitting 10 - 14 mile long runs with a weekly run total of over 30 miles since July. So: can I run a marathon before November 25th?

Nope.

In reality, I’m still not quite there. There’s only so many marathons in the Southeast that I’d want to run before November. For me to be ready for a marathon by early November, I’d have to be further into a real training program than I am right now, and “pushing it” for the sake of an arbitrary date is clearly not a good idea.

How about the Rocket City Marathon?

Tracing back from where I am right now, that’s 13 weeks out. Most beginner marathon training programs are 16 to 18 weeks, and with my currently weekly mileage being where it is, this feels more doable.

So how to train?

After a lot of reading on reddit, I settled on the Hanson Beginner Marathon Plan. I even bought the book on Amazon - a first for me. I settled on this approach for a few reasons:

1. The Hanson Method doesn’t sugar coat it: running a marathon is hard. In fact, if anything, the author almost seems to try and discourage you slightly: training for a marathon is a commitment, and it takes a lot of time. Given my last few attempts, I’d rather go with a realistic - but successful - approach.

2. The very long runs have been my Achilles Heel. Two out of the past three attempts, I’ve hurt myself on a 20 mile run. I’m fairly sure my other injury also occurred not long after an 18 or 20 mile attempt. Running longer than 3 hours in training has gone poorly for me, and the Hanson Method addresses this head on. A lot of people focus on the promise of only running 16 miles; however, they miss the author’s reason for limiting the long run. Generally, for most people, running longer than 3 hours is damaging on the body. Doing so in training is likely to lead to injury. For those of us in the 9 - 10 min/mile camp, 16 miles is roughly a 3 hour training run; hence that limit. This is a plan that addresses issues in my previous training attempts.

3. The plan helps with pacing. Like most running neophytes, I tend to run too fast and end up hurting myself as a result. The plan gives you pacing guidelines, which for the slow runs is far slower than I was running.

4. The focus on speed work. I’ve never really known how to do speed work properly. I had attempted to do fartleks in the past, but it didn’t feel “right”. I’d run fast either too little or too much, and burn out on what felt like a very inconsistent run. Eventually, I just stopped doing speed work. The Hanson Method has you doing speed work for several weeks, followed by what it calls “strength” runs, consisting of longer iterations run at slightly faster than marathon pace. Again, the author explains very well why these substance runs (Something Of Substance, or SOS) matter, and how to view them in relation to your easy/recovery runs and long runs.

Since my mileage was already high, and the first five weeks of the Hanson method are really building up to the first set of SOS runs, I started out on week six of the plan this week.

We’ll see how it goes…