5:30+ marathon training schedule - looking for some advice

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Dvorak Jan 2021 4:38pm, 29 Jan 2021 21,914 posts	0 Dvorak I'm wondering how the story went thereafter, jennyh.
jennyh Jan 2021 5:08pm, 30 Jan 2021 5,498 posts	0 jennyh Turned out to be a few twists and turns to the story Dvorak (so apologies for the long response...). I drew up a training plan for him, and his training seemed to be going pretty well until late January of 2019, when on mile 9 of a 10 mile club run, he went over on his ankle. He was determined he’d be able to do a race we’d signed up to 3 days later - I managed to convince him this was a bad idea, but after about a week he said his ankle was fine, and started running again. We did a half in early Feb, he was aiming to do it in about 2:25, but ended up doing just under 2:19 (his PB is 2:16:15, and this course was long, so he was really chuffed). But then the following week, after running 13 again, he was in pain, and on getting it checked out it seemed he’d returned to running too quickly. He was able to run again by early March, which didn’t leave him much time to get up to any sort of distance, but we decided he’d do his long runs by run walking, and a few of our friends helped him with this. He’d got up to 19 using the run walk method, and the plan was to employ a 10 minute run/2 minute walk strategy from the start of the race. However, he met someone we knew from another local club in the start pen, she was just coming back from injury herself, so they decided to rub together - this meant he didn’t walk at all until 15 miles. He stayed with her until 18 miles - when we saw them just after 22 he’d dropped back a bit, but still seemed in good spirits. Apparently it all went wrong at mile 23, and the last 3 were definitely a slog - but he finished in 5:45:28. His time from Newport in 2018 was 5:44:18, so I thought it was pretty good considering the enforced break in training. Glad he decided not to defer to 2020 in the end, as he as at least had that London marathon experience now. He did have a place in Snowdonia for 2020, just hope he’ll get to do that at some point when he can have the full race experience.
Dvorak Jan 2021 5:19pm, 30 Jan 2021 21,921 posts	0 Dvorak Thanks for you reply The best laid plans do indeed gang aft agley, especially when they are marathon training plans. Or pacing plans. Still, he did it! Hope that he gets his Snowdon experience, although I saw from your blog he's out of running again currently. Happy RTS day for tomorrow
jennyh Jan 2021 5:35pm, 30 Jan 2021 5,499 posts	0 jennyh They do indeed! 😂 I had my own issues with my marathon plans in 2019, but that probably is one for a blog one day. Yeah, he’s out at the moment, but it’s a problem with his shoulder (when he runs it exacerbated the pain) - he’s got an injection next week which I’m hoping will help.