So here it is.
My schedule for the Honolulu Marathon.
I’m using a modified 16 week plan that doesn’t have endurance runs over 18 miles, plus I’ve converted it over to kilometers. 18 miles is about 28 kms, but I did put a 30 km run in there for the week of Nov 14th.
If you are a new runner and have never performed runs over 2-3 hours, you should keep your milage under 28 km. The reason you do endurance runs is for the time, not distance.
In most cases, you should not extend past 4.5 hours in a long run (assuming you are at a training intensity between 70-80%). Otherwise you could be over training and be prone to health issues or injury.
Remember, you are working up to a marathon, not doing one.
So even though I added a 30 km run, I could have make it 28 km. But for that run, I might do a little walking, too. It’s not an exact science, as there are a lot of factors and it’s hard to know in what shape I will be when mid-November rolls around. Nonetheless, I’ll keep it at 30 km for now as it is a nice round number. 🙂
So this schedule starts at the end of last week’s Preconditioning Stage I.
Then I take 10 weeks over the summer months to build up a solid training base. One hiccup in the plan is that I really wanted to do a 10k in Montréal on June 18th. The 5k that they offer is okay, but the 10k takes me through my old high school stomping grounds, some fun trials, and old running routes. Those routes will definitely remind me of those cold winter nights when I was training to carry the Olympic Flame in the 1988 Olympics.
Come mid-August, it’s time to get serious and put that 16-week plan into place. From there, the mileage gradually increases towards the ‘Endurance Run’ stage and then tapers off the last few weeks before the marathon. The last two weeks are pretty crucial, so I’ll be talking about them come November.
Now, because marathon training involves long distances, mental training and nutrition are just as important. So I’ve added a column for goals and focus. This involves the mental aspects of marathon training and will remind me to cover all the requirements to get through the training. The notes may seem a bit cryptic for now, but don’t worry. I’ll be talking about these in the coming weeks and let you know what works and doesn’t work for me.
The exciting part about training is that you can also add some races in between. After all, I believe that marathon training is more about the journey than the destination. So there are few races I’m interested in and I’ve added them to my schedule. I strongly encourage you to do the same.
Now, some of the longer miles may scare you, but just remember that you are working your body up to this milage. The most difficult part to the whole training plan will be mental aspect. Marathon training requires a mental game plan and I think I’ve got that area pretty well covered. But of course, you do need to stick with your plan and not party too hard when you should be getting up early the next day for that long run.
I’ll be talking about all these other things as the weeks go by (how run, what HRM to get, what type of running shoes to look for, what mental games to play, etc.), but for now…
Here is my training schedule.
Tailored to me, knowing that there will be some hot months and travel that I need to think about.
Hope it helps!
PS: Just click on the schedule below to get the PDF version.
