Belfast Marathon Training week 5

Hey folks! As I write this late Sunday night feeling a lot more positive about things, when putting together last weeks blog can’t say I was feeling overly positive about matters. So what changed? Not a lot really, probably just a shift in mindset from myself and putting things into a bit more perspective. Also I probably told myself not to be so over dramatic and feeling sorry for myself. Anyone that knows me will always say there’s always some drama with me. I tend to not make things easy for myself so when looking at the Belfast marathon which is 7 weeks away, yes its going to be a huge upward challenge and things aren’t going exactly to plan but in truth was always probably going to be like this so just going to embrace it and be up for the challenge. “The bigger the challenge the bigger the response” is a quote that I absolutely love so will be keeping that in mind over the next few weeks:

Weekly Recap:

Monday: 6 miles 47.04

Tuesday: AM: 70 mins Turbo Trainer PM: 30 mins Turbo Trainer

Wednesday: 6 miles – 39.45

Thursday: AM: 7.15 - 53.13 PM: 50 mins Turbo Trainer

Friday: 70 mins Turbo Trainer

Saturday: 13.5 miles 90.19

Sunday: Rest Day

So as you can see there wasn’t just a shift in mindset last weeks but also an increased volume of training. Not just from a running perspective but as I mentioned last week I needed to find other ways to increase my overall fitness and aerobic ability. I’ve done this through setting up my bike on the Turbo Trainer. If I’m being honest I found these sessions very tough not in terms of effort but really from a mental perspective. The 70mins on Friday in particular I found mentally torturous, from about 20 mins in I wanted to hop off the bike but kept telling myself to go another 10 mins. Every 10 mins felt like about 45 mins ☹ I’m hoping these sessions will help my mental resolve that I’ll need late in a marathon so we’ll see, the proof will be in the pudding on marathon day. I got asked do I do any particular sessions on the bike, not really to be honest, I monitor my Heart Rate and try and keep it between 120 – 130 bpm for the duration and by doing this it allows me to increase my aerobic capacity.

Regarding the Tib Post injury feel as though it has improved a lot and was able to get 90 mins running in on Saturday without much fuss. Actually wanted to go further but promised my physio I’d go max 90 mins this week. Plan to get a longer run in next weekend in around 20 miles so that will be the real test and one I need to just do and gauge how it goes. So will be keen to see how that goes and also get stuck into the longer stuff. Probably won’t get as much chance to get in bike work this week due to being away.

Before I finish off, was thinking about how much time runners spend each week completing their training and if you did less running but added in more cross training in how would that affect matters. So did a bit of analysis of my own training. So in in terms of total hours training last week I completed 7.5 hours of training. I looked back on one of my better weeks training in 2021 in February where I ran around 55 miles for the weeks and the total training time was just over 6 hours. Now this probably means nothing but I thought it was interesting. What week had more value? I would of probably said the week in February but in terms of improving my aerobic capacity maybe last week is more valuable, hard to know! I suppose post Marathon I’ll probably have more insight into this and will be interesting to see what value add I think the extra additional non running training has had.

Cheers for reading folks and have a great week 😊

Noel